This is a great post from the Educational Technology facebook group.
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For those of you who use Powtoon for students to create animated videos on, you will know that students often have problems exporting/finalising their video and getting it to you. The best methods are to export to Youtube or to export to a link. Instructions for these are on the tech wizards website. It is a good idea to put a link to these instructions in any task/assignment instructions you give the students.
Getting students to create videos as part of introducing them to a new topic or revising one already learnt is a great learning activity. It can enhance many skills for students. And far more engaging that writing out information! This way you add some digital skills at the same time! For those that have attended my 'Humble Camera App' workshops, it is a good step up from the basic talking head type of video and enables students to utilise many pictures included in the programe as well as images they upload themselves. In an activity like this students may need to research information, synthesize it, define it, and explain the concept or topic in their own way. This requires them to really think about what is needed in a video about their topic that will help a viewer to understand the topic or concept fully. This new tool is well explained and reviewed by Jennifer Gonzalez on the CULT OF PEDAGOGY website. If your interested she has a facebook account under the same name - very handy to see what she comes across. I have given the program a quick go and think it is one of the best of this style of video creation tools that I have seen in a while. I particularly like that it starts from a written perspective and then you add pictures to support that. In many previous tools students have focused on putting the fun good looking pictures on first but haven't thought about what it is they need to say first. This is a much better tool for this reason. Below is an example of the style of the videos created. This excellent post by Richard shares great tips on tools available for helping to achieve this task. Creating 'Book Trailers' can also be used for sharing a variety of other knowledge in many subjects. Summarising a topic, or subject, or even just a chapter in a book (perhaps significant chapters in a book, movie etc that they have read), summarising events in history, or even describing the significance of a place (geography, outdoor education etc).
This is often best set up as a collaborative group task, to enable students to pool their knowledge of the topic and also of tech tools they can use to accomplish the task. A task such as this also provides excellent opportunities for students to develop their creativity and communication skills. Students are very well schooled on movies, TV programs and the like (outside of school as well as in) and so creating a movie trailer provides great links between prior knowledge they have of what looks good on screen and new knowledge that they may need to develop in order to make that occur in their own movies. On a slightly different tangent but just as important, tasks like this are a fantastic way for teachers to highlight the importance of copyright free images and music etc. By providing some links to students of where they can access free to use images and music, we support them in making good decisions on digital literacy. As an added bonus, student created movies can later be used by teachers to teach future students! Sometimes what the students create is well beyond what we thought they were capable of. Tools mentioned in his post are: PhotosforClass.com - for images with Creative Commons license (free) Pixabay - for images with Creative Commons license (free) Stupeflix, Adobe Spark, WeVideo, and iMovie - Audio recordings Free Music Archive - Free music archive FMA- Free music archive Sound Bible - free sound clips, sound effects, and sound bites. Adobe Spark and Stupeflix - Video editing software Please see Richards posts for instructional videos on how to use some of these tools, or for more information on how to create Book Trailers. It is also handy to provide links to some of these videos to your students when they are completing this task so that they have some resources to visit to help them out. If you have done a task like this or do one in the future, please let me know as I would love to share student work (with their permission of course.) This will be an absolute game changer in our teaching programs. Google's latest update will soon allow students and teachers using the google apps on a MOBILE DEVICE (Ipad and Android tablet apps) to annotate, highlight, and draw freehand into a google doc. So what does this actually mean? Well, basically students can draw diagrams freehand into a google doc. Teachers will also be able to write and draw freehand on those student docs (exactly in the same way as you would on a piece of work on paper.)
