Exploring Media and Student Voice - From iMovie to Facebook

I had the privilege to participate in another Oregon Migrant Leadership Institute for high school students. We use videos and media as springboards to discussion surrounding the migrant population, leadership, goal setting, challenges, and more. Two college mentors facilitate discussion and lead participants in using iPads to create their own videos in a few hours. Check out the big ideas and videos in the dropdown menu we use for springboards to conversation. The Tech Activities serves as a guide for our process. Once participants complete a video on the iMovie app, it is uploaded to a Facebook page.

Here's 2016 Session 1 page and 2016 Session 2 page. A big shoutout to all of the OSU college staff who make the OMLI a meaningful experience! Thanks to Jose Perucho for this overview video of session 1.

Giving Students a Voice with iPads and iMovies

This summer, I worked with high school migrant students in a summer camp using iPads to give them a voice through videos and writing.  This posts builds on the one prior to it, Giving Students iPads vs Pens, but focuses on the instructional aspects.  Here's a fun video that two students created on the first day in about 20 min.  Watch others from this Shout Out page.

Prep and a platform are important!  A lot of prep work goes into setting something like this up.  I had 15 iPads, 4 staff, and around 25 students at one time.  I chose Blogger as the platform in part because it has a super easy to use app.  We used iMovies as the movie making app and You Tube Capture to quickly upload the movies to You Tube.  In weeks 2-3, when staff became more comfortable, we added Animoto (using an Educator’s account) and Explain Everything. The resources and handouts and general plans were posted prior to beginning each week.  It is handy to have videos, links, general purpose explanation, etc. set up ahead of time on a site to aid in the flow of instruction during a project.

Student choice: In week one, I began with a structured format that was “school like” the staff politely told me later. Staff were learning the apps, there were a lot of unknowns, and it seemed the safe bet. Students created Where I am From poems and turned them into videos.  I had my handouts, model examples videos and how-to videos ready to go on the site.  It was exciting the first day when one of the participants quickly created an incredible rap during a pre-write session.  But for what could be a variety of reasons—not wanting to share publically, or perhaps feeling the need to follow my “school like” directions, his rap didn’t make it to video.  Students in week 1 did a great job!   They followed my directions, but I was a bit disappointed in my directions and how it pigeon holed everyone into creating a similar looking video. 

In weeks 2-3, staff were more comfortable, and they opened topics up to students.  Wow, do kids have ideas and voices worth listening to!  They chose topics of importance to them such as bullying, language choice, goal setting, etc.  

Process and experience: If this is presented with a focus on the process and learning, not only the final product, it helps meet the needs of a wider range of learners, differentiating and even individualizing.

Learn together as you go:  Tablets truly give teachers the opportunity to take the seat of a facilitator and learner with the students.  Students asked each other, problem solved, worked together, naturally became the experts and taught me! I did do a lot of the leg work in managing the site and creating You Tube playlists, looking at privacy issues, etc, but some of this can be delegated to students as well.

Celebrate!  This type of learning differentiates and allows learners of varying levels to contribute.  We popped popcorn and watched their videos and related videos along the way.

Overview: This experience shows how mobile devices can be used quickly to create videos and give students a voice.  This is the tip of the iceberg when we have access to such devices and begin to rethink assignments and how technologies can support content and language learning. This experience also cements the importance of a platform (such as a blog) for workflow and instructional purposes, to share student work, and to communicate.

Happy movie watching!

The Teachers Should See This: iMovie

What's a worn out teacher to do when teaching jobs line up back-to-back with minimal time to prep for the upcoming one?  Look to the kids for inspiration and solutions of course!

Here's how the young author of the series, The Teacher Should See This, came to my aid.  The task at hand was to find an iPad app or two to support learning in a summer camp with 150-200 high school students, to give them a voice, and document some of their experiences.  Within a few hours, she selected the iMovie app, found a few how-to videos, and set off to make her own video on a Where I Am From Poem theme.

It's showtime!  Enjoy.

Now, the real question is if the teacher can pull this off.  It's the beginning of the first week, so there will be an upcoming post.  Here's the beginnings of a three week summer camp journey where I meet with the students for less than four hours for the video/blogging part, but learn so much from them!  Kids are amazing people.

Happy video making!

