On how to change the way I teach.

In 2003 ? I went to Adelaide, Australia for the ACEP? Computer in education conference. I came back and tried some of the things I learn about. I presented one activity and had what I perceived to be a negative comment along the lines of 'what has this to do with learning?'. I did not continue with using creative computing after that. As a head of department not far off retiring I know that what I do in my teaching will not make any changes to the department, only by my encouraging, or at least not discouraging, the younger staff will any change be made.

-- Post From My iPhone

It didn't work!

Well, my attempts at getting the ! students to make a digital story failed because they could not save the photostory3 project in a place where I could access it to turn it into a video or other students in the group could view it; their attempts were blocked. I decided to look for a service on the web to do this. I found a site cogdogroo of online free tools for writing digital stories. I investigated a few of these and chose www.onetruemedia.com. I was surprised to find I already had an account and then found I had made a montage in 2008. I had no recollection!
I will try this with the students, they will need to write captions by hand, no bad thing. It can save the video as a YouTube.
I took the photos the students did today of a play dough worm moving and made a YouTube I will provide a link when it is finalized.
OneTrue Media also allows a 'song track' mp3 to be added and this could be a recorded voice over. I have found a google service Mynah that allows voice recording and editing online.
I also need to investigate keeping photos online to upload to one true media. Could try DropBox.





-- Post From My iPhone

Trying again

Today I tried a cooperative learning lesson, I had prepared better, had group roles, and a simpler activity. The students made story boards and then typed their captions into photo-story 3. The students had no problems at all with the computer, the only difficulty was saving the file. I think I have found a way of saving by uploading to the wiki.


-- Post From My iPhone

Let's cooperate

I spent the weekend reading about cooperative learning and digital storytelling. I bookmarked these sites at delicious.com/activescience and read Cooperative learning in NZ by Brown and Thomson.
I realize now that my failure at implementing cooperative learning last week was due to the activities not being structured. I assumed the students would all help each other to complete the task. They did not.
The groups were presenting their learning as a question and answer wiki page. This was a bit boring and I think I will get them using photostory to make a digital story. Some may choose to add a narration. I might get students to caption some photos I provide and put on their wiki page. I would like to use software that can store their group story on the web because the students do not have a group folder to store this. They could also work on their stories outside school. I also thought of converting the movies they make to gp3 files like I did last year so they could watch them on their cellphones.


-- Post From My iPhone