The inability to draw diagrams and pictures that can't easily be created through adding shapes has held google apps back for some subjects. This change will allow students to not just create diagrams, complete brainstorms and in general take hand written notes if they chose but it may also help those subjects like Science and Maths that use subscripts and superscripts in equations. Students will also be able to show their workings for mathematical and science equations. This is a very similar type of software that will most likely be seen in some external digital examinations in coming years (starting for some subjects in 2018 - majority by 2020). So it is great for our students to be able to become familiar with this style of working prior to digital examinations. While at this stage it is only available to those on mobile devices and not laptops, I am sure google will be working hard on rolling it out on laptops as well. The gif (animated image) below shows this in action through a google classroom assignment. This is a great article about the value in using comics for a range of learning outcomes. If you are interested in trying this with students (it is really easy) feel free to approach Catherine Wooller or Brigita Biondic as we have experience in using these with students.
The blog post is written by Shelly Sanchez Terrell, a Teacher Trainer/ International Speaker/ Instructional Designer/ Author/ Founder of The 30 Goals Challenge & #Edchat. March 24 (2016) "Comics can be powerful learning tools. They are brain friendly. The visuals help support struggling readers and language learners. The frames break up the reading into chunks and students can get a general understanding about the plot, subject matter, characters and themes from the visuals. Many comic creation tools are free, easy to use and allow learners to choose from a library of characters, props, scenes, speech bubbles, and templates. Your learners will be able to quickly create a story, view it, and share it. Creating comics engages students and encourages them to explore vocabulary, summarize information, and contextualize what they learn in a creative way. " To read more click here. Shona shared with me yesterday a website she has created to use with her classes. This is a great project for teachers to embark upon as it soon becomes quite clear how easy making a website is. While in itself it is only a place for students to visit it also increases their skills at navigating websites effectively. Shona is going to take that one step further this year by helping her students to set up their own blog site (one particular kind of website). She will then be asking her students to blog about various topics that they will be studying as well as other current events occurring around the world. Interestingly, we have many students who have begun this blogging journey on their own, writing about topics that they have a passion for. Why not embrace it and enable our students to connect globally! Shona's Thoughts on this JourneyIf Taylor Swift can blog then why can’t I? Admittedly, I’m not really a big Taylor Swift fan but blogging is a very popular and is increasingly common in popular culture and the workplace. Like any form of writing- blogging does involve a set of skills that teachers can help students with. Google Classroom is a great way to forward resources such as worksheets, slideshows and notes to students but I have found so far that it is mainly one-way traffic. By asking the students in my classes to set up their own blogs that will be linked to our home class blog I hope that they will be more inclined to share and reflect. Blogs can be published instantly and to a wide audience so students will need to be more mindful of what they write. Students will be able to track their progress on their blogs and hopefully enjoy sharing their ideas and receiving feedback by a range of different people and not just their teacher. One thing that I became acutely aware of with the building of this teachers help site is that it is never finished. Now my teachers OCD struggled with that initially!!! However you get used to the fact that a website/blog is essentially a living book, that twists and turns as it needs to and changes with time. Now I am ok with it being in a consistent state of being unfinished as I know that if I tried to finish it now (when technology is moving even faster) it will be inaccurate by tomorrow! Anyway, thanks Shona for sharing your ideas with us, click on the link below to visit Shona's site. Year 11 Social Studies - McRae2016
This presentation was given to staff who selected this PD session on 17th August 2015. Thanks to Maya for sharing this presentation and for sharing her knowledge with others.
A very helpful post from Richard Byrne on the 'Free Technology for Teachers' website. This is good for students who have laptops or chromebooks. For those that are using ipads they have the option to use imovie and android tablets could use Explain Everything.
"The process uses Google Slides and WeVideo and can be completed using Chromebooks or laptops. You can also make them with a desktop computer as long as you have a microphone. "
Links to his Helpful Tutorials on how to do this:
Step 1: Create your slideshow in Google Slides and download each one to your device. Step 2: Log in at WeVideo and put your images from Step 1 into a video. Step 3: Record your narration for each slide. Step 4: Publish the video to Google Drive where you’ll be able to share it with your teacher. The following tips that he gives are really helpful, Thanks Richard.
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AuthorPlease be aware these are links to other people's work. Most blog entries are written by me unless stated otherwise. I am happy to share all my ideas. |