Web Based Mind Mapping

This is a free web based mind mapping program. No sign up required. Will be great for the classroom.

Week 5 - Animation

This week in our workshop we looked at a plethora of Web sites that allow you create your own animations.

Animations are a great tool and I see them having a range of applications across the curriculum. Animations can be used to for sequencing, recounts, to illustrate literature or be used as a stimulus to inspire student's creation of their own literature.

Animations can be used for more than literacy applications, they could be created to help teach a mathematics concept or as part of an integrated inquiry unit of work. Some of the programs that are available are amazing in that all you need is your basic ideas and they create the sound and sync characters movements with the speech you have added.

I look forward to being able to use animations of these kinds as well as claymation in my future classroom. For students creating such a tangible product such as an animation or video that can be shared with their friends and family is a rewarding exercise. There is potential for great improvement of skills when animation is used repeatedly over a year as well, it would be a great opportunity for everyone to observe student's skills improve as their finished products do too. With all the ICT that I use in my future classroom I will remember what Greg told us repeatedly in our lectures and workshops "make sure you celebrate student's successes and then move on and encourage improvement".

Here's a little bit about what we looked at this week:

Zimmer Twins

http://www.zimmertwins.com/

This Web site allows you to create story boards using 3 different characters doing a range of things in a varitey of places. You get to add in what your characters say by typing it into speech bubbles. The characters don't actually talk but you can read their speech bubbles. This would pose a few problems for students unable to write or read. I am sure that if you wanted to use this programme with your Prep class you could get some parents in to help, make a class animation or even ask students what they want to say and write it for them so they can just copy as long as their other ICT skills are up to the task!

Once your story board is complete you turn it into a movie. Sound effects are added for you as well. Zimmer Twins creates really nice simple animations and the way that it turns your storyboard into a movie is magic! This would also be an excellent way to help students understand sequencing.

This is 13, he's one of three characters that you can choose to use in Zimmer Twins for your animation.

The jungle is just one of the many settings you can choose for your animation.

13 is singing, singing is one of the many actions you can have your characters perform.

Build Your Wild Self

http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

This Web site is provided by the New York Zoos and Aquariums. It allows you to create your

own 'wild self' by selecting different animal body parts to place on your own body. The really cool part is the crazy name that it gives your 'wild self' made up of all the names of the animals that you took parts from to create yourself.

This could be used as an activity to get to know your students at the beginning of the school year. Everyone in the class can make their own 'wild self' and print them out to hang around the classroom (including the teacher). This Web site was incredibly simple and fun to use, the end product is really cute too.

Creating characters using this Web site could have great literacy applications for visualisation and character illustration. Characters created using this Web site could be used as creative story prompts, students could create a story based around the character generated using the 'random' generation button or one created by a classmate.

Roller Mache

http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache/default.htm

This Web site is provided by the ABC and has information about animation, examples of animation and instructions on and how to do it as well.

There are some great teacher resources in the form of PDF's worksheets that you can download that provide instructions for students on a range of animation techniques including; creating a set or background, templates for story boards, how to make flip charts, ideas for character development and squashing and stretching objects to create movement.

Microsoft Photostory 3.

This is a free programe by Microsoft that apparently "makes show and tell cool again". I personally am not the greatest fan of show and tell however, I do see it's place when done correctly, with variation and interesting topics other than the contents of student's pencil cases or what they did on the holidays! So if this program by Microsoft can make show and tell more exciting for everyone they are onto a winner.

Photostory lets you show your photos with your voice recorded as a commentary, you can add motion to your slide shows, special effects or a soundtrack.

Xtranormal

http://www.xtranormal.com/

Xtranormal's claim is "If you can type you can make movies."

This Web site contains high end adult animation. Character's mouths move to the text that you have typed making animation very easy for the user. This Web site is not really suitable for use in the classroom, but it's good if you are interested in making your own animations for other purposes. As a teacher you could make examples of animations to inspire students when creating their own however, this may prove to be problematic when students are not able to achieve the same effects that their teacher has.

