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Here’s a sweet little Newspaper clipping generator. You can do awesome things with this in the classroom, but I chose to write my own awesome news clipping.
My wife just joined twitter. I’m trying to explain it to her, but I can’t put it into words. Often times when I explain the concept to people, they say…”why would I ever want to do that?” I believe that twitter can be used for good or for evil.
For good: Sharing helpful information with people. I follow a lot of educators and ask my network for help most of the time. I offer websites and different strategies to whoever is listening.
For evil: Sharing every minute of your day. No one cares that you just ate breakfast or you sneezed 5 times today. If you do share that, you can at least share a recipe for your breakfast or the webmd link for your sneeze attacks.
Here’s another radio commercial for Murrell’s Inlet. Sometimes the music in the background sounds too perfect.
Murrells Inlet – sadie-and-kylie
This was my favorite commercial. For such a quiet child, Maleek really shined on this project!!
Our radio commercials were a success!! Audacity worked really well. The kids had a ton of fun playing with all the effects. Some of them even changed their voice.
Here are some samples of their work…
Glenn – Spartanburg
Leslie and Leah – Pawley’s Island
Stay tuned for more commercials.
The final test is done. The kids stopped bringing materials to school. The weather is nice. It must be the summer…
Think again!!
We still have 2 partial weeks of school.
As far as the PACT test goes…I think most of my kids nailed it. I received a pretty warm response to the test. Of course, I had some students claim that I didn’t teach them anything this year, but those were the ones who didn’t bother to learn my name, let alone learn some history. The kids that wanted to learn something…did learn something. Now, I’m not saying they’ll remember it for next year, but I hope they’ll remember some of the major topics.
My plan for the last days of school are to work on a radio advertisement for a city in South Carolina. With a little begging and handiwork, all of the computers in the Media Center have been equipped with audacity. Let the games begin!!
I’ve decided to start a new project with the kids for the remaining 10 days of school after our state-wide testing is finished. We’re supposed to start next year’s curriculum, which is South Carolina history.
I’m thinking about having the students create a radio commercial about a city in South Carolina. After doing simple research on a city, they’ll have to put together a 60-second advertisement about their city of choice. They’re main goal will be to attract tourism to their city.
The only part I’m struggling with is finding the proper program that has the ability to record, bring in music, and export as an mp3. The only one that I’ve used is audacity. This is a great little program, but it might be a little too hard for most of my 7th graders to get a grasp on.
Eventually, I’ll make them available as podcasts.
I might just have to suck it up and use audacity!!
I hope the kids enjoy this little project…it’ll keep them out of trouble during the last days of school.
So…slowly I’m gaining recognition in the “blogosphere.”
Recently, animoto.com contacted me about the projects that my classes produced. Nothing special…but they informed me of a classroom password that can give your classes a 3-month all access pass to animoto and everything it has to offer. Although the longer videos might be too much for some students to handle, it is nice to have that option.
As of last night, my request from donorschoose.org has been fulfilled. That was extremely exciting news! If anyone out there needs something for their classroom, but can’t afford it or doesn’t have the budget for it, you have to check out donorschoose.org. I wanted a classroom set of microphone headsets for various projects that required them, so I asked for 30. The total bill was almost $400. Last night donorschoose.org sent me an email informing me that my project had been funded. Awesome!! I can’t wait to get my shipment, it’ll be like Christmas!!
I’ve also been contacted by the people of Create South. They call themselves a “grassroots group of Grand Strand Bloggers.” Create South is having a conference here in sunny Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on Saturday, April 18th and they asked me to present during a session about blogging in the classroom. I’m honored!! That’s pretty neat!! I hope I don’t disappoint. I’m hoping that there will be some teachers in the audience since I can relate to them, but if they’re not in the audience, then maybe they know some teachers they can relay the information to. Regardless, this will be a great experience. I’m looking forward to it.
Grades are due today and these extra credit podcasts are still coming in. Procrastinators never cease to amaze me….I know because I’m one of them. Anyway…here it is.
As the quarter comes to an end, more students become interested in creating an extra credit podcast. Unfortunately, I still have to hold their hand as they create, but I still think they are enjoying what they’re doing…oh by the way…I think they’re also learning something.
