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Today I missed my Windows PC. Yes, yes I know ….. but before you mac’ers shoot me with bows and arrows, hear me out.
Over the past few weeks my 5th graders have been creating Lines, Angles and Polygon digital learning stories for 3rd & 4th graders at our school. The purpose was to create an introduction digital story using photos taken around our very own school environment showing just how math exists in the “real world”, and teaching our younger students a few introductory things about Geometry.
Now we are a mac elementary school and I am a mac user at home (but have recently come from eight years in PC schools). Last year I did a similar project with my Year 7 students but used Photostory3. This year I made the project a little simpler for Grade 5 (Year 6) but used iMovie since there is no Photostory3 equivalent for the mac.
iMovie is a great programme, but it’s not as simple to use (with students) as Photostory3. I am however very proud of the work that my students did with their digital learning stories as we finished them off today (just in time to be watched by 3rd & 4th graders before Christmas break).
Today we accomplished the following things:
1. Recorded our voices (after preparing a script) into our digital learning stories in iMovie
2. Created our own background music in Garageband
3. Added titles, credits and words to our digital learning stories
Thank goodness our fabulous 21st Century Digital Learning Specialist, (and my very good friend) Ms Cofino was with us in class today. She spent three hours with us as we finished off this project. Her help was invaluable as she most definitely knows more about iMovie & Garageband than I do!
I know you’re all busy thinking why on earth would you do ALL that at once??? And I must say that wasn’t the plan at all! We have an issue with the available space for each student on our server. Their flash drives are not big enough to store an iMovie project (and you know how BIG those are when you’re working on them!!) Plus our laptops are set up to clear everything on the laptop when the students log-off or shut down (which is a good thing really). We didn’t really have a choice but to get our projects completely finished and rendered before we had to let another class use the laptop carts.
Reflection?
I love this project based learning. I learnt a lot about the way my students work together, and already have some particular skills to pinpoint and polish next semester regarding collaboration.
I need an alternative hard drive so that my students aren’t forced to finish their work in a hurry.
I really need to make sure that I am using the right tool for the job. Was iMovie really the right tool for this job? Could VoiceThread have done the same thing? (That would eliminate the server/saving problem). And will I do it again? Of course I will, and I’ll be tweaking it a bit more next time too.
PS: In the next few days, we’ll be embedding our digital learning stories for Lines, Angles and Polygons on our class wiki math page – so take a look if you have some time. We’d love some feedback on the discussion tab if you have time too.
December 18th, 2008 at 3:08 am
LOL & don’t tell anyone but I’m PC
I do have a MacBook which I bought because people told me it was better for podcasting. Now I’ve podcast on both Macs and PCs; both audio and video podcasts so can honestly tell you that they both offer advantages and disadvantages. (and not enough to warrant buying a Mac for podcasting).
Photostory is definitely easier than iMovie.
December 26th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Maybe I would have used the podcasting side of Garageband to do this instead of Photostory. If you really wanted to get creative you could use Bootcamp on the Mac and used Photostory anyway! That would send the techie person into a spin at school I would think!
December 29th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Well, after reading this and Sue’s comment, I am not rushing out to convert my PC to a Mac. I do like Photostory, have no issues with podcasting, and can make movies easily. BTW…I love the idea of math digital stories. Might have to try that one.
January 7th, 2009 at 3:22 am
I’m a PC too. I love my MacBook Pro for it’s aesthetics, but if somebody gave me $3000.00 American and said go buy what you want I would be thinking pretty strong about a Sony Vaio.
Photostory is good and better than iMovie. Windows MovieMaker is way better than the current iMovie although I understand the latest update will bring back some of the fine tuning available in the older versions.
For an online option try Kerpoof
At UEN we did a write up of it available at http://www.uensd.org/multimedia/?p=153
or voicethread at http://voicethread.com/#home
I have also seen smilebox work pretty well http://www.smilebox.com/
January 14th, 2009 at 8:49 am
I had heard that you had gone walkabout and you certainly have! Have you got an e-mail address that I can get in contact with you. I’m wanting to pick your brains and get some support for I.C.T teaching back here in Napier. Also caught up with Karen Houghton recently – she finally got married to Paul:) We discussed the possibility of a Ruawharo Reunion
January 15th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
This sounds like a great project. I’ll bet the students were totally involved. I look forward to seeing them on your wikipage.
Who needs Mac or PC, Ubuntu (Linux) all the way!
January 19th, 2009 at 12:35 am
Just checked your link, but still don’t see the digital learning stories. I’m anxious to see them, as I’m looking to some similar type projects with my 3rd graders. I’ll keep checkin’ Just know that you’ve got an audience.
January 31st, 2009 at 10:25 am
Hey Chrissy,
Got an idea for you.
http://incidentdesign.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-is-response-to-chrissys-post-about_1685.html