Wow – the end of another course – Course 4 starting next week!!  The purpose of this post is to reflect on the experience of designing this unit/presentation.

To be honest in my reflection,  I need to say first that I’ve really struggled keeping up with Course 3.  It’s not that I don’t understand parts of it or I can’t do parts of it, it’s that I’ve struggled with keeping everything functioning together.  By that I mean my family, my work and my study.  And it’s been hard.  So hard in fact, that I ended up doing BOTH parts of the final project instead of just one.  Was it a combination of so much to do and so little time to do it in?  Was it not reading the instructions properly?  Is this what happens to our students when we overload them with so much to learn and so little time to learn it in?

So how did I come to do twice as much work as I really need to?  I believed I’d read the requirements correctly the first time, and I actually had.  I also distinctly remember our Course Advisers repeatedly tell us that we had a choice so my confusion, and eventual “extra workload” was entirely my own fault!

Utilize your visual literacy skills to either:

• Create a visual presentation to use in your class to help teach a lesson

OR

• Develop a unit plan to actively engage students in using visual literacy to demonstrate their learning (include a model “project” for what your students should produce).

For some reason a while later I thought than you had to have a unit plan and I couldn’t understand how to get a unit plan out of the tutorial my group and I had created on “How To Choose A Just Right Book”.  So that’s what led to me doing BOTH parts of the final project! I think I need to take some of the advice I always offer my students:

Check and double check you understand exactly what it is you are required to do before you start!

Anyhow ……. back to the reflection:

Create a visual presentation to use in your class to help teach a lesson:
I enjoyed working as a group on a creating a tutorial for what is a similar problem across the grades – teaching students how to choose just right books in the learning hub!  For some of us, many of our students wander aimlessly around the learning hub not actually making good use of their time and certainly not sure of how to choose a book that’s just right for them without the levels on the books.  It felt like we were creating an authentic presentation for use in the classroom as well as fulfilling our course project requirements.  Working together as group saw us work cooperatively, collaboratively, using each others strengths to produce a finished product, much like we expect our students to do.  It is always helpful to go through the process we expect our students to go through in order to troubleshoot any problems we think may occur.

Develop a unit plan to actively engage students in using visual literacy to demonstrate their learning (include a model “project” for what your students should produce).
I love digital storytelling.  Stories let us communicate our perspective and perception. Stories let us connect on an emotional level with people and events in stories and we connect them to experiences in our lives.  Digital storytelling allows us to share our stories globally hence the driving force behind the unit plan Personal Narratives Digital Stories.  Sharing our stories with an authentic audience enables students to work with purpose, using visual literacy to show, not tell the narrative story.  How powerful is that?  Communicate skills are engaged, connection skills are addressed and students are provided with opportunities to address multiple intelligences.  Again, going through the process we expect our students to go through in order to experience what it will be like is paramount to the success of any project-based learning in the classroom.  It also provides students with a model to aspire to, gives them direction and helps them to understand what is expected of them.

The actual process of making the model was an eye-opener.  Just thinking that you’ve developed this splendid, authentic, purposeful task does not necessarily ensure that the project will be successful.  Choosing my personal narrative was easy – it’s the one I’d done the most work one, it’s the one that’s been polished and polished until it’s the best that it can be.  Students will not struggle with this step as they too have a similar piece of work in their Writer’s Workshop book.

Finding the images for the story was easy – pictures from my camera.  That’s what had prompted me to write the original narrative in the first place.  As for students finding images, unless they too had photos stored on their computers at home and could bring them in on a flash drive, they would have to search for appropriate images to retell their chosen personal narratives.  I began to wonder whether there was a rather large obstacle here for students.  Searching and finding appropriate images (and I’m referring to the visual appropriateness here, rather than the creative commons approriateness) will be time-consuming and difficult for many students.  This would be the area where the storyboard planning would be extremely important – what sorts of images will help me tell my story.  This is where those critical thinking skills will need to be applied.  Critical thinking is a very valuable skill, a very important skill.  At this point I get the feeling that this is the focal point, the crux of the lesson – that’s different to what was originally envisioned in the unit planning.  Again, I’m reminded of the importance of creating a model project.

