http://voicethread.com/#q
The website states, "A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or phone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too."
VoiceThread is able to be manipulated for all users. The VoiceThread website has a huge amount of examples. However, a great example of how VoiceThread can be used to advance the Creating Mind within First Graders can be found here: http://digitalstories21.wikispaces.com/PETE+and+C+2009. Once you press play, make sure that you click on the arrow to the right so that you can observe all of the slides.
The third VoiceThread down highlights how teachers can easily use a digital video camera to take pictures of student work and quickly upload the content to the web. This allows for a fantastic conversation to evolve. It can also be viewed here: http://voicethread.com/share/332534/
Overall, the main reason I appreciate this software is that is allows static presentations to become dynamic. In addition to pictures, teachers can upload PowerPoint presentations to the software, and then all of a sudden the presentation is able to be commented on.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Nurturing Creativity
It takes creativity to be able to provide time to focus on creativity within the classroom. Let me explain. All educators feel the demands, pressures, stresses, and pulls from local, state, and national mandates. Amidst the AYP, PSSA, IEP, and wide range of other acronyms, lies classroom teachers struggling to "fit it all in". "How is it possible?", I often hear colleagues complain. Like always, where there is a will, there is a way. And technology is that way. Now, technology for technologies sake does not solve any problems. However, once you've identified the problem and have a need, technologies can easily answer the "how can I fit it all in" question. The reality is that so long as educators devise systems that enable, not discourage, students to read, think, write, and create, our students have the potential and ambition to soar on their own. It's our job to get out of the way and stop being the kink in the hose.
One website that opens doors up for creativity is www.wikispaces.com For writing, check out the tools here: http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/ and http://www.kolabora.com/news/2007/03/01/collaborative_writing_tools_and_technology.htm Finally, for some great student applications try this: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_20_backpack_web_apps_for_students.php
Sunday, February 8, 2009
PETE&C w/ DEN
...a day of technology at the Pennsylvania Educators Techology Expo & Conference (PETE&C) with Discovery Educators Network (DEN)
Below is a brief outline, or brain dump as I like to call it, of the information I experienced during the preconference event.
Jason Ohler Keynote Speaker - Introduction
Key Learnings:
1. Screasle = screen + easle
2. students need to be able to write what they can read
3. ...
Web 1.0 (few writers, lots of readers)
Web 2.0 (more readers and writers, but too much information)
Web 3.0 (read, write, paint, think)
VDT (visually differentiated text)
Jason's 9 Dig Lit action guidelines
1 - shift from text centricism
2 - value writing more than ever
3 - art the next R...(multimedia, photostory, etc. is the new art)
4 - Follow DAOW of literacy (DAOW of literacy...art, digital, dawo, oral, written)
5 - attitude is the aptitude
6 - practice private and social literacy
7 - develop literacy about digital tools
8 - fluency, not just literacy (don't be the techy..be the guide on the side to help others)
9 - harness both report and story...embrace story!
(you don't need a lot of money to do this..work with what you have b/c this is what you have and you don't need $...it forces you to focus on the story)
Green Screening example: (zoom in to see the girl standing in front of a picture she drew)
-use the talents they have (garage band songs...rock band...guitar hero songs they've made it up on their own....set those songs to credits that role after their stories end)
-again having the kids own their stories (just like writing research supports)
JASON DOES NOT STORYBOARD....a good way to make a boring story flow
-mapping vs. boarding (emotional flow vs flow of emotion)
Below is a brief outline, or brain dump as I like to call it, of the information I experienced during the preconference event.
Jason Ohler Keynote Speaker - Introduction
Key Learnings:
1. Screasle = screen + easle
2. students need to be able to write what they can read
3. ...
Web 1.0 (few writers, lots of readers)
Web 2.0 (more readers and writers, but too much information)
Web 3.0 (read, write, paint, think)
VDT (visually differentiated text)
Jason's 9 Dig Lit action guidelines
1 - shift from text centricism
2 - value writing more than ever
3 - art the next R...(multimedia, photostory, etc. is the new art)
4 - Follow DAOW of literacy (DAOW of literacy...art, digital, dawo, oral, written)
5 - attitude is the aptitude
6 - practice private and social literacy
7 - develop literacy about digital tools
8 - fluency, not just literacy (don't be the techy..be the guide on the side to help others)
9 - harness both report and story...embrace story!
