Today, I had the opportunity to catch a Periscope live broadcast of a group of students in Endwell, New York sharing out their favorite apps. The students gather information about their apps first in a Google Slide presentation, and then each student presented their rationale for the app they chose.
Without further ado, here is a link to tweet with the Periscope video available to view there.
You can also get an idea of the apps the students featured by looking through this Google Slide deck the teacher, Rachel Murat, shared: App Smashing
Here are three screen captures from the slide deck:
Here is a sample of the Google Form (survey) that was filled out to evaluate each of the apps presented. Students later created a blog post to support their top choice.
Overall, I was fortunate to watch the live presentation via Periscope to see the class in action and was impressed by the way the students took control of the learning, sharing their favorite apps with others and defending their choices as well as explaining how the app worked and its benefits.
At the end of July, EdCamp Global ran a series of professional learning events. Given the series was all online, the Periscope app was an excellent way to bring the sessions to a live, interactive audience.
Here's a sampling of some of the sessions offered via the app, and you'll be able to see the broadcast via the Twitter tweet in which they are embedded. Be sure to hit the volume icon in the lower corner to turn on the sound while watching.
What suggestions do others have for offering online professional development? What tools do you think work best for reaching a global audience during the EdCamp Global and similar events?
A professional colleague in the language arts area recommended the StoryTimeMomShy channel on YouTube.
My colleague noted her kindergarten child has been glued to the read-alouds. What a wonderful way to develop a love of literature in young children.
I am embedding some of the stories for you to preview, but recommend going to the StoryTimeMomShy YouTube site to see all the stories available, and expect more will be added.
You can also check out StoryTimeMom's website for more information:
Do these read-alouds look like something you would use in the classroom or recommend to parents? I am new to StoryTimeMomShy channel, but subscribed, so I am ready to recommend it to parents and teachers when they seek a source of read-aloud sites.
Let me know what you think. Have you heard of StoryTimeMomShy? Do you know of children who watch the read-alouds on the channel? Where do you go to find online read-alouds for young children?
So we started a VoiceThread in class tonight. This was the first time we used the program.
Here is what we have so far, and we will add more comments next week. VoiceThread.
We then experimented using two apps on the iPad to make quick videos. Our goal was to compare the three tools for creating a photo story about children's books.
We won't edit the versions completed on the iPad. That was not the intent. We just wanted to compare different tools to deliver comparable content.
On the iPad, we first used the free version of Shadow Puppet, which allowed us to upload 10 images. We then audio recorded our comments about each of the books. Next, the final version was transferred to the iPad's camera roll, so it could be accessed there to upload to YouTube.
We next experimented with iMovie on the iPad. We did not have the limitation of 10 images, but we also kept each of the clips to 15 seconds to keep the final video short. We used one of the music tracks in iMovie, but did not use other features, except to audio record ourselves for our allotted 15 seconds. The final version was uploaded to YouTube.
Here are the two versions.
Shadow Puppet Version
iMovie on iPad Version
So what do you think so far? Would you consider doing a collaborative photo story like this one with students?
We also used Padlet to create a bulletin board of our favorite children's books. It was easy for us to collaborate online using the tool. Here is what we have so far, shown in a screen shot.
Why didn't I know about this free app sooner. This morning, I downloaded it to my iPad, went through the screen shots of how to use the app, and within a minute, I was up and running.
For my first attempt, just grabbed from my iPad camera roll some photos I had left over from a conference on campus at the University of Saint Joseph. Some were blurry, but as I was just experimenting and wanted to find out how seamless using the app was, I just used what I could find quickly that related to a single event.
So, uploaded a few of the pics right into the app. Then just audio recorded whatever came to mind for each photo, and saved the final product. Wanted to see what the share options were from there. For simplicity sake, selected share to email, and sent the video to my own email and to a colleague who helped plan the event captured in the video. She emailed back to say, "Love It."
Mind, you this was a first attempt, and when I opened the video from email, I could see it could use lots of improvement, but also wanted to find out from there if I could upload to a site like YouTube or Vimeo. The options were several. First, I selected from the emailed video to download, which I did on my Mac, and then I selected the option to share the video on YouTube. Worked like a breeze.
Feeling confident, decided to try my hand on a second video. Went back to the iPad, and made another one, this time also including a quick video I had in the camera roll. Found out the free version of Shadow Puppet allows for uploading 10 photos or videos, but was content with that. Went through the same process as outlined above, audio recording a quick narrative, sending the saved video to my email, accessing it from there, downloading it my Mac and then sending it out to YouTube.