Using still images, adding audio, adding background music, and using transitions in iMovie was exceptionally easy, but only because I’m familiar with the programme.  This is where screencasting will be of particular use – mini tutorials to share with students how to do certain things like importing images, editing images, transitions etc.  It could also be an opportunity for students with prior knowledge to shine – they could help other students by offering a “mini-workshop” on how to do certain things in iMovie.  You could organise to have 3-4 “iMovie Experts” who are available to answer questions from fellow students so that the teacher remains the facilitator and does not have to have all the answers and technical know-how of the programme.

Projects have layers – it’s important to understand that – it’s important to realise that some things will be taught “just-in-time” with project-based learning, other things will be deliberated planned and taught.  Being flexible is one of the reasons working with digital tools will succeed.  Taking risks with your own learning and going through the process you expect your students to go through will also help your project to be a successful one.

There is nothing more powerful than a digital story.  I love ‘em.  I love the combination of voice, music, and images.  I love the planning and the creativity that goes into telling a digital story and I LOVE the fact the digital stories are much easier to share with family and friends.

Daniel H Pink, in his book, A Whole New Mind says:

We are our stories.  We compress years of experience, thought, and emotion into a few compact narratives that we convey to others and tell to ourselves.  That has always been true. But personal narrative has become more prevalent, and perhaps more urgent, in a time of abundance, when many of us are freer to seek a deeper understanding of ourselves and our purpose.

Digital storytelling’s place in the classroom has cemented itself as one of the most powerful mediums available to our students.  It’s a chance for their stories to be created, to be heard, and to be shared.

I really loved Photostory3 in the classroom as software for digital storytelling.  It offers students and teachers the chance to create simple, effective digital stories, taking care of the “bells and whistles” that students tend to get carried away with – but still left that option open if it was needed (challenge for those digital natives in your classroom).  I wish someone would create a Photostory3 for the Mac! (Hint, hint someone!!) My prayers have kinda been answered with PhotoPeach.  I wrote about using PhotoPeach a while back, and I’m still liking it.  There’s a couple of missing features that would really put PhotoPeach on a par with Photostory3 – the ability to rotate photos and to add audio!  But it’s still pretty effective if I do say so myself.  I really like the feature of adding music from a general offering of styles – one less thing to think about if you are beginning digital storytelling in the classroom.  Being able to choose music without worrying about copyright is a bonus.

Here’s Day 1 of a recent trip to Cambodia, to show just how simple yet effective you can tell a story digitally. My general rule of thumb is ……..  if it takes me about 15 minutes, chances are that Grade 5 students can make theirs in two 45 minute sessions plus planning/storyboard time!

Not bad, for another “freebie” tool on the web!

How has the explosion of web based video changed the teaching and learning landscape?

We had two links to explore for this question.  The first, an article in the NY Times Magazine by Kevin Kelly, Becoming Screen Literate.  He states

Screens are everywhere …………… These ever-present screens have created an audience for very short moving pictures, as brief as three minutes, while cheap digital creation tools have empowered a new generation of filmmakers, who are rapidly filling up those screens.

When technology shifts, it bends the culture. Once, long ago, culture revolved around the spoken word.

This would have to be the single most astounding effect the explosion of web-based video has had on the teaching and learning landscape.  No longer are we bound by textbooks and studio-produced video tapes.  No longer are we limited in our resources to help our students learn.  No longer are we “just the teachers” and students “just the learners”.

The explosion of web-based video has provided us with more opportunities to help students understand concepts and practise skills.  As Kelly so eloquently points out, cheap digital creation tools have empowered our students to take control of their own learning and the learning of others in a way never experienced in schools before.

Of course, not all of the effects of this explosion are positive.  Our rapidly filling pile of web-based videos contain a mass of “rubbish” not suitable, nor appropriate, nor substantial enough for education.  One might ask “Doesn’t this make more work for the teaching and learning landscape as you sift through the ever-growing pile of video now available on the web?  Kelly thought of this also.

The holy grail of visuality is to search the library of all movies the way Google can search the Web. Everyone is waiting for a tool that would allow them to type key terms, say “bicycle + dog,” which would retrieve scenes in any film featuring a dog and a bicycle.