Here’s the latest…
Ok. So I spent a few days in the Media Center, sans Cathy Nelson, and had my students complete a project using animoto.com. All things considered…it went really well!! The one major problem that I came across was that only one group was allowed to create a video at a time. That slowed the process down immensely. In fact, I still have a few groups that need to complete their slide show. Some of the videos came out really great. I’ll share a few with you below..
These are just three…there is no way that I can post 50+ of these videos.
This week we start our wiki project. I’m a little apprehensive about the entire thing. I’m also excited to see how it turns out. I’m placing all responsibility into the hands of the students. All I’m showing them is how to work with the wiki website. All research and editing is up to them.
Our project schedule is as follows:
This project should take no longer than 5 school days.
Monday: January 27,2008
“Wikis in Plain English”
Video from: http://www.commoncraft.com
The Rules of Wiki – The Warranty
Groups and Topics
Preliminary Research in Classroom.
Tuesday: January 28, 2008
(Media Center)
Research in Media Center
Pictures and Information with citations
Wednesday: January 29, 2008
(Media Center)
Edit text in MS word first, then copy and paste to Wiki
How to edit in Wiki.
Thursday: January 30, 2008
(Media Center)
Complete editing.
Touch-ups.
Friday: January 31, 2008
(Media Center if needed)
Any finishing touches
The long awaited VoiceThread projects are finally graded and posted for your viewing pleasure here. There were some very great ones and some that needed a little work. If I had to do it all over again, I would change some things.
Things I would change:
I would change the rubric for the project. I graded the kids on their pictures, the sentences they created for the pictures, their voice quality, creativity, and their use of class time. Next time I would add a category – Picture Relatedness. Some of the students turned their Revolution VoiceThread into a research project about their favorite topics and forgot completely that they had to show a change over time.
I would make sure students work with a partner – 4th block especially. When students worked together, they brainstormed about their revolution giving them two perspectives instead of one.
OK….so here are the links for the VoiceThreads. The kids had them set to private, so I hope these links still work. If they don’t, then I’ll have to set the VoiceThreads to public.
1st Block:
Sawyer and Derek – http://voicethread.com/share/26077/
Glenn and Xavier C. – http://voicethread.com/share/26082/
Jeffrey and Tyler – http://voicethread.com/share/26086/
Leah and Summer – http://voicethread.com/share/26096/
Cody and Seth – http://voicethread.com/share/26087/
April and Leslie – http://voicethread.com/share/26106/
Cameron, Brandon, and Darrell – http://voicethread.com/share/26097/
Sean, Michael, and Chrissy – http://voicethread.com/share/26127/
Xavier W, Xavier LT, and Pagrien – http://voicethread.com/share/26107/
Jarrell and Destiny – http://voicethread.com/share/26129/
Angel, Cierra, and Kadeja – http://voicethread.com/share/26130/
2nd Block
Jacob and Kyle – http://voicethread.com/share/26149/
Dylan and Brandye – http://voicethread.com/share/26147/
Kendrick, Javarius, and Orlando – http://voicethread.com/share/26161/
Grayden and GK – http://voicethread.com/share/26159/
Jamekee and Dana – http://voicethread.com/share/26166/
Maddie, Erica, and Alleah – http://voicethread.com/share/26163/
DJ, Charles, and Tre – http://voicethread.com/share/26175/
Haley and Gennifer – http://voicethread.com/share/26170/
Ashley, Elexis, and Jessica – http://voicethread.com/share/26167/
3rd Block
Annie, Jordan, and Mary-Hannah – http://voicethread.com/share/26185/
Kayla and Savannah – http://voicethread.com/share/26186/
Kirby and Christine – http://voicethread.com/share/26187/
Chelise and Chelsea – http://voicethread.com/share/26190/
Taylor and Chanan – http://voicethread.com/share/26188/
Dalton and Alyssa – http://voicethread.com/share/26195/
Bridgette and Maleek – http://voicethread.com/share/26191/
Sadie and Kylie – http://voicethread.com/share/26196/
Jenna and Gissel – http://voicethread.com/share/26199/
Josh and Jamie – http://voicethread.com/share/26204/
Linda and Jontecia – http://voicethread.com/share/26201/
Cain and Brianna – http://voicethread.com/share/26205/
4th Block
Tylen - http://voicethread.com/share/26232/
Thair – http://voicethread.com/share/26235/
Matt – http://voicethread.com/share/26233/
Hunter – http://voicethread.com/share/26236/
Skylar – http://voicethread.com/share/26238/
McCall – http://voicethread.com/share/26245/
Josh – http://voicethread.com/share/26244/