Here are the two videos, but mind you, these were done quickly. As soon as I free up more space on my iPad to store more photos and videos, I plan to play with Shadow Puppet further.
First Attempt:
Second Attempt: Tried to find clearer pics on camera roll and selected one of the videos in the camera roll.
Do you have a favorite app for making quick videos? How do you envision using an app like Shadow Puppet in the classroom?
Update: I tweeted out how much I enjoyed the ease of using Shadow Puppet and got a reply from the company, pointing to a page on its site with some samples. I am including a link to find the example of how the app was used by one teacher for students to tell about their art projects. Take a look and listen to what the students had to say: "Stories, Reflecting on Art Projects." While on the site, also notice the other examples, lesson plan ideas, and information about using the app to meet Common Core Standards.
So who could ask for anymore? Sure you need an iPad or iPhone, but grab one from a neighbor if you don't have one, and try out Shadow Puppet.
If you explored around the Shadow Puppet site, let us know what you found of interest.
As the school year ending is drawing closer and closer, it's time once again to think of how to celebrate your students' accomplishments. Digital tools are just one of many options. Animoto is an excellent tool for making quick video celebrations. If you're a teacher, be sure to use the Free Animoto Educator account when signing up, so you can make longer videos than the 30- second ones that come with a regular free account. Use this link if you need to create your educator account.
Here are some examples of Animotos. I created the first three for courses I teach. The last four feature young children and celebrate camp and field trip experiences. You can view these videos full-screen, using that option (see full-screen icon, lower right corner of each video).
As one of my courses comes to a close, I like to create a recap to show at our last class. I have used Animoto in combination with a slide program to create these videos, which showcase the topics students selected for their research study proposals.
Ending a Course
This one is from an 8-week course taught in fall 2013. Interestingly, one of the students in the course also chose Animoto as a way to present her own final project.
I just finished teaching the same course in an 8-week format and created this one. Although Animoto allows for creating text right within the program, I prefer to use a slide program and (1) insert in each slide an image with accompanying text, (2) screen capture the slides as images, and (3) upload a full set of images into Animoto, which then creates the video mix.
This additional one was created based on a joint cross-class project done between elementary school students in Maryland and graduate students at University of Saint Joseph. The video was created to celebrate the conclusion to a project we did with trading cards in celebration of International Dot Day. We actually exchanged our cards through regular US mail, and I did a Skype with the Maryland students to connect in person. You can read more about the Skype and the trading card project at this blog post. Skype for Dot Day
Each summer my niece is a counselor at summer camp for small children who sign up to attend on a weekly basis. At the end of each week, on Fridays, a performance is held at which the children sing, dance, or do another kind of performance. A video recapping some of the events told through photos is also shown, and Animoto works perfectly for this. Here are some examples.
I also like these two videos that teachers in the Integrating Technology and Literacy course created to celebrate school field trips, having parental consent to show the children. Although these were not necessarily made at the end of the year, they illustrate ways to use Animoto to celebrate special school events.
You can also upload Animoto videos to other sites such as Facebook and YouTube, which is another way to share with parents and others.
As the month of May draws closer an end, what are some ideas you have for using Animoto or similar programs to reflect on the year? What videos could you make to celebrate students' accomplishments or events that transpired during the year?
I found this video on Richard Byrnes' blog, Free Technology for Teachers. At this time of the year, and living in New England, consider sharing the video with students. The original video was on The Adventure Blog and posted with the title, "The Colors of Autumn."
Perhaps the video will motivate students to create their own projects centered on the change of seasons, or in particular the fall season. Do you do specific projects in your classroom that celebrate the autumn season?
What do you do in your teaching that addresses the fall season? Have you found books, online resources, videos, and other materials that students particularly enjoy as we celebrate the change of seasons in New England or other regions of the world? Have you considered creating a book or video with your students to celebrate the fall season, including the holidays of Halloweeen, Veteran's Day, or Thanksgiving?
My professional colleague, Wes Fryer, sent along this Audioboo by Rachel, "Flamingos at the Zoo." Rachel's voice reminds me of those talented kids you hear on television commercials. More to the point, Audioboo is a wonderful tool to use with students of all ages.
Here is Rachel's Audioboo. Let me know what you think. How can you see this tool, Audioboo, being used with learners of any age? How might it be used in different disciplines in the school at any grade level? What about teachers creating Audioboos? Have you used this tool?
Although this strikes me as excellent project for young children to demonstrate what they are learning about animals, the use of Audioboo also gives them practice with recording their voice and developing their oral communication skills.