It is a formidable task, but in the past decade computers have gotten much better at recognizing objects in a picture than most people realize.

So we may conclude that this will not be a problem forever.

We are teaching and learning in the 21st century.  There are certain skills that we as teachers and as learners need to acquire.  Web-based video is one of those tools that allow us to connect, communicate and collaborate easily with others around the world.  Jamie McKenzie’s article Questioning Video, Film, Advertising & Propaganda: Deconstructing Media Messages gives us a good overview of those visual literacy skills we need to be exposing our learners to in the 21st Century.  What was once “literary devices” in an English Class are now “film devices” in our literacy classes.

One of the effects of the web-based video explosion would then also include the necessity of ensuring that learners possess the skills of critical thinking and as McKenzie states:

the importance of being able to understand information when presented through through a variety of media.

McKenzie pointed out in his article that there is little explicit clear commitment to the critical analysis and debunking of film, media, advertising and propaganda.  These are the skills that we must therefore including in our teaching and learning environment in reaction to the explosion of web-based video.  We must make sure that we engage students in careful, critical analysis.

It’s been a couple of years since I last made a screencast.  I find them incredibly useful for tutorials – especially to help students complete tasks at home or during their “downtime” in the classroom.

We have a variety of free tools at our finger tips for recording screencasts – which are essentially  “just in time” screen-capture movies of your desktop with audio.

Back in the ol’ days when I worked at a PC school, I used CamStudio – a delightful, easy to use free download software but it was for PC’s only (I hear there is a paid version for the mac now).

Screencasts mean that Students can watch a tutorial over and over again, in their own time, stopping and starting them as they desire.  What I like the most about screencasts is the potential for use in the classroom and the fact that it’s just not the teacher that has to create them!  We’re going to be using screencasts to show our mathematical thinking when we multiply and divide – explaining to others in the classroom (and world as we’ll put them on our own blogs!) how our favourite strategy works.  Here’s just a few other ideas for screencasting:-

• Tutorials for web2.0 tools
• Tutorials for specific lessons in different curriculum areas
• Tutorials for “How to’s”
• Catch up tutorials for students absent from class
• Teacher absent? – Screencast for those important points that you really want students to know!

Screencasts are so good for those learners that just need a visual as well as an aural explanation as well as the opportunity to watch something again, in their own time, and without having to feel like they’re not smart just because they benefit from hearing/seeing something many times.

Since there’s no CamStudio for the mac (well not a free version anyway), we still have a few free options.  There’s Jing (personally I find it a bit clunky, limiting and I don’t like the file extension it uses) and then there’s the SMARTrecorder.  (both Mac & PC)

Of course if I were rich …………… my ultimate choice of screencasting software would, without a doubt, be ScreenFlow.

Below is a quick little Screencast that I made with the SMARTrecorder in 5 minutes to demonstrate to my class how to sign onto VoiceThread and leave a comment.
It was super easy to use, and being able to chose the screen capture area (default capture is the whole desktop) was a bonus!  The only thing I didn’t like about SMARTrecorder was that you can’t see the mouse!!  I’m going to ask my students tomorrow if this is a real hinderance or if they understand the tutorial just the same.  I think it’s a little confusing in some parts, not to see exactly where I’m clicking!  What do you think?

I use blip.tv for storing my movie files – it’s free, you get lots of storage space, multiple uploading feature and the rendering of your video is pretty quick.  On the odd occassion, I might use TeacherTube or YouTube.

Our CoETaIL leaders (aka: Kim Cofino & Jeff Utecht) have asked us to reflect on a presentation we have created in the past looking at how we would implement new visual presentations techniques to better communicate your message to your audience.

One of the best books I bought over the “Summer” break was Garr Reynolds‘ book,  presentationzen Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. It’s an informative read and is full of ideas, reasons and ways to ensure that you’re not contributing scores of to the “Death by Powerpoint” group!  My favourite new term is slideument – a cross between a slide and a document.  I know I’ve been guilty of a few “slideuments” in my time!!

