Working on my Online Story Book

I hope that I can get my story book online sometime tonight. I was working on a story book in Tabblo so that I could actually get a soft copy published for my granddaughters for Christmas. I think they would really get a kick out of seeing themselves in a book and reading a story of our adventures at the Florida Aquarium. Actually if I can get the hang of it I would probably make a book for each of my grandchildren highlighting an experience or day we had together. I think it will be a great educational tool for teaching my grandchildren about the places and things we saw. I am highlighting the wildlife I photographed at the Florida Aquarium and explaining some of the ecology or biology associated with each organism. I can see using it in my classroom highlighting lab projects or possibly making a zoobook in biology. I again see some problems possibly with copy right issues of pictures my students might want to use off the internet. I just thought about contacting Fish and Wildlife or even the Park Service here and seeing if they have pictures archived there that my students might be able to use. I know they have lots of photos at least at Fish and Wildlife because we always had to take photos when we were out in the field. I also have lots of photos that could be used and I could also have students do their own drawings for the books and scan them in. I am sure I will be able to find ways to utilize this tool. It would be a great way for students to document their lab experiences and share their observations, diagrams, and even pictures (since we have a classroom digital camera) online with other students doing similar experiments or even to put on our schools website. Once I get something done that can be put up on here I will comment somemore on the experience of creating this book. I was waiting for things to upload so I figured I would go ahead and do a post now with more to come.

Flickr Slide Show Florida Aquarium

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I found using Flickr photo a little difficult at first. I tried to upload my photos at home and could not get anything to upload. I ended up saving my photos on my laptop so I could upload them at school. Once I got the hang of it everything went pretty well. I got my photos uploaded my titles and descriptions on. I then had to re-visit elive to get directions for putting the slide show on my blog. I also had to download firefox because for some reason flickr.com did not load correctly on Internet Explorer there was an error on the page. I could not go to organize to create my set and order my slides for my story. Once I got on Firefox I was able to create my set and order my pictures. Then when I went to FlickrSlidr I could not preview the slide show because there was no plugin even after I downloaded Adobe Flash. There was definitely some frustrating moments, but for the most part I really enjoyed the project. I was trying to think of how I might use this in my classroom and nothing was coming to me at first. I was working on my assignment at carnival and one of my students asked what I was doing then made the comment that she would really like to try to make a Flickr Slide show. As I was setting up my descriptions and explaining the scientific information about the birds and animals in my slide show I realized I could use it to have students take pictures during field trips or of lab projects and put them in a Flickr Slide Show to share with others on the internet or to put on our school web site. I was trying to think of ways that we could get photos that would not cause copyright issues also. The only things I could think of was maybe setting up a folder with the many pictures I have taken at field camps and national parks. I have quite a few pictures that I could use to set up a picture library for students to publish their own Flickr Shows. They would be required to do the research for the scientific descriptions. As I was sitting here writing this post I thought of having students take pictures of their labs and inquiry projects as a possibility as I mentioned before. Again writing the descriptions with scientific information and details about their methods and observations would certainly help reinforce and enhance their learning.

Sense of Place Comic Life Poster

The most difficult part of this poster was deciding what place to choose for the sense of place. Then I realized that I can't find my folders of pictures from Colorado and the Pow Wow my grandson and I went to in New York. I guess that helped narrow my choices, but I am still bummed I can't figure out where my other pictures are saved. Oh well, on to Comic Life once I found some suitable photos of a place I really enjoying going to the rest was pretty easy. I did have a little trouble getting things centered correctly and moving things around until they seemed like they were in a good order and position. I can see this being used in my classroom for many reasons. I really liked the idea of making posters of classroom events and field trips. I have already used it to help students get a project finished that they were having difficulty with. It made making a poster much easier and motivated the students to who would probably not have completed the project. When students have an enjoyable and relatively easy way to get things done even the unmotivated students can be stimulated enough to get their work done.

Digital Video

This video is being made to help my students with a video project on the history of the atom. I am starting the students off by having them create a time-line for the project. They will then preview video clips that I have downloaded from Discovery Education and create a story board with their time line or outline as a guide. My video clip still needs work it is actually a work in progress. After I saved it and viewed it I noticed that there were certain things I needed to move around and there are still a few more topics to cover. The more I used imovie the easier it became to work with. I think once I get the video completed and all the quirks worked out I'll be able to do these type of projects more often. I am sure the I will learn quite a bit from my students as they go through this project.

Video Clip Technology in the Classroom

This is a video clip from Discovery Education Streaming. Discovery has videos on many topics including professional development. You may find a wide variety of videos shot in the classroom for teaching tips to add to your teaching toolbox.

Oct. 6 & 7 In-service Bristol Bay

On Monday and Tuesday my school had two full days of in-service. We had an Apple Trainer at our school for those two days. Since our school is participating in a one to one program this is always valuable training. We covered several topics including imovie. The topic I found most useful was Apple Remote Desktop (ARD). I have had ARD on my school laptop since last year and never really figured out how to use it correctly. I have used synchronize in our computer lab and had no problem with that, but ARD for some reason has been a problem. I was successful in following along with our trainer in the use of ARD. Now if I can just implement what I learned in my classroom. I know what I have to do is set up class with the lists of my students computers in it so I can keep an eye on them during class. I know there are a few others who are watching computers even those not in their classroom. That is good because the students know that even if I may not be watching someone else might be. I didn't get a chance to go back to ARD once classes resumed, but I do know that I have to make it a priority so that I will be able to view where my students are when I have them working on their computers. I want to always be able to make sure they are on task and if not I can capture a screenshot of a student off task or even on an inappropriate site. We were told a story of students chatting about smoking pot that was captured by a screenshot. I don't believe they did that again and everyone in the school knew about it so everyone got a clear warning to be responsible. We also covered iworks including document shortcuts, picture placements, and educational uses of iworks. I only got a hour of instruction on using imovie, but a little is better than none. I learned how to split videos in imovie, how to put in titles, and dub sound in. I really want to learn how to use this because our school also has a subscription to Discovery Education Streaming. Many of the videos on Discovery can be edited. I can have a student take a video use the clips and place in their own narration covering a plethora of topics. I wanted to do that last year, but never had a chance to get to it. I do use many video clips in my presentations though to enhance and illustrate the concepts I am teaching like mountain building and biomes. It is an exciting tool that I want to utilize in as many ways as I can and with the one to one program it is possible.

PowerPoint Presentation Assignment

I thought that I would be able to breeze through this assignment because I use PowerPoint on a daily basis for my lectures. What I didn't anticipate was my change from the 2003 PowerPoint version to the 2007 PowerPoint verision learning curve. I had some major frustrated moments with a little cussing (I'm sorry to say) involved. Of course, I got through those moments and figured out what I needed and feel much more comfortable with the 2007 version. I thought the exercise itself was a good one. Thank-you for all those videos to clarify these points Skip.

I hadn't thought of breaking my presentations into small individual tutorials. It is an excellent way to breakdown things like writing a scientific report into small chunks of information. I have always tried to break this subject down having students work on one to two pieces of the report until they could finally put it all together with a complete report. This exercise gave me a whole new avenue to be able to work on this.