(you don't need a lot of money to do this..work with what you have b/c this is what you have and you don't need $...it forces you to focus on the story)
Green Screening example: (zoom in to see the girl standing in front of a picture she drew)
-use the talents they have (garage band songs...rock band...guitar hero songs they've made it up on their own....set those songs to credits that role after their stories end)
-again having the kids own their stories (just like writing research supports)
JASON DOES NOT STORYBOARD....a good way to make a boring story flow
-mapping vs. boarding (emotional flow vs flow of emotion)
Friday, February 6, 2009
Media Infused Presentations & the Disciplined and Synthesizing Minds
Howard Gardner presents four ways to achieve a disciplined mind. First, one must identify crucial content or processes to be learned within a specific discipline. Second, he suggests allowing a significant portion of time for learning the proposed content or process. Third, one should portray the content or process through several different approaches. Fourth and finally, Gardner tells us to set up “performances of understanding” that force students to apply the content or process they learned into new situations and problems.
Gardner also establishes a variety of methods for educators to help create synthesizing minds within their students. He proposes that the most likely way that students will become synthesizers is through interacting with adult synthesizers. Therefore, educators should aim to acquire this skill and model it to students whenever possible. In addition, mass media presentations, surfing the Web, and reading books are all likely help students’ synthesizing minds evolve.
Media infused projects help foster the development of both the disciplined and synthesizing minds. As mentioned, Gardner proposes teaching materials through a variety of ways. When considering the developing brain of an elementary school aged child, videos, pictures, songs, and other digital medias all accomplish this task. Images and videos help build students’ background knowledge. They also present new terms, ideas, and meanings through visual representations. Therefore, practical tools such as WebQuests, videos, and slideshows are all important in fostering the disciplined and synthesizing minds.
These tools allow students to store this information so that it can be recalled later in their educational careers. When information from prior knowledge is recalled, connections are formed between old knowledge and new knowledge. Thus, students create new schema, demonstrating another way that digital media helps to foster the synthesizing mind.
The use of Smart Boards and other technologies allows digital media to be broadcasted to classrooms in new ways. When teachers can interact with text on websites and model specific strategies for learning, synthesizing also occurs.
In addition, when students are able to interact with similar texts on their own to create projects that demonstrate their learning, both the disciplined and the synthesizing minds are enhanced. Projects like these are non-limiting. Rather than simply reading information and regurgitating it, students must conquer the facts and manipulate them in new ways. This requires students to use inferring and other higher order thinking skills.
Finally, one last practical way that educators can force students to build upon their disciplined and synthesizing minds is through the use of specific software programs. Drawing on Microsoft Paint or creating image, audio, and video stories through Microsoft PhotoStory or PowerPoint are but a “performances of understanding” that allow students to apply their knowledge to new situations.
Gardner also establishes a variety of methods for educators to help create synthesizing minds within their students. He proposes that the most likely way that students will become synthesizers is through interacting with adult synthesizers. Therefore, educators should aim to acquire this skill and model it to students whenever possible. In addition, mass media presentations, surfing the Web, and reading books are all likely help students’ synthesizing minds evolve.
Media infused projects help foster the development of both the disciplined and synthesizing minds. As mentioned, Gardner proposes teaching materials through a variety of ways. When considering the developing brain of an elementary school aged child, videos, pictures, songs, and other digital medias all accomplish this task. Images and videos help build students’ background knowledge. They also present new terms, ideas, and meanings through visual representations. Therefore, practical tools such as WebQuests, videos, and slideshows are all important in fostering the disciplined and synthesizing minds.
These tools allow students to store this information so that it can be recalled later in their educational careers. When information from prior knowledge is recalled, connections are formed between old knowledge and new knowledge. Thus, students create new schema, demonstrating another way that digital media helps to foster the synthesizing mind.
The use of Smart Boards and other technologies allows digital media to be broadcasted to classrooms in new ways. When teachers can interact with text on websites and model specific strategies for learning, synthesizing also occurs.
In addition, when students are able to interact with similar texts on their own to create projects that demonstrate their learning, both the disciplined and the synthesizing minds are enhanced. Projects like these are non-limiting. Rather than simply reading information and regurgitating it, students must conquer the facts and manipulate them in new ways. This requires students to use inferring and other higher order thinking skills.
Finally, one last practical way that educators can force students to build upon their disciplined and synthesizing minds is through the use of specific software programs. Drawing on Microsoft Paint or creating image, audio, and video stories through Microsoft PhotoStory or PowerPoint are but a “performances of understanding” that allow students to apply their knowledge to new situations.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
An attempt to enrich the synthesizing mind through the use of technology...
