Oh lookie, there’s a present under the pumpkin! What could it be? It’s Domo Animate! Kevin H. sent this lovely little demo through the Tech friends Ning. Follow the link and have a look.
DomoNation.com: A gathering of Tech Friends by dogtrax
Like it? Create your own at DomoNation.com. It’s free and fun!
Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning gives a great guide for using blogs in education. There are additional links for further information.
I enjoyed the presentation Ben Davis gave at UT-Martin yesterday. He always has so much to share! He off-handedly referred to Lifehacker.com and of course, I’ve already found lots of interesting stuff there. I’ve visited before but had forgotten about the smorgesbord of information about everything from preserving herbs to making shelves to nice little downloads like Easy Peasey.
“Easy Peasy aims to require little or no additional tweaking or app installation beyond what you first get. Right out of the box, you can browse the web, organize media, watch flash video, and more. Easy Peasy includes Firefox, Pidgin, Skype, Transmission BitTorrent Client, Open Office, Banshee Media Player, Picasa, Cheese Webcam Booth, and the Open Office Suite, among other free and open-source tools.”
I’m thinking of getting a netbook, so it’s nice to have some options to whatever comes with my sweet new machine! Thanks Linux. Thanks Lifehacker. Thanks Ben!
In my neverending efforts to keep myself from losing things that I’d like to keep track of by putting them on this blog, I offer some of the links I used in today’s presentation regarding Blogging and Voicethread: Give students a reason to write and an audience.
Parent information letters from Bud the Teacher
New Zealand Student Bloggers
Room 24 Colorado
Mrs. Heaton’s Class, South Carolina
Mr. Smith’s 4th grade, Hannibal, MO
There are many more terrific education/classroom blog examples in the world. Google them. Check on wordpress. Follow the links offered by the educators above. The possibilities are endless. Educators are a creative, innovative bunch of people! Hooray!
A few free blogging options:
WordPress.com
Edublog.org
Blogger.com
Xanga.com
Kevin Hodgson highlights student creations on
his blog. The create a variety of different movies
throughout the year.
Mike’s Grade Fives offers examples of students and teacher carrying on educational discussions via their collaborative blog.
For a terrific collection of different Voicethread ideas, please scroll down to the Voicethread entry or click here.
Creating books with students is always a terrific experience. They enjoy the process of creating their own publication as well as the product. Here are some terrific ways to use technology to create books with children from Farr-Out Links to Learning. I can’t wait to try them with some children I know!
That’s the slogan for Xtranormal.com. This looks like a FANTASTIC tool to help students publish their dialogue, stories and writing. Users choose the setting, the characters, ambient background noise and music and just type in the dialogue and poof! Instant movie! What a great way to motivate my wee writers or writers of any size!
Voicethread offers wonderful opportunities for students to share, collaborate, write, practice speaking and learn. Colette Cassinelli has created a wonderful wiki packed with examples from each grade level as well as resources for how to get started. I was delighted to see Voicethreads from Kindergarten including student artwork. Directions are provided for a variety of different methods. Watch these. Try one yourself and, if you like, you can upload your example to this wonderful wiki.
Kim Cofino offers a variety of ideas on how to integrate technology into classroom lessons and learning in an imaginative (yet very doable) way. I plan to include Voicethreads in my classroom this year but never thought about posting photos of plant growth for student response. Her suggestions (actually they are examples of what real classrooms have done) demonstrate the many ways technology can help motivate student response, assist with pre- and post-assessment, and connect students with each as well as students throughout the world. These are terrific projects worth adapting for any classroom.
I like web quests to familiarize my 2nd graders with some of the tools and information available on the internet. It’s great to have some to choose from/adapt for the purpose at hand. Here is a nice collection of web-based projects from the University of Richmond to get started with.
I need to thank Sue Waters for is the Clustr Map I’ve just added at the bottom of the widgets (I’ll move it up when I get some red dots). I’ve always wanted a Clustr Map but didn’t know how to get one. Now, thanks to Sue Waters, you do too. Ain’t blogging grand?
Update: I’ve got some dots! The Clustr Map is right on top thanks again to Sue from down under!
Sue Waters has a handy-dandy top five list of common blogging mistakes. I wish I’d read this BEFORE I started blogging. Since I’ve been proselytizing about blogging lately, I thought it might be nice to warn my converts. Consider yourself warned. You are are now free to make the same mistakes, learn from them and rest assured that I would NEVER say “I told you so” because well, I can hardly remember what I said 15 minutes ago much less. . . What was I talkin’ about?