Sketch Swap

http://www.sketchswap.com/

"Draw one to get one" Unfortunately this site is also not suitable for kids as you may get something inappropriate back! This is a shame as it was heaps of fun and sketches that the kids get back could be used as great story starters. You could get around this by saving sketches off the website but I think this takes away the fun of drawing a picture and then getting a nice or

nasty surprise back.

I drew the butterfly sketch and got the bomb back!

Reasonably Clever

http://www.reasonablyclever.com/

This Web site allows you to create your own Lego characters. Once again these could be done for pure fun or to illustrate or inspire literature.

The Star Wars character at the beginning of this post was also created on this Web site.

Zip Tales

http://www.ziptales.com/

This Web site allows you to write and share stories in the classroom. Greg siad that this is a great Australian resource however, it does require a subscription.

Dvolver

http://www.dfilm.com/live/mm.html
This Web site is not suitable for use in your classroom but is a great example of animation made very simple. I made a short animation that is suitable for all audiences about Pete the bear for this blog, it took me about 30 seconds to do!

Week 4 - Dust Echoes Inspiration Recount, M&M's Mathematics, Web 2.0 Technology

Dust Echoes

In this workshop we created a recount of an Aborigional story from the ABC Dust Echoes website http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/. Being able to retell/recount a story is a very important skill for our students and is part of the VELS curriculum from level 1 -4. It is a vital tool for comprehension.

I chose "Mermaid story", which was about an old man who leaves his family group and finds a waterhole with Mermaids, anyway if you are interested in what the story was actually about click on my recount and have a closer look.

To create our recounts we used 'Inspiration'. We chose the 'create a diagram' tool and then took screen shots of the most important parts of the story and placed them in our diagram, I connected the parts of the story in order and created a caption that I attached to each image. In the end it ended up looking like a really nice story board. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this activity and found the "Mermaid story" to be quite moving tale!

Initially I arranged my recount like this

I then decided that I wasn't really happy with the visual aesthetics of it. As I had attached my sentences describing the story to the relevant images I could then easily drag the images around and resize them to make it look more appealing. The arrows link one image to another so as I moved the images around they also were automatically readjusted. It was all very simple and I think produces an effective result.

M&M's Mathematics

We then moved on to M&M's mathematics. In the classroom, students would tally the number of each different coloured M&M in their bag of M&M's. As I didn't bring a bag of M&M's I jsut made the figures up!

We placed our data into two columns in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, highlighted the data and then fiddled around with the different options for graphing the data. We played around with the different graphs and worked out how to change colours to correctly depict the colour of the M&M. I also worked out how to label my graphs, which is important as I belive you shouldn't teach graphing with out teaching how to label the graph. With out labels a graph means nothing or could mean anything!

Storybird

On LMS this week there are a whole heap of interactive resources that we can use in our classrooms. I had a look at the 'Complete Web 2.0 directory' and found another excellent tool for creating story boards called Storybird. See my screen shots for more details...

This is how one image of your story board looks, you can leave space to write next to your image or create your story board without any text.

This is what the whole web page looks like when you are creating your story board, you get thumbnails of images to choose from. The range of artwork and artists was amazing, I think all of my students would be able to choose from Storybird something that interests and inspires them to create a story around.

Once you are finished creating your story board you can publish and save it to share.

I was amazed at the amount of free web 2.0 resources that are available. There are resources ranging from children's stories to upload to your ipad or iphone, chess instruction for children and a whole heap of collaborative resources to name a few.

Week 3 - Design Briefs, Quia games and activities

Design Briefs

We began this weeks workshop but completing a design brief and making a jumping frog using: cardboard, a rubber band, sticky tape, scissors, glue and a picture of a frog. Greg reccommendsthat we use the I/D, P, A/E format for design breifs.