Quick QR Code How-To

Wondering how to use QR codes in education?  There are many ways!  In my online Tech for Educators course, I have a creative librarian working towards integrating QR codes and ipods.  In my quest to aid her, I aggregated the following.

 She is using The QR Code Generator: http://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/ 

Unitag:  http://www.unitaglive.com/qrcode looks like a good site to customize QR codes.

QR Voice is another fun variation to explore:  http://qrvoice.net/
Tag My Doc allows you add a QR code to a document, so others can simply scan it. http://www.tagmydoc.com/ 

Watch how I created and embedded the QR code above.

What could you do with QR codes in your instructional setting?  (The topic of immersive technologies in education is a good extension to this conversation.)

Happy creating!

Ed and Tech Play With Web 2.0 Tools Part 3: VoiceThread

VoiceThread is a handy, easy-to-use tool in education with potential for digital storytelling and beyond.  It can be used to hold debates, explain, describe, persuade, etc.  It allows participants to interact on one platform in five different ways: writing, recording audio, doodling, video, or phone.   My online class will soon be experimenting with VoiceThread (VT).  I’ve used it in my College of Ed classes, a middle school classroom, with my adult ESOL classes, and at a personal level for several years now; I continue to see its benefits.

Getting Started and Examples in Education

I presented on VT back in 2007ish and hadn’t returned to the how-to’s since.  I was tickled pink to find that they still have their original (updated) directions. If you don’t get anything else from this post, do yourself a favor today and watch slides 5 and 6! (Use the arrows to access them quickly.) The first avatar still cracks me up.  What a great example of digital storytelling!

Viewable in a lovely world where I never age is my first attempt at a VT. I was surprised when a year after creating it, I returned to it and discovered people from around the world had responded.  It was memorably one of my first “ah ha” moments that this thing called social media, multimedia and digital storytelling had a bright future.  Embedded below is one my kiddo created years ago explaining her learning from a travel experience.

Wondering how to use VT in your content area?  Here are examples from various content areas and age groups aggregated on the VT site.   Search VT within a defined field to see how other educators use them.  For example, in my field I search for ESOL, ESL, EFL, ELL, assessment etc. Michelle Pacansky-Brock is a great resource to follow on Twitter or at Teaching Without Walls as well.

Ways I have used VoiceThread and things that have worked for me

Set-up: A. Use ones already created. (Do a search by browsing on VT.)  B. Make my own that I use either in the classroom or have students respond to.  C.  Guide students in making either a class, group, or individual VTs and in responding to each other.

Instructions/Purpose: It is important to have a clear set of instructions and purpose for the VT assignment. 

Storyboard/Process:  When students create their own VTs, I often have them storyboard their responses first.  This works well in a process oriented assignment.  For ELLs, it gives them the opportunity to use all modes of the language: reading (if they did research on the topic), writing/editing, speaking, and listening.  I provide checklists and grading rubrics with expectations along the way.

Collaboration: I have experimented using VT when working with multiple sections of a class.  I teach two sections of one class, and the students never see each other, but they are able to correspond, discuss questions, etc. via VT.  This also works in online courses when students enter VT from around the world.

Things I have learned as I’ve used VT

Privacy settings: I need to be mindful of students' comfort levels and privacy.  At this point, I do not have any VT that my students have made to share in public because as a class they opted to keep them private for various reasons.

Comfort level: I once had a middle school student who did a phenomenal job on a VT.  He was engaged in a way I hadn’t seen him engaged before.  He put a ton of effort into his VT, from the writing process to recording his voice several times.  When we got ready to share with the class, he hit “delete.” It was beyond his comfort level to share with others.  I think this is important to honor and another great reason if it is a project to be assessing with a rubric and/or checklist along the way.

Recording Issues:  The reality is that the tech doesn’t always work.  With best efforts, particularly in online courses, some students have hardware limitations and experience difficulties recording audio/video.  This is where the writing option comes in handy.

Potential I see in VT beyond what I have done 

Portfolios: VT could be a portfolio for students to showcase their work and reflect. 

Global Collaboration: VT could be exciting to work in a more global way with other classes.

Course Development: It could be fun to add to the same VT with subsequent classes.  This could work great with vocabulary.  Students in Spring term class create VTs for vocabulary on chapter 1 and Fall term create them for chapter 2, etc.