Since writing this post in draft from, I have also learned that Rachel has her own websites where she has archived her other creations: 22 videos, several e-books, and 28 Audioboos. Here is the link to her website:Rachel Fryer. Click on the individual tabs at the top to get to her ebooks, audios, vidoes, and writing samples. Did I mention that Rachel is 10 years old?
Watch these third graders from Bismark, North Dakota advocate for a new school playground. Do you think they would have been as persuasive if they wrote an essay? Why do some claim digital storytelling is the new persuasive essay?
The third graders created the video on their own using iMovie. What do you think of their skills as digital storytellers?
Recently, I learned about the PixNtell app for the ipad. I am often on the hunt for new tools for creating digital stories using photos, especially missing PhotoStory, which runs on just PCs. PixNtell looks to be a simple. You insert photos and then narrate the photo sequence. I have yet to try the app, but if you have an iPad, you might. It also runs on the iPhone and iPod.
I read two reviews of the app, one on Free Technology for Teachers, written by guest author Mr. Kelly Rexine, who has also been tweeting me (@mrrexine) about the success of implementing the app with 3rd graders. His post on Free Technology for Teachers also includes an embedded video 3rd graders produced with the app; while you at the post, look at the video. The good news is that you can embed and share the videos that students create on Blogger and other sites. Here is a link to Mr. Rexine's post, PixNtell in the Third Grade: Guest Post.
I also learned about the app's integration in the classroom in this blog post from Columbia, Missouri schools. Check out the post here: iPads in CPS: Review of Pixntell. Based on this review you can only upload a handful of photos, but the pro version is just 99 cents, so if you like the app, you might want to explore the variety of features in the upgrade.
It's the weekend, so thought I'd pass along this video for your entertainment and reflection.
On a more serious note, what strategies do you suggest for remembering passwords? What strategies do you suggest for keeping passwords secure? Do you teach your students about the importance of safeguarding their passwords?
When your digital story is completed and processed, you have several ways to embed it in a Blogger post. To demonstrate two methods, I quickly made a rough draft of a digital story that still needs lots of editing. Because we need to embed an early draft for feedback, I decided to use this rough cut to demonstrate the process.
I created the draft with iMovie using photos that I had stored in a file. After I created the story as a project in iMovie, I exported it to Media Player, thereby creating a file I could upload. Because this is a rough draft, I used the saved file with the lowest resolution for uploading.
Method One: I uploaded the video to my YouTube account. (Another blog post contains a tutorial of how to upload to YouTube. See that post: How to Upload Your Video to YouTube.) Once the video was uploaded, I got the "embed code" from YouTube's "Share" option. I copied the code, returned to this post, and used the "HTML" view to paste the "embed code" into the post. While I was in the HTML view, I changed the width and height of the video, though you can skip that step if you like. I then switched back to the "Compose" view. Here is the video embedded from YouTube.
Method Two: Blogger has a Video upload feature. The icon to upload is located right next to the icon for inserting a picture. I clicked on the Video icon and used the first option: Choose a file to upload. I located my saved iMovie in Media Player and clicked on the filename. Then clicked to begin the upload process. It took a few minutes for Blogger to upload and insert the video.
When your digital story is ready, let me know if you have questions about embedding it in a Blogger post.
In addition, I would remind you, thanks to Kelly (see comments), to use Vimeo for uploads. You can embed videos uploaded to Vimeo to into blogs, but also once you save them there, you can easily access them in school. Fewer schools block Vimeo than YouTube.
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As you work your way through the digital story telling project, when your first draft of the video is ready and processed and saved as a file, you can upload it to YouTube, which will ease embedding it into a blog post.
This short video walks you through the process of how to upload your video to YouTube once you have a YouTube account. On another note, if you don't already have a YouTube account, you should consider having one to save your favorite YouTubes. YouTube also enables organizing your favorites into categories.
For the digital story telling project, you will be embedding in your blog two drafts of your video, an early draft and a final draft. In addition to using YouTube to upload videos, there are other video sharing sites, and you can also use Google Doc. If I find a good tutorial on how to use Google Doc for this process, I will post it.
Yes, students use YouTube to help them study for school. CrashCourse offers some excellent and entertaining videos for students to brush up on what they're studying in English, social studies, and science classes. Check this list below of subject areas and the number of videos presently in each category.
Even if you don't teach high school, you should be aware that high school and even middle school students are going to sites such as CrashCourse and other sites to review for school.
I am posting three examples from CrashCourse to give you an idea of how the videos work and their quality. I have sent some high school students to CrashCourse, and they reported the site was helpful.
Here are two for English classes: one on Emily Dickinson and one on Catcher in the Rye:
Here's one for social studies:
Check CrashCourse to see the collections of videos available. How do you feel about students using sites such as CrashCourse? Would you send your students to such a site? Should you as a teacher be aware of the kinds of videos available online to help students study? Do you provide a list of videos for your students to review at home?