During my first year in third grade, I often found myself at odds with the curriculum to be taught and the current means of teaching that information. Worksheets and readings out of old textbooks were how "things have always been done". I knew that my students needed to be energized with the content. After all, it was the 4th quarter and summer was on everyone's mind.
As I began to process the Social Studies unit on Pennsylvania that I needed to teach and my goals for the end of the year, I soon realized that a culminating year end project would force students to synthesize the information that had been learned throughout the year. And so, with the help of our school librarian, we created a webquest on Pennsylvania.
The purpose of this webquest was more than just to cover a unit from our Social Studies curriculum. It enabled students to synthesize various learnings throughout the year. Students used reading skills, oral speaking skills, technological skills, research skills, and numerous other skills...
On Winning $5,000 . . . Or Was It Actually Much More?
By Kyle Schutt, teacher, grade 3, Pine Forge
The end of the year can be a very busy time in any elementary school, and my 3rd grade class has been no exception. During the month of May, my 3rd graders utilized a Pennsylvania WebQuest developed by Rebecca Hart and myself with the purpose of generating student-created Photostory presentations about any number of Pennyslvania topics. A WebQuest requires analysis, synthesis, judgment, creativity, and problem-solving through the gathering of information from the World Wide Web. Ideally, a WebQuest should include an authentic experience.
In 3rd grade our authentic task was to attempt to win 5,000 pretend dollars by creating the best Photostory travel brochure related to various topics in PA! Photostory is a software program similar to PowerPoint, but easier for students to use. The students collected pictures and narrated them using the research they found.
In order for the 3rd graders to then demonstrate their skills, parents, grandparents, and friends were invited to the Pine Forge Library on June 6, 2008 at 2:00 PM. At that time, third graders gave their Photostory presentations about Pennsylvania. Along with sharing their Photostory travel brochures with friends and family, my 3rd graders also answered a few questions about their experience. Below are the four questions asked with a number of student responses:
1. What was your favorite part of the Pennsylvania Photostory project?
“My favorite part is when I got paired up with Nick, getting to know each other better, and recording. I liked recording because you would get so nervous and say the wrong thing or say something funny that you weren’t supposed to say.” –Tesia
”My favorite part of the PA Photo story was that we got to work with partners and we had fun but, as we had fun we learned.” –Summer
“My favorite part of the Pennsylvania Photo story project was when we got to record on the microphones.” -Haley
“My favorite part of the web quest was learning how to up load photos and finding the photos.” -Jennifer
2. If you could do the Photostory again, what would you change?
“Get a different topic.” -John
“If I could change the photostory, I would be a little more louder.” –Dylan
“I would change the pictures and the way I was speaking I sounded kind of weird.” -Trevor
“I would change the music.” -Eric
3. What was the most important thing that you learned from completing the PA Photostory Project?
“Taking your time and patience.” —Trevor
“The most important thing I learned is that economy isn’t just money, but it is also agriculture, farming, services, and more.” -Tesia
“I learned how to work as a team.” -Nick
“That you learn to work together.” -Shjon
“I learned about the plains. I also learned that I had to work hard.” -Eva
“I learned to take time and patients [sic.].” –Ethan
4. What other comments would you like to share about the webquest?
“ . . . we had a fun time every minute we were in the computer lab.” -Tesia
“I enjoyed the webquest, because I learned that the Delaware River is really big.” –Eva
“I had fun, and I LERNED [sic.] lot[s] of things about PA.” -Matthew
“It was very fun and I really think more kids should do this.” -Trevor
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Teaching Landforms through Media
Teaching landforms is a topic in our 3rd grade physical geography curriculum. To support teaching this topic, I found a video on DiscoveryEducationStreaming entitled "Geographical Features: Landforms". It can be found here: http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=bc55baaa-1c72-4e51-8cb5-145430879776&BLNPOPUP=1&productcode=US&CFID=43891681&CFTOKEN=80c6e13c596f18cc-29FB59F4-14C2-3E51-D64F799557023026
My goals for teaching this topic include:
-exposing students to the diversity and stunning differences between various areas on our planet
-helping students recognize differences and similarities among various landforms
-helping students examine how landforms have an effect on how we live our lives
There numerous ways I could use this video in my classroom to help reach these goals.
1- First, I could simply show the video in its entirety to provide background knowledge to my students.
2- I could use the video as an end of unit assessment. I could create a simple quiz that correlates with the video. Whenever I stop the video, I'd have students write down the name of the landform they see.
3- I could download the segments of the video and use each segment as an introduction to the specific landform we're studying that day.