Marketing guru and presenter extraordinaire, Seth Godin, contributes to presentationzen with the idea that

communication is the transfer of emotion

He says you can improve your presentation immediately by:

Making slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them.  These slides should demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you’re saying is true not just accurate.  No more than six words on a slide. EVER.

Don’t use cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.

No dissolves, spins or other transitions. Keep it simple.

Create a written document. A leave-behind.  Put in as many footnotes as you like. Tell the audience that you’re going to five them all the details of your presentation after it’s over, & they don’t have to write down everything you say. DON’T hand out printouts of your slides.  They don’t work without you there.

I’ve been trying to use presentationzen during the writer’s workshop mini-lesson for my Grade 5 students.  I’m hoping that the visual images will help to stimulate creativity and emotion.  I did think that my slides were presentationzen – after reading the above message from Seth Godin, I’ve discovered that they’re weren’t quite there yet.  I had transitions still, the slides repeated my words, not reinforced them and some had more than six words!

I’ve come to the realisation that the words are on the slides for me, rather than the students, and this is a direct reflection of how much I am still not comfortable with the writing workshop mini-lessons from Lucy Calkins.  I’m using her words, her ideas and I haven’t yet managed to formulate my own words and ideas about teaching writing workshop style mini-lessons.  (but now I digress ……).  Below is a sample of a “before” page and then an “after” page.  Apart from the last suggestion from Seth Godin about creating a writing document (which I guess we do in a way when we hang reminder charts everywhere in the classroom for writing and reading) – I think I’ll definitely stick to the other suggestions.

Before …….

After …….

Garr Reynolds believes

One of the most important things you can do in the initial stage of preparing for your presentation is to get away from your computer.

My planning has always taken place at the computer, so I’m willing to give this a go to see if it helps me be more true to the presentationzen ideal.

I’ll also be asking myself his two questions as I prepare my next presentations:

What’s your point? Why does it matter?

CoETaIL Blogging Assignment:  Sept 14-20th

Use Creative Commons image search to find an appropriate image to use in at least one of the classes you teach. Include this image in a blog post and share how you plan to use it in the classroom. How can visual imagery support your curricular content?

Our Enduring Understandings:

• Design and layout of information influence effective communication
• Audience and purpose behind your communication affect how and what you communicate.
• Different information mediums require different strategies when organizing information and communicating effectively.

I use Creative Commons all the time to help me with my Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop mini-lessons.  I hope that it helps my students visualise and capture the heart (no pun intended) of what the mini-lesson teaching point is. At the same time I use images to model to students how to attribute images used.  There’s always an attribution slide at the end of the mini-lesson.  (That’s me – always looking for multiple teachable moments!!)

This is one of my most favourite images used to date.  It’s popular with my students too!

The Writing Workshop mini-lesson was:

Good writers revise by asking themselves “What’s the most important part of this story?” and then develop that section.  You can do this by ……….

• Rereading your story
• Find the heart of it
• Develop that section of your writing

After a very long (self-imposed) break from blogging, the start of Course 3 of our CoETaIL.asia group means I’m back in the saddle again!

Our first blog post requires to us to reflect on implementation of ideas learned during the past two courses.  There’s are the essential questions:

• What have you tried/are trying in your classrooms?
• How has this / or how do you hope this impacts student learning?
• What do you hope to get out of of this next course?

For me personally, Course 1 and 2 didn’t really offer me anything new to try in the classroom.  I don’t mean for that to come across as big-headed as that sounds either!   Technology, global collaboration and connections were already staples in our classroom learning environment.  What Course 1 and 2 did give me was the opportunity to share ideas and tools as well as offer support to teachers who were willing to have their thinking and their knowledge pushed.  This aspect was immensely satisfying as it is always a good feeling to be able to “pay-it-forward” in terms of giving people help like people (in my PLN) have helped me in the past.  My pedagogy was challenged as were my reasons for using technology in the classroom for learning.  I found this extremely helpful to deepen my own understandings of how and when and why I use technology and it also gave me the opportunity to look at things from another person’s point of view – which I can often forget to do.

