My Art Club kids got together and made a podcast! Not all of them were into it for the first episode, but my 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students wrote their own scripts and recorded them using an old iMac (so old it can’t run OS X) and Audacity.
The blog service is Class Blogmeister, a wonderful free service provided by David Warlick. To my knowledge Class Blogmeister doesn’t host files, but that’s what Ourmedia.org and Archive.org are for.
I’m getting ready for a really fun day tomorrow.
I know, I know, as an art teacher most of my days are fun, but this one’s extra special.
Tomorrow is an inservice day, so to make up for the lack of students the teachers in the Interrelated Arts program are getting together to swap lesson ideas. I’m sure most of them will be bringing in student work, but I don’t have the heart to take those things down.
Instead, I’m taking digital pictures. I’f I’m lucky and can get an internet connection in that building I’ll show them a Flickr slide show, since I really want to get more art teachers turned on to that service. If not, I’ll use my Mac’s built in screen saver to do the job.
When we’re done there I’ll be hopping in my car and driving to Rockville (Mental note: I still need to print directions) for a Maryland DEN event where we’ll be learning how to use MovieMaker. I may already know how to use iMovie, but unfortunately most of my buildings are using Windows so I guess I might as well learn Movie Maker also and get some cool lesson ideas while I’m at it.
After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I’ll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.
Again, this is also a podcast.
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End of the day, and in a moment of triumph Steve Dembo showed off the new discoveryeducatornetwork.com website. A lot of work went into this, and it shows. Based on the idea that a website’s users are what makes it great, DEN members have a lot of input here. There’s a discussion forum, calendar, links to resources, and in all of these DEN members are allowed to contribute.
Not a DEN member yet? Well, why not? Go sign up! Now! It’s free, so you don’t have that as an excuse.
After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I’ll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.
Again, this is also a podcast.
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My last session of the day was with Hall Davidson again, and he showed how to do multimedia. I already know how to edit video, but like most of the big names in education out there he had a different way of doing it.
Not every school has enough cameras for everyone to make their own movie, but computers today often come with MovieMaker or iMovie installed. Why not make a “pack” of media – pictures, video, and music – on a given topic and have students combine some or all of it to make a movie. There’s a lot that can be done using media that are either copyright-free or at the very least under Creative Commons licenses. (My favorite sources for such content are Flickr Creative Commons, YoToPhoto, and Archive.org, but there are plenty of others.
I wish Mr. Davidson had spent more time on Creative Commons rather than just discussing fair use, but then he did a presentation during session 1 on copyrights so he probably talked about it then. He DID show how easy it is to cite references, which is of course something we should al be doing.
The notes for this session were provided as handouts, but he also had them saved as Word documents. Anyone with a thumb drive was able to come up and get a digital copy if they wanted it.
After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I’ll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.
Again, this is also a podcast.
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For the 2nd breakout session I went to see a presentation on Google Earth and unitedstreaming, run by none other than Lance Rougeux (the guy who planned the whole PETE&C DEN event). I went into this with a bit of skepticism since I wasn’t sure if Google Earth had a Mac version, but a teacher at another table downloaded and installed the Mac app during the presentation so I really perked up after that.
Google Earth has some great visuals and looks at the altitude above sea level to make the maps 3D – honestly, the Grand Canyon looks awesome. You can also insert images on top of the map to turn them into great social studies lessons. Lance used unitedstreaming pictures of course, but an image is an image.
I think the best feature is Google Earth’s support of html code. I can insert pictures hosted on Flickr by using the codes they provide, and then everyone who loads my map file will see the same image.
When I had Art Club later on that week I showed Google Earth to some of my kids and they didn’t want to stop playing with it.
After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I’ll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.
Again, this is also a podcast.
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During lunch Hall Davidson showed us some great videos that were made by students – some of them younger than one might expect. Our kids are for the most part digital natives and are capable of doing a lot more than our curriculum gives them credit for. I constantly hear about raising standards for math, raising standards for reading, and so on, but I don’t often hear about raising the standards for technology.
Is it perhaps because so many of our teachers are afraid of what technology can do?
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(At one point in this podcast I say “education” when I meant to say “technology.” See if you can find it.)
After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I’ll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.
Again, this is also a podcast.
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The first breakout session I attended was run by the DEN’s own Scott Kinney, who only had to drive down the road to attend the conference. (The lucky guy lives in Hershey.) His presentation was all about the diversity in our classrooms and how unitedstreaming could help us meet the needs of today’s classrooms.
If I wasn’t already sold on unitedstreaming.com I would have reacted to this like so many other vendor presentations, but since they had me at multimedia downloads I paid attention to find out what else unitedstreaming could do.
We started with a quiz, and the answers were a bit surprising to us. I’d list them here, but I forgot his source so I can’t properly cite his statistics.
The main point of this warm-up was that our schools are a lot more diverse than we thought.
Since unitedstreaming has lots of features from subtitles to online quizzes to encyclopedia articles, It really does help people who have a variety of learning styles.
This morning I left two things on the counter that were meant to go to school with me:
So guess which item I missed more today?
That’s right, the replaceable digital camera I didn’t even need.
Hello, my name is Aaron, and I’m a digital junkie.
After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I’ll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.
Again, this is also a podcast.
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During the keynote I had the pleasure of sitting next to Cristina Runkles, whose third grade class has just started podcasting. We exchanged web addresses since we were both into blogging and podcasting.
I’ve already listened to her students’ work, and it’s good stuff! Just imagine what these third graders will be capable of when they graduate, having experienced cutting edge technology at such an early level.
After writing up my summary of the PETE&C DEN event I noticed that it can easily be divided into 7 sections. So, rather than bombard you with a large report I’ll post one section a day this week. Short, sweet, bite-size chunks of information work much better for me, and hopefully for you as well.
Oh yeah, this is also a podcast. Enjoy.
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The first keynote speaker was Kathy Schrock, and she did a great job going over tips for visual presentations. Now granted, I knew most of her tips due to my training as an art teacher, but I’ve sat through far too many presentations (done by adults who should have known better) that included sounds, transitions, pictures, fonts, and even colors that just did not belong.
And of course the whole thing was made even better because she put examples and notes from her presentation online for us. This took a lot of pressure off of the people who were taking notes, and it also meant one less handout for us to file and forget. (I myself intend to use wikis for my presentations, since my last wiki is still the number one downloaded resource on the new DEN site. … how did THAT happen?!)