4- I could download the video segments and piece them into a PowerPoint presentation for students to use at an independent learning center. The Powerpoint presentation would give pictures, videos, definitions, and even passages relating to landforms.
5- After recognizing those students that have not grasped the concepts of landforms, they could watch the video independently and fill out a graphic organizer as they go. They'd be encouraged to stop the video and rewatch specific parts in order to write the landform being discussed, write a description of it, and draw a picture that represents the landform.
6- This video could be embedded into a Webquest on landforms. Along with images, references, and such, students would be challenged to build their own knowledge of landforms as they work independently on the computer.
7- Students could create videos about landforms using MovieMaker. Throughout their videos, they could plant segments from this video to reinforce their ideas.
There are endless possibilities and variations on these ideas. Rather than just being "exposed"; however, the best ideas will be those that encourage students to interact with the information and build their own knowledge.
My goals for teaching this topic include:
-exposing students to the diversity and stunning differences between various areas on our planet
-helping students recognize differences and similarities among various landforms
-helping students examine how landforms have an effect on how we live our lives
There numerous ways I could use this video in my classroom to help reach these goals.
1- First, I could simply show the video in its entirety to provide background knowledge to my students.
2- I could use the video as an end of unit assessment. I could create a simple quiz that correlates with the video. Whenever I stop the video, I'd have students write down the name of the landform they see.
3- I could download the segments of the video and use each segment as an introduction to the specific landform we're studying that day.
4- I could download the video segments and piece them into a PowerPoint presentation for students to use at an independent learning center. The Powerpoint presentation would give pictures, videos, definitions, and even passages relating to landforms.
5- After recognizing those students that have not grasped the concepts of landforms, they could watch the video independently and fill out a graphic organizer as they go. They'd be encouraged to stop the video and rewatch specific parts in order to write the landform being discussed, write a description of it, and draw a picture that represents the landform.
6- This video could be embedded into a Webquest on landforms. Along with images, references, and such, students would be challenged to build their own knowledge of landforms as they work independently on the computer.
7- Students could create videos about landforms using MovieMaker. Throughout their videos, they could plant segments from this video to reinforce their ideas.
There are endless possibilities and variations on these ideas. Rather than just being "exposed"; however, the best ideas will be those that encourage students to interact with the information and build their own knowledge.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Introduction
Welcome to my blogger page for EDIM 508. I am currently a 3rd grade teacher at Pine Forge Elementary School in the Boyertown Area School District. This is my third year teaching at Pine Forge.
In our third grade setting, I coteach with one of our Special Education teachers for half of the day. This is usually the best part of my day as I look forward to the ability to interact with another adult in front of students. I always think of it as, "two times the learning, two times the fun". And, meeting our students needs is what our entire classroom philosophy thrives on.
In this class I hope to learn new ways to fuse technology into my daily routines. I think of myself as digital native with some immigrant tendencies due to the constant "hammering" of the past ways of education. My familiarities with technology include the Smart Board in my room, the classroom response system in our school, my classroom web page, student email and blogging accounts, and more. Overall, I strive to learn new technologies almost daily. Therefore, I can't wait to share my experiences with my class and my faculty.
Finally, and on a more personal note, this is one of my final two courses I'm currently taking that will finish my Master's degree! I am very excited for May, as my wife and I are graduating on the same day (although she'll be earning a doctorate in physical therapy...yes I'm very proud!) We just got married on the 27th of December, so the past month or so has been a crazy, hectic, and exhilarating ride.
Thanks for reading,
~Kyle
In our third grade setting, I coteach with one of our Special Education teachers for half of the day. This is usually the best part of my day as I look forward to the ability to interact with another adult in front of students. I always think of it as, "two times the learning, two times the fun". And, meeting our students needs is what our entire classroom philosophy thrives on.
In this class I hope to learn new ways to fuse technology into my daily routines. I think of myself as digital native with some immigrant tendencies due to the constant "hammering" of the past ways of education. My familiarities with technology include the Smart Board in my room, the classroom response system in our school, my classroom web page, student email and blogging accounts, and more. Overall, I strive to learn new technologies almost daily. Therefore, I can't wait to share my experiences with my class and my faculty.
Finally, and on a more personal note, this is one of my final two courses I'm currently taking that will finish my Master's degree! I am very excited for May, as my wife and I are graduating on the same day (although she'll be earning a doctorate in physical therapy...yes I'm very proud!) We just got married on the 27th of December, so the past month or so has been a crazy, hectic, and exhilarating ride.
Thanks for reading,
~Kyle
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