Get started with the free version of VT.  So far with planning, I have been able to use only the free version.  There’s an app for that.  Last year, VT introduced an app.  It’s straightforward to use and allows students yet another way to be mobile with their learning.  

How do you use VT?

Happy VoiceThreading!

Ways to Use Thinglink in Education

Visual literacy is an emphasis in ESOL. The visual aspect helps language learners develop vocabulary and much, much more.  It is also beneficial for many learners.  As an online instructor who wishes to bring more meaningful visuals into the classroom, I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for visuals for adult learners as well.  There are many online options available to us.

When Tech:  Thinglink Education is one option with a lot of potential.  The ThingLink Education site describes it as an “Easy-to-use editor, teachers can create immersive and engaging experiences by adding tags to any image in a few minutes: Create authentic, valuable, and rich interactive stories around historical events using media (video, sound, photos, written words, etc.) found online. Annotate graphs and timelines. Record an instructional message to students inside an image. Embed interactive images into student blogs. Enable students to curate content inside an image to demonstrate understanding of a topic."  

At ISTE, I received a free upgrade to the educator’s account of Thinglink Education, which took me from 50 pictures to 500.  

Met Ed: It may be no surprise that Pinterest is a great starting place to see the potential in education.  Explore the pictures at Thinglink Education on Pinterest. It will take you a few clicks to be able to interact with the picture in its intended way.  (Wave your cursor over the Thinglink and click on the circles.) I found this interesting one there by Mr. Loret’s World History class that demonstrates how students are using it!  Here's another Thinglink jumping place to gather ideas and examples.
 

 

Above is my first try with Thinglink. (Wave your cursor over the words, and click on the circles.) It’s very basic, but it shows me the potential firsthand.  I made this in Tagul and uploaded it to Thinglink.  I’ll use it to introduce a few options of online timelines my students can explore for an upcoming course.  It only took a few minutes to make.  I can imagine linking to videos I upload to You Tube or audio instructions I make on SoundCloud.  There are many possibilities.  With an assignment on theories of SLA, students could link to credible articles, videos, etc. that discuss and describe the theories.  Students could even have a “debate” starting place with the words “yes” and reasons on one picture and “no” and reasons on another.  They could then debate away, either by recording their voices and linking to Vacaroo or SoundCloud or simply by writing reasons on the picture and debating in person.  Thinglink has an option to invite others to work on a picture collaboratively.  There are a ton more possibilities, ways librarians, musicians, and others are using it too.  This Wired article gives an overview of a few.

Happy Thinglinking! 

Summer Camp Experiences Recorded with Weebly, Animoto, and Educreations

Five iPads. Thirteen laptops. Five college staff.  200 high school students at summer camp.  Four days per session with students rotating between laptops and iPads in groups at 25 minutes intervals for two hours. What a way to spend a summer month!  

I held my breath in anticipation as this project unfolded before my eyes.  Weebly was the chosen website platform, and Educreations and Animoto were the primary apps.   PBWorks Wiki was integrated as a storage space to make easy access and viewing of the iPad creations in one place. Dropbox was used to manage pictures. I had used all of these before, but never on this scale or in such a tight time frame, so it was exciting to see this come together.

Purpose and background

The Oregon Migrant Leadership Institute brings high school students (9^th-12^th) for a week camp where they learn leadership skills.  Read about it and view the site they pulled together here.  The writing and technology component served the purpose of allowing participants to document their experiences, practice writing skills, and get some exposure to emerging technologies and resources.

What worked

Staff pulled together:  Plain and simple I had an amazing staff of college students!  Within a few hours of training (the first hour with them looking at me with uncertainty and their eyes glazed over), they arose to the occasion in a huge way.  The photographer set forth to figure out syncing pictures on the laptops in Dropbox and on the iPads.  The iPad experts who had never held iPads before became experts, creating examples and planning lessons.  After the first day, it became apparent we needed more help, so two Weebly/Wiki experts jumped in coordinating the uploading of the iPad creations to a wiki the participants could access and in helping students with writing and design.  Here’s a link to the staff page.