Here is a screen shot of our design sheet that I filled in MS word (thanks for the template Greg).

My partner Josie and I chose to stick the frog to the cardboard and make a spring type mechanism out of the rubber band. We did this rather than sticking the cardboard to the table and creating a catapult type contraction that was the most popular design for our workshop group. The main difficulty was that the rubber band was too large, we overcame this by twisting the rubber band many times between the two sides of the cardboard (see design brief).

Here is a picture of our jumping Frog, he was a wee little ripper!

Press down on him and release to make him jump. Notice the twisted rubber band.

This would be a great activity for students to refine their scissor and fine motor skills as well as stimulate the use of their brains, not to mention the team work that was required.

On the left is a design brief template that I created for my students in my first practicum class to aid in their design of a new purpose for an old cardboard box.

Quia

Next Greg introduced us the program Quia.

Quia is according to their web site "a collection of tools for creating online content". These tools are in the form of a range of quizzes and interactive games. You can create your own based on your own content or search for already made quizzes by subject area.

Quia has the potentail to be used for the purpose of formative or summative assessment or just as a fun activity. You could assess students by having them create their own game or quiz or complete one that was created by you, or even better still students could create their own quizzes and test out the quizzes of their class mates like we did in our workshop.

This is the link to the quiz I made using Quia, it's about the capital cities of the world.
http://www.quia.com/quiz/2513873.html


I then created a hangman activity on the topic of types of pasta and sauces.
http://www.quia.com/hm/668209.html

I also created a 'pop up' activity af basic addition questions
http://www.quia.com/pop/432537.html

This week on LMS there is a whole lot of information about copywrite, cyber bullying and acceptable use. I played the game Piracy Playgound : First Adventure of the Three Cyber Pigs. This game comes with an accompanying teacher's guide and was interactive and interesting enough to help students understand when they should and should not give away their personal details or those of their families and the potential consequences for doing so.

Week 2 - MS Publisher & E-Portfolios

Microsoft Publisher

In today's session we learnt how to make brochures in Microsoft Publisher. We made a brochure about the Shrine of Remembrance for our Humanities assignment in semester one using Publisher so I am vaguely familiar with the program. I quite like using the Microsoft programs as you can use the help menu to find out how to do pretty much anything. Or if the help menu is a bit confusing whatever you need to know you can always find on Google (along with a whole heap of rubbish you didn't need to know but got distracted by!)

I made a brochure about Kyrgyzstan, I visited Kyrgyzstan with my husband in 2007. I have taken photos from our online photo storage with Picasa and used them in my brochure. The text is from a blog I wrote about our experience staying in the Yurt Life Camp in Tash Rabat.

Kyrgyzstan is a brilliant place, I highly recommend it as a travel destination (even if my very rushed brochure doesn't do a great job of selling it).

MS Publisher looks like it could have some great applications in my Primary classroom, the only limitations being mine and my student's imaginations. The range of templates that you can use mean that students have a good base to work from and hopefully will not waste too much time fiddling with the format and be able to concentrate on the content. From my limited experience so far with children and computers I have realised that a lot of time can be wasted fiddling with fonts, headings, backgrounds and layouts and a lot of ink can subsequently be wasted as well!

Just so that I wouldn't forget I wrote down the steps that I followed to create my brochure.

Creating a brochure in MS Publisher:

• choose brochure


• choose template


• choose colour scheme


• fill in the boxes, you can: cut, copy, move and resize them


• it's bit tricky when your text flows over a page but cutting your text from MS Word helps to fix this


• it's also sometimes a little difficult to paste pictures directly into the brochure but by pasting into MS Word first that will fix this


• choose file/web page prievew to enable a good screen shot that can then be uploaded to your blog or anywhere else

E-portfolio

This week we were also shown an E-portfolio for a Primary school student in our lecture. I shuddered to think how much work the teacher and student had put into compiling the portfolio however, it was a very impressive way to showcase the students work and progress. I imagine that if the school had their E-portfolio's well set up (template wise) then it wouldn't be too hard to do one for each student especially in upper primary when the students could help to compile their own portfolios. In contrast to this though I can also imagine a lot of hours spent putting them together especially for younger students who aren't yet better at ICT than I am!

