iMovie for Mother's Day

Mother's Day is coming up and Maria Meyer (2nd grade at Elda) had a wonderful project idea. She wanted the students to do something special for their mothers. We sat down together and came up with the idea to make a movie of the class talking about their moms. We decided to use iMovie and the built in camera on the computer. Each student took his/her turn recording (well, I ran the computer) a message to mom. The clips are all saved in the same 'event' and will be put together to make a movie. Mrs. Meyer's class is hosting a special event for Mother's Day and the movie will be shown on the projector.

So far, this has been a great experience for the students. They get so excited to see themselves on the computer! They also have really enjoyed watching the clips being replayed back for them. Each student composed a message and either read it out loud or memorized it for the videos. This is a great project for moms but even a better experience for the students! They have learned a lot from watching themselves read on camera!

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is a great, free website that lets you create questions and have your audience respond. It is web based so you need access to the internet, however your audience has a little more flexibility. They can vote online via computer or other hand-held device (iPod Touch, etc) or they can text in their answers from cell phones. It is a quick, easy way to get some audience participation and feedback. You can create multiple questions for multiple surveys. If you are familiar with Turning Point it is a similar concept. There are advantages with using Turning Point over Poll Everywhere, however it is free and you don't need to check out additional equipment. Poll Everywhere questions are great for getting quick feedback from your class that you don't need to track. It could be a nice way to keep your students on their toes to always be listening. They will never know when you will ask them to vote in their responses on your questions!

Turning Point will track your answers (who answered what) and export them into Excel. You also have all the equipment you need on the cart in your building and don't need internet access for it to work. If you are using the polls for a quiz or grade Turning Point is still the way to go. However, if you want a quick survey from the audience Poll Everywhere is a nice alternative! If your students are already in the computer lab you can have them vote right from the computers. Or, if you are working with older students that have cell phones (or adults) they can text the answer in! Of course, you would want to let your participants know that their cell phone service providers will charge them for sending a text just as they normally would. Lets face it though, for better or worse many teens already have texting plans and it won't cost any extra to send a text to Poll Everywhere.

If you want to check it out, go to:
http://www.polleverywhere.com/

I have some handouts from our last SOITA Tele-Tech Tuesday presentation that I would be happy to share with you. You will need to set up a username and password to use the site. You will be able to save your surveys and copy/paste your old questions to make new ones! Let me know if you have any questions.

Unlock your You Tube Potential...Carefully!

You Tube offers countless educational videos that make great additions to your lessons! You just need to know how to access them. If you work in Ross (or probably any other school district) you may have noticed that You Tube is blocked. There is a good reason for that. As many educational and appropriate videos as there are, there are just as many inappropriate videos and content as well! So, to make sure students don't wander onto something they shouldn't be watching most districts block all the videos. However, there are ways teachers can still utilize the appropriate content in their classrooms.

In a recent post, 'iPod Touch for Teaching' I mentioned converting a You Tube video to a file and putting it in your iTunes library. That is great if you have an iPod that can handle video. If you don't, there is still hope! There are free websites available that will convert You Tube videos into actual files (mp4). From there, you can save them on a flash drive or any other device. Once the video is converted you can play it in Quick Time (which most of your school computers most likely already have). The nice thing about Quick Time is there are no unpredictable advertisements or video suggestions of "What you might also like" that may not be appropriate to show in school! Quick Time is free software and works on Macs and PCs. If you work in the Ross District, please ask your tech staff in your building before you download anything! If you are working from home try:

 http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

One website that offers file converting is ZAMZAR. You just need the URL of the You Tube video you want to work with. If you would like step by step directions please contact me. I received my handouts from a SOITA professional development for the iPod Touch and am happy to share! Just make sure you view the entire video before you decide to use it in your classroom. You Tube is uncensored so you need to make sure the video you want to use is educational and appropriate for your grade level.

Check out:

http://www.zamzar.com/

Note: You Tube is still blocked by the district. If you are planning on searching and converting You Tube videos you will need to do it from home or somewhere other then the school district.

Don't forget that if you are a Ross teacher you also have access to Discovery Education (formally United Streaming). There are thousands of media clips, movies and resources that are all appropriate for education. Chances are good that if there is a video on You Tube you you want to use with your students you can find something similar on Discovery Education. Plus, you have much better options to search with to find what you need. If you are not already using the subscription it's not too late! Contact me (or your building tech staff) to get the passcode you will need to set up your account.

Go to the link below to get started:


http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/