Technologies:  I was pleased with the resulting integration of Weebly, Educreations, Animoto, and PB Works Wiki.  They met the needs of our purpose.  They each have free accounts for educators.  I upgraded to the paid version of the Weebly account, but everything else used was free.  (Animoto is worth applying for the educators’ account.  It only took a few minutes to get it.  There are a lot of added benefits, including longer videos.)  I also love the idea that students can continue to use these tools on their own.  It was exciting to see how these technologies supported our intended purpose and learning.  Weebly has an easy drag and drop website design interface, but it allows for more.  We limited our use of it due to time.  Educreations is a great way to use voice over, practice speaking skills, etc.  Animoto is a quick way to make videos with text, pictures, and videos.  View all of the technologies and resources introduced to the participants here.

Focused participants:  I’ve done this for three years before using blogs and was pleased with the past experiences.  However, integrating all of these technologies stepped it up a notch.  The students had less time (25 minutes compared to 50 in previous years).  Despite having a shorter time, they wrote as much or more!  They used their time wisely when they were on the laptops and seemed excited to create on the iPads. View the Shout Outs here and all of the participant pages here.

Tweeking here and there

Ongoing changes occurred, particularly after week one.  During week one, I realized that Weebly was capable of supporting more students than I had initially expected on one student site.  This led to simplifying and changes in the other sessions.  After day one and repeating the directions four times every 20 minutes, I found myself near exhaustion.  Screencasting with Snagit saved my voice.  I recorded the directions, played them, and stopped and discussed as needed.  It felt a bit odd, but did the trick.  It also freed me up to walk around the room responding to technical questions as the videos were playing.

The staff also brainstormed other ideas with the use of the Voicethread app, but we were limited in time and decided it was best to stick to two main apps.  Voicethread seems to have a lot of potential in having students think more critically though.

Working with high school students in a summer camp experience is rewarding.  It also really, really, really makes me appreciate the work high school and middle school teachers do!  Wow, those kids have energy!

The Teachers Should See This: iMotion HD

I am eleven years old and a guest blogger here.  I often find interesting sites and apps and sometimes want to share them.  I will occasionally post things I think teachers should see. Here is my post that I made about an app called iMotion HD. 

In the summer, it gets too hot outside to take my dog and leave her in the car while we go to the store or wherever we need to go. In the winter it gets too cold. We don’t like putting her in her kennel when we are gone, so we put her in the laundry room. We extended her area into the hallway and bathroom so that she has more room. When we are gone, my mom and I always wonder what she does when she is alone at the house. One day, I decided that we should use iMotion HD on my mom’s iPad to video tape what she was doing. Why not use the camera app? Well the camera app will turn off after a few minutes. iMotion HD is different than the camera app. I will tell you why.

iMotion HD is a stop motion app. It is an app where you program the video to take a picture every second, minute, day, etc. You can also make it take a picture every time you want it to if you are there on the iPad. After you have all the pictures you need, it will put them all together in a video. You can change the speed to be really fast or super slow.

Now I will show you what I did with iMotion HD. I made two different videos. I programmed the app to take a picture every two minutes. In the first video, I left the bathroom door open and only gave my dog one toy. We were gone for about 40 minutes. In the second video, I left the bathroom door open and gave her some more toys. We were gone for about an hour. Then, I compared how active my puppy was in each video. Here is the second video. She wasn’t very active in either of the videos.

There are a lot of things you can  do once you make an iMotion HD video.  My mom has edited them before in a video editor program.  I added music to this one on You Tube.

I hope you liked the post. Try to see what you can make with iMotion HD.

iBooks 2, Textbooks, iBooks Author, and iTunes U Initial Impressions

At the Apple Education Event on Thursday, January 19^th in New York, Apple announced iBooks 2 and textbooks, iBooks Author, and iTunes U app.  Watch the keynote video below to see them in action.

My first impression was that this links into what we’ve talked about since the beginning of this blog.  It connects to several of our earlier posts such as our Digital Curriculum Discussion and What’s A Book? Is This A Book?  We have talked about the possibilities of digital curriculum as a disruptive force in education to help differentiate instruction since we met, so this caught our attention.  We don't believe technology such as digital curriculum should replace the teacher or that one should be swept away with the flashiness of new gadgets, but we think it has potential to make some positive changes in education. Does Apple's announcement contain the solution or does it have hints of movement in the right direction?