Shannon – http://voicethread.com/share/26253/
Katie – http://voicethread.com/share/26249/
Skottowe – http://voicethread.com/share/26260/
Brett – http://voicethread.com/share/26278/
Kaitlyn – http://voicethread.com/share/26295/
Marshall - http://voicethread.com/share/26296/
Olivia – http://voicethread.com/share/26298/
Kristen – http://voicethread.com/share/26299/
Henry – http://voicethread.com/share/26305/
Mykal – http://voicethread.com/share/26885/
Ryan – http://voicethread.com/share/26892/
Haley – http://voicethread.com/share/26891/
Sean – http://voicethread.com/share/26897/
Jess – http://voicethread.com/share/26896/
Trevon – http://voicethread.com/share/27938/
Tichina – http://voicethread.com/share/27938/
Mariah – http://voicethread.com/share/27943/
Avery – http://voicethread.com/share/27939/
For all of you educators out there. Check out your blog’s reading level. It looks like I’m writing on a Junior High School level. I guess I did that on purpose because that is my main audience, but I can’t say I’m satisfied with this. I’ve been in school systems for 23 years now. I’m really disappointed to be writing as a teenager, and an early teenager at that. The website analyzes the most recent post, so somewhere down the line I’ll strive for that High School level. I’ll have to thank big bro Greg for that link. He’s a year older and his blog reads at an elementary school level. Trumped!!
You can also check the gender of your blog post at a different site. I won’t tell you how I write. It’s official…the internet has everything.
I just created an animoto video. Pretty cool how it the program edits the pictures for you. And adds music!! I just don’t know how to make this a project. I’d like to add writing to it. Maybe I can turn a PowerPoint slide into a jpg.
Ok…It’s nothing special, but I’ve created a wikispace for the class. It is completely editable by you and me. Give it a shot, you just may like it.
Just click the badge below.
This past week was crazy!! I had my students create a VoiceThread. During the week I had to contend with several different obstacles. The first issue came with the jumbled up schedule due to MAP testing. Everyday had different times to meet with the classes. Then I had to deal with a blocked website. That was ok because I had a password to get past the firewall, but I had to put in the password every single time the students went to the website or even refreshed the page. It got old quick. Then my headsets with microphones came just at the nick of time, unfortunately getting them all to work with the computers was another issue. I had to log on to the computers as me and not as student, just to go into the control panel and fix the microphone settings. After all was said and done, only about half of my students finished their projects when I wanted them to finish. There were too many technical difficulties to contend with. Next time I know I’ll be better prepared for this. Even though, towards the end of the week I had a short fuse, I was extremely happy with the out come of the projects. I’ll post the links to the VoiceThreads later on in the week, once everyone has finished.
In addition to creating the VoiceThreads, I had a handful of my students create our podcast for the week. I ended up mixing all of their comments, but they created the entire podcast.
Here it is…
Here is the first official podcast. Although we had a shortened week, we still managed to put something up. I’d like to thank all the kids who worked so hard to help create the podcast.
Let’s get ready for a short week!!
Monday – 11/19/2007
MIRP
Finish our 7-3.3 – Reading Questions and our 6-pack of Questions.
Tuesday – 11/20/2007
7-3.3 Quiz – Latin American Independence Movement
Begin The Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution Begins – Questions
Wednesday – 11/21/2007
2 1/2 Hour Early Dismissal!!!
Announce VoiceThread Project!!
**All of your project questions can be answered on the project page
I hope everyone has a Happy Turkey Day!!!
Thursday – 11/22/2007
Eat a lot of Turkey!!
Friday – 11/23/2007
Recover from eating a lot of Turkey
In an attempt to get more street-cred on the internet, I set up a Technorati account. We’ll see what happens…
Hey, I just tried this program called voice thread. It is really cool. I created a simple 2 minute voice thread about a classroom revolution. Since we are studying revolutions, soon I will ask you to create a voice thread about any revolution you want.
Check out mine here.
I got the help of my fiancee to record some of the comments. Our librarian Ms. Nelson has also recorded some comments into the voice thread. I think this will be an exciting project for you guys.
See What They’re Saying…