The impact on student learning has been more in the development of our Grade 5 Digital Literacy Overview.  It is a great thrill to work with, support and guide a fabulous group of teachers in our Grade 5 team who are willing and enthusiastic about the value of using a blog as a “Window into Our Learning”.  The impact on student learning will no doubt reveal itself slowly over the coming year and be evident in the content of our classroom blogs and individual student blogs.  Every single Grade 5 student has their own blog.  That’s an incredible step our team has taken onboard!

I’ve always considered myself to be a “life-long-learner” and I am nowhere near close to knowing everything there is to know about Information Technology and Digital Literacy.  I hope to continue my own personal learning journey by finding more ways to inspire, guide and facilitate learning in the classroom through digital literacy as well as continue to support and help my fellow colleagues who have been led to the water, and are now drinking it by the bucket-full!

Image Attribution:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericsurfdude/322217434/

Our budding young scientists in Grade 5 have been learning about Variables and how to investigate them. During the investigations they have been learning things like how to use a two-coordinate graph, how to predict, how to identify variables and control them, setting standards and recording data.

To help them with their reflection and interpretation of data (we’ve done the what – so what?) we’d love you to click on the student blog links on the right hand side of our class blog and read our Measuring Capacity post.
Each student has posted their two-coordinate graph with a little explanation of what investigation they were doing and are asking other student scientists around the world two questions.
What do you notice? What would you suggest we do next?

Of course they’d be really excited if an experienced scientist left us a comment too!  If you can help us out please head on over to our classroom blog and click on the individual student blog links on the right hand side.

Since we’ve just returned from a fabulous first ever trip to the South Island, what better subject with stunning photos to try out PhotoPeach.  And I’m impressed.

Features

It’s FREE, and super easy to use. (Grade 5’s will find this a breeze).  You have the option of choosing from the generous list of free audio for background sound or you can upload your own music.  You can’t record voice audio each photo but you could record your voice using GarageBand (macs) or Audacity (PCs) as you have your PhotoPeach story playing (so you get the timing right).  You would have to forfeit the background music option though.  The sharing options include Facebook, Twitter (url), html code (for embedding in blogs) MySpace, email or Copy Link.  Images can be added from your computer, Picasa, Facebook or Flickr.

I really like the editing feature – you can edit captions, add photos, swap the order of photos etc even after you’ve published it – when you’re working with students I think this option is a must – since it provides an opportunity for students to evaluate, reflect and then make improvements (if necessary) to their work without having to start again.

Use in the Classroom
I will introduce PhotoPeach to my class at the beginning of the year (August 2009) using it as a way for them to introduce themselves to me and the rest of class.  I’d have them take photos to represent themselves, (no identifying photos, since we will be sharing the stories on our blogs).

It’s a presentation tool to be added to our classroom “toolbox” for digital storytelling.

Steps to Setting Up a Story

At moment due to a problem with permissions, flickr is not available (not sure if that’s a problem with me or with PhotoPeach).  I used the photos in my facebook album first.

I found the adding the captions easy at first, but when I wanted no caption I wasn’t sure if missing a line would result in no caption. (Someone else can try this). It was much easier to add/edit captions after I was finished.

Using the editing option I was able to add in more photos (from my computer this time) adjust the speed (slower) and edit the captions.

I’ve been meaning to do this “job” for a while now – and 7 weeks 3 weeks left of summer vacation means I just cannot make excuses any longer – I need to get it done!

My categories on edublogger have just got outta control!  In the early times of my blogging attempts I really had no idea about the difference between categories and tags – I used to think they were actually the same things (and if you use blogger – there’s no categories, only labels – which I am guessing are the same as tags).

Hence this blog’s categories have spiraled out of control and are in need of a tidy up.  I’ve checked with edublogs guru extraordinaire Sue Waters to make sure that cleaning up my categories won’t make all my posts coming through anyone’s RSS reader again – I hate for you all to be subjected to all my early writing again!!  If by chance that does happen – my sincere apologies to you in advance!

So when I’m done, hopefully it will be easier for anyone to find “stuff” (aka: I’ll be able to find stuff more easily).

I’ve decided to categorise all blog posts with either Tools, Resources, Conferences, Collaboration, Classroom or Blogging (for now).

What categories do you use?

Image Attribution: file cabinet to heaven by t.magnum