This is a page from my developing E-portfolio. I intend to use this as part of my material when applying for jobs in the future.

I am a Mac user at home so created my portfolio using iWeb. iWeb is simple to use and the templates are quite nice. It's a little bit fiddly to change all the colours and font but I think that is probably my own fault at this stage.

I managed to work out everything I needed to do by watching the video tutorial and Googling a few things that I was stuck on e.g how to save it!

Week 1 - Inspiration and Screen Shots

So it all begins!

Greg has just introduced us to Blogger, a site that I am familiar with as my husband and I used this to create an absolutely fabulous and well followed travel blog. We documented our extended honeymoon from South East Asia overland through Central Asia and into Russia. If you are interested, check it out it's titled Shell and Brock's Excellent Adventure and can be found at http://shellandbrock.blogspot.com.

My IT consultant husband even taught me a little about Html so that I could fiddle around with the placement of my photos within the blog posts rather than having to re-upload them. I don't claim to be able to write code of any description, but if you look at it carefully enough you can find the keys words that correspond to the size and placement of your images and have a play around with them and see what happens. If it all turns pear shaped if you have saved your previous draft then it's not an issue.

The new version of Blogger (formally called Blogspot) seems to have undergone a few updates since we created our blog, there are more blog designs to choose from and the tool bar is a bit different too. While we were travelling it was great to see our friends and families comment on our blogs and be able to reply to them via the blog.

My sister in law Cassie is a teacher who's grade 3 class followed our travels via our blog. Cassie also set up a class blog for her student's which they used for literacy and integrated studies. Her current class also has a blog which they use frequently to share their writing and also use it as a forum to comment on each others work. Cassie also has students leave comments/reflections as proof of their own work, enabling it to be used as a form of assessment. I can see many applications for the use of blogs in my future classroom.

Enough about blogger...

...The first thing that Greg taught us how to do was create screen shots, very simple: print screen, paste into MS paint, cut and repaste, resize if you want and then copy and paste from there to where ever you want your picture to be.

This is all very simple untill you try to do the same thing on your Mac. The MacBook Pro does not have a print screen button. I used my powers of Google to find out that to capture your screen there are a few options. The easiest method for me was to press "command" + "shift" + "4" all at the same time. You then get a little cross appear on your screen which you use to click and drag over the portion of the screen that you want to capture. Once you release your mouse the computer makes a camera shutter noise and saves your image straight to the desktop. I like this method as you do not need to trim the image of your screen as you are already able to select the bit that you want.

The other difference with the Mac is that it does not have MS paint. This means that if you did want to crop your screen capture it is a little bit difficult. I ended up downloading a free version of Paint for my Mac, it was supposed to be identical to the MS product but I personally don't think it has as many features or is nearly as simple. If I end up with a classroom full of Macs next year I will now be able to show my students how to capture their screens and utilise the images in their work as well as do anything else they may need to (I hope).

Greg then went on to show us how to use the programme Inspiration. This was an excellent tool for creating diagrams and mind maps. The above images are screen shots of the mind map and diagram that I created. Inspiration was user friendly and I can easily see how it would have many applications in the classroom e.g brainstorming, mind mapping, family trees, summarising and more. It was loads of fun playing around with it and members of my workshop group produced some very nice looking products in a very short space of time.

Once I got home from uni my Husband told me that they use a similar program at their work and that there are loads of freeware programs available to download that all do a similar thing. It is good to know that if my future school does not have Inspiration that there are other options out there that can be used to do the same thing for example; Bubbl, MindMiester and Mindomo.