Here’s a breakdown of our initial thoughts on Apples new educational releases.

iBooks 2  and Textbooks (On the video, iBooks 2 runs through minute 23.  Textbooks runs from minute 33 to minute 43.): The textbooks can be accessed through iBooks 2.  We’ve read various perspectives but have come to the conclusion that this is a move in the right direction in terms of textbooks. We both love the interactivity shown in the keynote. There will be no going back from this type of interactive textbook format!  Will all of the textbooks be this interactive?

The note taking feature is great. Also, having the dictionary as part of the book is a nice concept.  It would be good to see this linked into various online dictionaries, including bilingual ones.  As an ESOL teacher, I’d like to see a feature for subtitles to be turned on/off in the videos. Is this asking too much?  From the perspective of an online instructor at the university level, I hope quality texts become available for higher ed. as well.  Although it would be nice, it’s hard to imagine the price of $14.99 sticking for a university text. While I’m dreaming, I’ll place a request for a way to collaborate and discuss the content as an extension of the text.  What if it were a worldwide discussion and collaboration with public and private chat rooms or wiki spaces built into the text?

Just for fun, download the free The Beatle’s Yellow Submarine from iBooks 2.

iBooks Author (On the video, iBooks Author begins at minute 23 and ends at minute 33.): iBook Author allows you to make your own books and to integrate them with iBooks 2 and potentially iTunes U.  I’d love to try it, but I will have to borrow a Mac computer in order to.  There are some obvious large accessibility issues on several levels for education with Apple’s roll-outs.  Kacey was able to play around with the iBook Author software for a few minutes and thought it seems very easy to use.  She could easily drag documents, etc from Word. However, she felt there were only a few templates and hopes Apple will be adding more to keep it interesting.

We both think the concept of  iBooks Author seems like it has enormous potential in education! We could see using it in some manner in any of the classes we teach-- both in the hands of the student and teacher.  As an online instructor, it would be ideal to be able to easily make some of my lectures more interactive by using this type of tool if all my students could access the end product.

           

iTunes U (On the video, iTunes U runs from minute 47 to minute 57.): I’ve been using iTunes U for awhile now, but they have made improvements and made it easily accessible for K-12 and higher ed. in this app.  It is possible to create courses and apply to have them uploaded to iTunes U and/or access existing ones.  Courses are available for download from universities including Duke, Stanford, and Yale to name a few. OSU has some content out there too. 

It’s interesting how fluid this seems.  It appears that it can be organized in a way that the texts, lectures, and notes for example are all connected and accessible with a click on the app.  We are also for the concept of open courseware which empowers us to take learning in our own hands.  Maybe with the new layout more schools will post content.  It will be interesting to see how things unfold and how much of it will be free and useful.    

Conclusions:

All of this is not completely new. As we’ve discussed in the previous posts accessible above, digital texts have been emerging.  There are ways to publish ebooks similar to iBooks.  We’ve used concepts resembling iTunes U on various platforms over the past few years.  Nonetheless, these all seem like another step in the right direction.  It makes us ask questions such as what other competition and possibilities will this stir up?  It reminds us of the potential of some form of flipped classroom instruction.  It makes us wonder what possibility all of this opens up for hybrid classes.

Of course Apple’s news comes with various view points and some fine print.  Here are some interesting additional links for further exploration.  

• Listen to Leo LaPorte and Sarah Lane on iPad Today (81) 
• Johathan Wylie of The Education Technology Blog gives a nice brief overview of Apple's announcement 
• Ronnie Burt of Edubloggers voices his opinion in 3 Major Problems With Apple's Education Announcement
• Read Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis’s review 
• Read Jose Picardo on Box of Tricks review and see his first attempt to use iBooks
• Apple vs. The Textbook: Can Education Go Paperless? is an interesting article that takes a look at various aspects

No doubt, we will hear more on this topic and continue to explore it ourselves.  Happy exploring!

A Web of Reflections and App Picks

In reflecting upon this past year, we went be back to last year’s end of year reflection post.  We still find all of the tools discussed in that post useful—from email to smartphones.  We challenged ourselves to explore a few new avenues of tech.  Here are some of the results that seem to be a related web of events.       

                                       

Continued blogging in class:  We both blogged with our classes to various degrees this year.  We worked together during the summer when we blogged with 180 high school students.  The benefits of blogging are numerous!