Blog! Make mistakes! Blog some more! Forget to blog for a while. Redeem yourself by blogging again!
And by the way, under #4 blogging mistake regarding pingbackNOW I know what a pingback is! Thank you Sue Waters!
David Warlick just tweeted about iTweet,a site where you can check your Twitter account from school. Well, I’m at home so I can’t check if it works right now, but I’m clapping my hands and shouting “I do believe in fairies, I do, I do!” as Peter Pan has oft requested. (Love the Pan Man)
I’m not much of a tweeter, but I’ve been following some really smart folks on twitter. One of my frustrations has been not being able to check it at school. While my daughter tweets from her phone, I’m not quite willing to go there. itweet.net does not keep all your tweets, but it does allow you to check on recent tweets from school (I hope).
I’ve been trying to convince the superintendent to start tweeting. If this really works, it should seal the deal! Thanks David (said with familiarity even though you’re a complete stranger).
I love Google Earth! It’s such a cool toy. Here’s a great site that not only helps you get started, with some how-to help, but it also includes lessons to turn this great toy into a fantastic educational tool! I’ll be incorporating Google Earth in an even more productive way thanks to Google Earth Lessons. Don’t forget to check out the blog and other pages at this site. It’s chock full of resources!
ZooBorns contains photos of all different types of baby animals from zoos and aquariums all over the world. The pictures are priceless and the captions are very informative, e.g., an adorable baby owl is described as being very capable of attacking humans. How preciously dangerous! 
What a great way to prepare for a trip to the zoo, research life cycles and share a respect for captive animals.
Oh yeah! All the news that’s fit to be read by children! The editors of this site include children and adults. One of the editors is a 14-year-old whose claim to fame is his great duct tape ties! This would be a nice safe homepage for your classroom desk top. I’ll be asking my student of the day to choose their favorite “news” story to report on. This could be a great idea generator for writing and research. These may not be the current headlines, but they are definitely news.
I have not tried this myself, yet. I would check the acceptable use policy at your school before putting this into use. The method came from one of the groups I belong to:An additional description of this method comes from Kim Cofino who suggests using this for elementary students.
Gmail for Student Accounts
The problem that many teachers face when having students create user accounts for web applications is that most applications require a valid e-mail address to create the account. There is a solution that I learned from Alice Mercer about harnessing Gmail to create “fake” accounts that applications will recognize as legitimate.
Create a legitimate gmail account at http://mail.google.com/. (e.g. username@gmail.com). Then, you can use that base account to “trick” web applications that require e-mail address to create user accounts. The way it works is that you add a + and a student name/alias after the gmail user name (e.g. username+sara@gmail.com, username+tom@gmail.com, username+chris@gmail.com, etc.)
The web applications will recognize those addresses as real e-mail addresses, but students never see an inbox. They cannot send nor receive e-mail because you haven’t actually created an e-mail account for them; they don’t have a password to sign into Gmail. Any e-mail (i.e. registration confirmations, etc.) that are sent to the username+name@gmail accounts will be delivered to the Gmail inbox that only you can access.
I have used this to register students for blogs, wikis, and other Web 2.0 applications. The one catch is that it does not work when registering students for Google applications, like Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Notebook, etc.
Here are those instructions as steps:
1. Create a legitimate Gmail account at http://mail.google.com/. (e.g. username@gmail.com).
2. Add a + and a student name/alias after the Gmail user name (e.g. username+sara@gmail.com, username+tom@gmail.com, username+chris@gmail.com, etc.)
3. Start registering students for web applications
4. Check the inbox of your Gmail account periodically
These two sites offer opportunities to microblog with students. Edmodo has a place to post a calendar, assignments and files. Wiggio was designed by college students who needed a better way to collaborate. You can send all kinds of e-mails and messages, work on files together, poll the group and keep a group calendar. I may set one of these up for parents this year or use it with the writing project or . . .
Clara shared this article from today’s Commercial Appeal. Blogging is a great way for students (and teachers as well) to stay connected to their summer reading and each other. While this is a great tool for AP English classes, many grade levels could benefit from this type of collaboration. Thanks Clara!
A demonstration of Voicethread is here.
An example of Voicethread to discuss digital storytelling.
Finally, here’s an example from some French children about some English limericks they have created.
There are plenty of examples all over the internet using this great tool in the classroom. I can think of plenty more!
LATE BREAKING NEWS: Tonight Jason in Denver e-mailed with an update on , what else, his voicethread. Let’s explore his Daddy Duty story together!
Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, what have you, here’s a nice list of alternatives to try out.
