To Animoto & Beyond!

At the end of the school year, I always like to send my students off with a little gift. Memories and experiences are priceless.  I want my students to look back on their first grade experience with a sense of love, belonging, and accomplishment.  Each school year, I have created a video documenting our experiences with learning and celebrating. I also include big events like field trips and field days.  The videos were mostly photographs with text and music and some video recording mixed in.

In the past, I used software called Muvee which came on my former laptop. I later upgraded to a better version once the trial period ran out.  Another year, I used a program made by Microsoft, but at this point I don't even remember what it was. I believe it was part of Microsoft Office Suite, but I'm not 100% sure.

Well, I was finally able to play around with an awesome program for creating videos, slideshows, and digital stories!  I've been exploring with Animoto to create slideshows of my engagement photos.  I could have created a free account with the capability of creating 30-second videos, but making these types of videos for seven years in the classroom, I knew 30 seconds wasn't enough for me. Fortunately, the pricing was reasonable for creating longer videos ($30 a year), and I'm happy to say I've found the slideshow program I'm going to utilize in the classroom!  Check out this 60 second video telling you about Animoto.  Then, read on to see what the educator perks are!

The great news I *JUST* discovered is unlimited videos for educators!  You will need your school email address and class website/blog. Animoto will process your application and send you an educators code for the free account. On the educator page, Animoto is described in this way:

"Enhance your digital classroom with Animoto, an ideal tool for creating videos and presentations.  It takes just minutes to create a video which can bring your lessons to life."

It really is very simple to use. You just choose one of their songs or upload your own.  Choose your photos and video.  Add some text and off you go!  When deciding how you want to share your Animoto, you can email it, embed it (as I have at the end of this post), post it to Facebook, or upload to YouTube.  When I clicked on, "Sharing" and "More Options", I have the option to post to MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, Posterous, WordPress, and Tumblr.  When I click on "More Services..." over 300 options were available!  Some examples were Yoolink, Throwpile, Kaboodle, and iGoogle.  Incorporating Animoto into your classroom is bound to open the door to even more ways to get digitally connected and share knowledge. What a great way to incorporate those National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)!

Below, you can see my first Animoto for my engagement photo shoot as well as some education examples of hatching chickens in a third grade classroom and a digital story about the Texas Oil Boom.  Thanks for visiting, and I wish you the best in your educational endeavors! It was a pleasure learning, blogging, and commenting with you!  :-)

You can view the Animoto page here with more information about the photos.

A Child Can Teach

iPad lessons from two kids...

There’s something about a kid teaching the teacher a thing or two.  Everyone has something to contribute. Everyone is good at something.  In the classroom, I have found that kids love teaching others, especially the teacher.  The kids who struggle academically are the ones who usually light up the most when they are asked for help or guidance.  Teaching also helps kids organize and verbalize their thoughts. They are improving their speaking skills and patience with others.  I try to utilize this principle of having kids teach often.  We all know that we can internalize concepts and show mastery of a skill when we teach it to others. Everyone wins!

The reason I bring this up this week is because I wanted to learn how to use an iPad.  I don’t own one, but all I had to do was look no further than the two kids who I help take care of.  One is 13 and the other is 10.  Both students are on IEPs, and I knew teaching me would be beneficial to them too. Again, everyone wins!

Kristen, the 13 year old, seemed a bit skeptical when I told her I wanted her to give me iPad lessons. I wonder if she was wondering, “What would I teach the kid-sitter?” When I told her I wanted to know how to use iPads because they are being used in schools, she seemed to trust my genuine intentions.  I explained that I wanted to start with the basics:  powering on/off, volume control, opening apps, surfing the internet, using the keyboard, and closing windows.  I reminded her about the time when an inappropriate window popped up on her brother’s iPad, and I didn’t know how to close it.  We were in the kitchen and, not knowing what to do, I looked away and handed it over to their mother like a hot potato! It was a little traumatic not knowing how to close that window! That was the final motivator for me to hurry up and get some iPad lessons. 