Presentations:  Blogging and exploring tech on this site also led to co-presenting.  You can view our Keeping Writing Alive with Web 2.0 Tools  EERC presentation and our Blogs as a Springboard presentation.   Cheridy also guest posted and explored Jing on the Teacher Challenge blog.

Twitter:  Last year’s end of the year reflection post inspired us to give Twitter a whirl. We both see its advantages as one form of a PLN.   Here are a few links to get you started if you are new to Twitter.  Cybrary Man has a wealth of resources.  The Langwitches Blog has a nice Guide to Twitter in the K-8 Classroom.   This is a list of some popular educational hashtags by November Learning.  Just following these will give you a taste of Twitter.

Google +:  Seeing the potential in Twitter encouraged us try Google +.  We are both still in the process of contemplating its uses in education.  We are accessible on Twitter and Google + via the links on the right of this blog.

iPad/tablets:   We mentioned the iPad in our post last year as being new to us.  It has so much potential that it still feels new.   It’s possible to do all of the above on it.  Numerous apps and more choices in tablets are making these mobile devices a more viable option in education.  Cheridy’s kiddo has taken over hers, so she finds herself using it to find educational apps for her kid.  There are quality apps for everything from art to writing.  Kacey uses the iPad for consuming information. There are some amazing aggregators that are wonderful on the iPad. She calls the iPad her “toaster” as it is always right there and easy to use.

Apps we frequently use:  While we are on the topic of apps, here are a few more we like. 

Cheridy’s picks:  ReadIt Later is useful for quickly marking sites and reading them later either on a computer or mobile device.  Evernote  and Dropbox are convenient organizational apps that sync to your computer.   Voicethread, Animoto, and ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard each have a lot of potential for students to display creativity as they synthesize and create. 

Kacey’s picks: Flipboard is a “personalized magazine” available for free on iPad and iPhone that allows you to add self selected content from different sources. You can add social media (Facebook and Twitter), magazines like Fast Company, aggregators such as Fancy, or RSS feeds via your Google Reader account. (If you still have not used an RSS reader, check out The Complete Educators’ Guide to Using Google Reader from The Edublogger). Flipboard makes everything look like a beautiful magazine. If you want to read a longer article, send it to Instapaper. This app is great for reading offline content. If you purchase the iOS version, you will have seamless updates to all your gadgets. Scrabble has an app that lets you play “online.” (Imagine if we had this app for our interactive white boards!) And you can’t pass 2011 without checking out Spotify for all your music needs. 

App Slappy and iPad Today are two podcasts full of good app suggestions.  Appy Hours 4 U with Lisa Johnson & Yolanda Barker is a good resource for finding apps and descriptions of ways to use them in education.   (These are just a few of our favs, so we forsee an upcoming post on this topic :-)

Topics we plan on keeping our eyes on this year:  Ways to apply technology meaningfully will continue to be a focus.  Cheridy attended a conference this year on immersive education and would like to explore it more.  She would also like to continue to learn about online instruction and instructional design.  Kacey continues to seek websites and apps that go beyond “flashcard” learning. Additionally, now that VoiceThread is available for the iPad she wants to capture student learning there. You can check out Bob Sprankle’s BLC 2010 VoiceThread for Beginners presentation slides and his blog post What’s Your Favorite Transformative Tool of 2011? where he posted BookCasts that he created with 3^rd and 4^th grade students. 

Future of Tech for Two Teachers Exploring:  We will continue to explore and make fits with technology that are useful to our given teaching situations.  We return to last year’s conclusion.  It really is about technology as a tool.  Sometimes the best tool is high tech, while other times it is no tech and good old fashioned sitting in a circle discussion.  Having the knowledge of the tools available to us and the ability to bridge the gap and put them to use in meaningful ways is important, so we will keep exploring.  We welcome you to continue the journey with us!

Tech and Ed Play With Web 2.0 Tools: Part 2 Jing and Other Screencasting Tools

Jing is a screencasting tool with tons of creative potential in education.  It belongs both in the hands of instructors and students across content areas and ages.  This post briefly highlights Jing and other screencasting tools as a part of the Tech and Ed Play With Web 2.0 Tools series.

Getting Started With Jing:  Last year, I was a guest blogger at the Teacher Challenge blog.  Here'sa LINK to my post. It’s where I suggest going to get familiar with Jing!  It walks you through downloading it, gives examples of how I use it as a self introduction, to return feedback to my students, and more. 