80 Alternatives to YouTube is an e-book, which its author, Med Kharbach, has made available for sharing. I will embed the ebook below, but you can also access it asGoogle Doc if you prefer to review the book in that way. After skimming through the book and options explored, let us know which of these alternatives you have used, which you want to explore, and which you think you might want to use in your teaching.
Use the forward > mark or the scroll bar to advance through the book. Use the magnifying icon to enlarge the image and text.
In this Alive in Five video, "Web Writing for Fun," we learn of three web writing tools: Fodey, Figment, and MixBook. These tools vary in their functionality. Listen and watch the video, and if you check any of the sites, let us know what you think.
Alive in Five has numerous videos explaining how and why to use specific Web 2.0 tools. For instance, here are links to some: Animoto Wallwisher PollEverywhere Toodoo
Once you are on YouTube looking at any of the Alive in Five video, you'll find more videos in the series. Breeze around, and let us know which of the videos you recommend.
Here are three more digital stories to get you thinking of ideas and how you might use digital storytelling in the classroom. All were created with PhotoStory 3.
The first was created by a 7-grade student for a social studies project. Each student in the class picked the name of an American Revolutionary War character from a hat. The student then needed to create a digital story about that person using PowerPoint, PhotoStory, or Movie Maker. The student selected PhotoStory.
The second video was created by an elementary school teacher to tell students about the life of Helen Keller based on a book they were reading about her.
The third video was created to be used with middle school students to give them an eyewitness account of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. After viewing the stories, feel free to leave comments.
Do these videos give you ideas of how to integrate digital storytelling into your teaching? If so, what new ideas do you have?.
Here's some help. I am posting for your convenience some digital stories completed by former EDUC 584 students. Please leave comments, and let us know what you think of the videos and if any give you ideas for your own digital story.
Here is one on using podcasting in the classroom:
Here is another one based on poetry. Here is what the students said about it: "Our group put together a digital narrative of the poem "Nappy-Headed" by Latasha A. Willis. The musical accompaniment is the song "I Am Not My Hair" by India Arie."
These examples were saved in Google as .wmv files. Use the links to access them.
A Teacher's Story You will really like this. It is all about the struggles and joys of teaching.
Shapes focuses on teaching young children about shapes, a geometry lesson for elementary school students. It is interactive and engaging, and asks students to think about shapes that surround them in their everyday world.
Tigers is a photo story about tigers and their life habits, which works well for a science lesson in a study of animals for the elementary school classroom.
Life Cycle of the Painted Butterfly This one, like the one above, works well for a science lesson on animals for the elementary school classroom.
States of Matter is a common unit of study in 3rd and 4th grade classes. Check this video if you do a unit of study on three states of matter or are looking for examples of digital stories for the science area.
13 Coloniesis a social studies lesson for the upper-elementary classroom for a unit of study on the early colonies.
A Special Place, can be used in almost any grade level. It shows photographs of places that are special to the storytelling. You can then ask students to write a script for a similar story. Starting this project with the photos will help students to write their scripts.
Holocaust Memories, is for higher-level social studies class; as expected, this one is a serious review of an important event in world history. The photo story would also work well in a unit of study of Elie Wiesel's book, Night.
What ideas about using digital storytelling across the curriculum did you get from viewing these stories?
You've seen the commercials: MasterCard Priceless. Why not create your own?Challenge your creativity! Tell your story!
I've gathered some examples from students at the University of Alberta who are required to complete a MasterCard Priceless digital story as a course assignment.
Writes one student, Melissa Comte:
For my ECMP 355 class we had to create a Mastercard Priceless video and I really enjoyed making mine. I used Windows MovieMaker and it was actually quite simple to put it all together. The other day I was going through pictures on my computer from my trip to Europe in the summer of 2010. As I was going through the album, I thought those pictures would make a grate priceless video. Even though we had to pay a chunk of money to go, the memories are truly priceless. It was a trip of a lifetime. Check out my video. Hope you enjoy!
The volume on Melissa's is low, but you should be able to get the idea from the images in the video of her time abroad.
Here are a couple others to get your juices going. The volume in these should be fine.
In this one, the student tells a personal story of meeting a family member.
Here's one that took another approach, using Harry Potter to create a spoof:
Here's one final one, which you'll appreciate if you have young children, and even if you don't, you'll find the video straightforward, cute, and entertaining.
Have these students' videos given your ideas for creating your own digital story? What did you think of this class project of creating MasterCard Priceless videos?