Even with my explanation of goals, Kristen didn’t seem enthusiastic.  When I assured her 10-15 minute sessions would be sufficient, she was up for it.  I let her choose the time and place.  I even called her Miss (last name) just like if I addressed a real teacher. She smiled, and I felt she truly trusted me at this point. I really DID want to learn from her!  She was a natural teacher and did a great job giving me time to practice on my own.  iPad Lesson 1 complete!  

I was ready for my next lesson with her 10 year old brother when Kristen gently told me, “When I took dance, my teacher told us to take breaks between routines to help us learn better. You should wait a little bit before doing your next lesson. It will help you learn better.” I felt so proud of this sweet girl when she told me that!  I took her advice by waiting to meet with her brother.

When I was getting ready for my second iPad lesson with Tyler, the 10 year old, I let him pick the time and place.  He told me 5:40 up in his room at his desk. He even told me to bring my own little stool to sit on. (He was referring to my vanity chair.)  I called him Mr. (last name) to make it official. I even brought him an apple post-it note and beamed as I proudly told him, “An apple for the teacher.”  He smiled, took the apple, and put it in the trash! Funny, but Ouch! This reminded me to be careful of how I treat my students’ “presents” (specifically, if I'm going to throw something away, don't do it in front of them!). 

My lesson with Tyler was a little different. He hesitated and wasn’t sure how to “teach” me. His instinct was to just do it.  This reminded me that sometimes as teachers, we end up just doing instead of allowing the students to learn on their own or through scaffolding.  Since he was not sure what to do, I told him that I needed to learn how to go through the apps screens and select apps. I even played a couple of the apps to practice touching the screen to select and getting used to the interface.  He seemed to like "quizzing" me by directing me to choose certain apps and then monitoring my progress. iPad lesson 2 complete!

I plan to continue iPad lessons a few more times with my new teachers. In reflecting on this experience, I would say that it reminded me just how important exploration is.  Allowing students time to just “explore” the technology and "play around" with it truly is beneficial.  I hope that from this post you will see that letting your kids or students take the lead is something we should be doing from time-to-time. It’s great for confidence and skills.  It lets them see adults don’t know everything, and we believe in them. It assures them they have value and can contribute.  Everyone really does win.

Check out the following video of second grade students teaching to learn math. Also, please leave a comment and let me know ways you give your children or students opportunities to teach each other and you! Thanks!

Checking Out New Programs to Create a Sample Digital Story for a First Grade Classroom

From my wiki page, you can view a sample digital story designed for use in a first grade classroom.  Since I am moving to Georgia, the sample is geared towards a Georgia class with the subject being gray squirrels (which are abundant in Georgia).  This project would be part of a unit on Living Things.  In first grade, we teach living and nonliving characteristics.  Then, we teach about what plants and animals need to live.  The standards go more in-depth, but these are just the basics and we'll focus on the basic characteristics for this beginning project.

Georgia 1st Grade Life Science Standard
S1L1 - Students will investigate the characteristics and basic needs of plants and animals.

The requirements for this particular project would be:

• Tell about living things in general OR tell about one specific living thing (e.g. daffodil, gecko, human, dog)
• Use pictures and sounds to enhance your story.
• The digital story should be about 1 minute long.

I decided to experiment with the programs available on YouTube, because I want to be able to upload and share resources with other educators and students this way. There is a section specifically for educators and the first grade digital stories could be shared here for other students and teachers as well. I also had to make sure the program was suited for first grade (i.e. appropriate, easy to add photos and text, etc).

Some of the challenges I experienced with this sample story were keeping it within 1 minute and sound quality with the voice recording.  I used a free program called MP3MyMP3.  Once I use it a bit more I can figure out if the quality issues were caused by the program, the mic on my laptop, or a combination of the two.  I also am trying to figure out how to remove the "related" videos at the end of the YouTube video. I would not use this program in a classroom with the related videos. Online research shows me how to change the embed code to remove the videos from showing up at the end of my video, but I tried their recommendations and it hasn't worked! I would appreciate it if you had any recommendations for removing the "related" videos or improved audio recording, in addition to any other ideas you might have. 

The purpose of this sample digital story is to excite first graders about creativity, literacy, technology, and science!