More of My Jing Examples:

How-to’s and diections:  Most of the video recording I do on this blog is with the Pro version of Jing, such as this video about online timelines like dipity.  I also find it useful for describing weekly expectations and assignments in my online classes.

In the hands of students: Here's another post about a project from my adult ESOL vocabulary class.  Within a matter of minutes, students created a Jing video using my laptop.  Their example is embedded in the Glogster along with more of their creations, but it can also be accessed via this direct link.  Oh, and I can’t make a post without highlighting my favorite use of Jing created by a 4^th grader.

Other Screencasting Tools: There are also a growing number of similar free screencasting tools. A few of them are highlighted under on my screencasting page.  I have found that my students who want to work from home don’t always want to download Jing onto their computers, so these offer some alternatives.

Here’s an example of a similar screencasting tool called Screen-O-Matic combined with Go Animate that one of my former College of Ed students, Jessica Coleman, created about SLA.

 

Screencasting Apps and Additional Resources:  It's also great to see some similar screen capturing apps for ipad such as Screen Chomp and Show Me.   As these become increasingly more functional, they allow us to use iPads in digital storytelling, etc. with relative ease.  One of my favorite ESOL bloggers, Silvia Tolisano, who blogs at Langwitches offers a lot of examples and step-by-step guides for using screencasting tools in the class.  Check out her blog and search for screencasting tools, digital storytelling, and ipads. 

Discussion:  What experiences do you have using Jing or other screencasting tools?  Feel free to share links to your creations or contact us if you would like to use this blog as a platform to share some of your students’ creations if appropriate.

Happy screencasting!

Part II Gaming: Making It Work for Teachers and Students

Here’s a post with more questions than answers.  It’s a post that reflects learning in progress about gaming and education.

Here’s what I hear practicing teachers saying:  For the most part, they see the potential of gaming, but they face some challenges using it.  The technology is not always functioning in the class or able to support it.  When the tech does work, fitting it into the curriculum, making sure it aligns with the standards, etc. for multiple reasons is a task that is asking a lot from an underpaid and overworked group of dedicated people.  Some want one place to go to—where they are not searching all over the Internet to find resources.  In essence, these teachers want it incorporated into the curriculum they are using and part of a system. 

I also hear many teachers saying they are extremely hesitant to recommend or use online games that require passwords. This hesitancy is at all levels K-adult.  The ramifications of managing 25+ kindergarten students on more than one online site is understandable.  Yes, I’ve read multiple ways of doing this—using the same password, etc., but the reality of it is enough to turn most teachers away.  This issue persists all the way to adults.  I see it changing, but many of my adult students are hesitant to create yet another password and username.  It can lead to good discussions about security, digital footprints, etc, but is it all worth the time and effort the busy teacher asks?

Equal opportunities:  And then, there is the question, how can students access these same sites outside of class to extend their learning?  Not all students have access to the Internet at home; while other students in the same class not only have the Internet, but their own iPads.  Is it fair for the teacher to require or recommend online games or apps when only a portion of the students have access to them outside of class?  Is it fair for them to not recommend them?

These questions lead to other questions:  1. Perhaps a disruptive educational innovation in the hands of students and teachers is on the horizon that includes gaming, individualizing instruction and addresses some of the issues faced?  Oh, let’s throw transmedia  storytelling in there for good measure too.   2. What changes are on the horizon with text based curriculum?  See our previous discussion on this topic.   3. And then the inevitable can of worms: How does all this fit into standardized testing?  Life is interesting in part due to not having all the answers. 

As I search, here are actions I wish to pursue and encourage others to do: 

• Keep searching for online and mobile games that do indeed foster positive learning experiences beyond rote memorization to developing high order thinking skills.  Use the revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy as a measuring stick.  
• Advocate for educational gaming that is accessible to teachers and students both inside and outside of school.  The author’s of Disrupting Class have an intriguing blog.  This article is one of several that relates to this topic.
• (This is perhaps the hardest considering how much our teachers face and do.)  Encourage creative and innovative administrators and teachers to look beyond the curriculum.  There are some amazing opportunities out there that are not bound by textbooks or walls and that do incorporate the standards and keep individual students at the center. 
• Promote computer science K-12.  Whenever we can put students in the role of the designer, empowering them with these tools, we are empowering them with critical thinking skills and perhaps shaping our future.        

In the meantime, when can teachers use gaming?  In the broader definition, most do.  See the low tech World Peace Game post for an example.   It can also begin with simple steps like discovering what is available.  (See links below to get started.)   Creating links to games on class websites or blogs can also be effective for providing kids safe spaces in independent work time or as an outside of school recommendation.   

Here are recommendations to get started for finding appropriate educational gaming:

• Read this post called Gaming and Learning—Are They Connected? by Zoe Branigan-Pipe that discusses this topic. 
• Digital Play is a blog I follow that highlights games for language learning. 
• I Education App Reviews  and Apps in Education are sites that review educational apps. 
• Fun Educational Apps also reviews educational apps and shares special offers. 
• 21^st Century Educational Technology and Learning has some good posts on games in Education.  Michael Gorman did a series of posts on this topic.  Here is one of them about using games to teach STEM and language arts. 
• Interaction Education blogs about educational apps and has a blogroll of additional ed. app bloggers.  I particularly liked this post that addresses some of the questions asked in this post. 
• Inanimate Alice is my latest find of transmedia storytelling that is worth checking out!
• Our Ed Sites tab has some educational games in all content areas that we have either used or want to explore more.  We will continue to highlight them and gaming apps in posts.

Feel free to share additional resources with us!  Happy educational gaming!

*photo credits by FotoChronicle 

Quick Byte: Multiple Perspectives

Does the world sometimes look a little flat or one dimensional?  Does one perspective get boring or just not seem to capture the complexity or full picture of life or history?  Do you ever want to have a say in the ending of a story?  Do you think creativity and multiple perspectives relate?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, you will want to watch Raghava KK: Shake Up Your Story TED Talk. (It's under 5 min. and may result in a new app on your iPad.)  It also has some clear implications for education.

This talk relates to the first TED Talk I ever watched that hooked me, The Danger of a Single Story with Chimamanda Adichie. It really draws out an idea that I advocate for in my teacher prep classes-- including multiple perspectives in our teaching.  We should be doing this in all the content areas: language arts, math, science, social studies, etc.  What ways could you bring in a variety of perspectives into your classes?

In addition, this talk points in the direction of the future that is within grasp with transmedia storytelling and augmented reality as seen in my Worth a Wow: Inanimate Alice and What's a Book? Is This a Book? posts. 

If you liked Raghava KK's TED Talk highlighted above, watch his earlier talk entitled Five Lives of an Artist.  It's good stuff.

Happy viewing!

New Twists on Oldies: The Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Lemonade Stand

Did you play the The Oregon Trail about 50 million times in a row, your heart beating fast each time as you tried to keep members in your wagon alive?  Do Number Munchers or Lemonade Stand running on a lovable Apple II bring back warm fuzzy memories?  Did your parents ever kick you off the machine, sending you pouting outside to play, because you NEEDED to hunt for food as it was a matter of life or death on the trail, or because you were glued to practicing multiples with Number Munchers and learning how to add money and think about a business with Lemonade Stand?  Perhaps you then extended those ideas in a game outside with friends.

Come on.  I know I’m not the only one out there.  Okay, I’m dating myself in this post.  (Yes, I’m also a firm believer Pac Man and Space Invaders rock.) Of course, my parents were proactive in exposing me to technology at a young age and seeing the value of educational games. 

If you identified with any of the above, read on.  The oldies are back with updated twists!  The marketing is working and a new generation can be heard playing and learning—literally.  Lemonade Stand has the same familiar tune.  Attention parents and teachers, earbuds in kid sizes are available.  Read Little Gecko’s review of these apps to get a kid's perspective.

Here are the links to the apps:  The Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Lemonade Stand.  No, there’s no money headed my way for this post—I’m just a sucker for nostalgic things and curious about potentials of this form of gamification learning.

Gamification.  Now there’s a word, a word worth exploring for educational purposes.  A few questions that revolve around this I would like to explore are related to rewards and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation.  Also I’d like to look at the possibility of putting kids in control of developing these types of games and promoting critical thinking skills with programs like Scratch and Alice.

Here’s a just for fun, somewhat related video clip to round out this post.  (Perhaps it shows sometimes in our limited free time as educators, we need to relax and lean towards the game part a bit.)