I enjoyed making my curriculum movie about telling time and money. My students struggle with these concepts so I was excited to make a video that I put on Youtube that they could go to after school if they needed help. My video is very basic and I tried to make it easy for my students to understand. I used Picnik to edit my analog clock videos. I added borders and arrows to point to each specific hand that I was discussing. I also added text to numerous pictures. I tried to take all the pictures in my classroom so my students could relate easily to the video.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Podcast
When I set out to complete week 3 assignments for my class I was excited to see that we were going to be using iTunes. I have downloaded music before but I never used the section on podcasts. Throughout my bachelors degree I had teachers who used podcast to explain different topics to us but I have never used them off of iTunes.
The first podcast I downloaded was Storynory- Stories for kids. There were many different stories that you could download for children to listen to. I found the stories to be interesting and I believe that the students in my class would like to listen to them as well. I think this podcast would be even better if I could find the actual story to go along with it.
The second podcast that I subscribed to was Google Tools. I felt that this was a great resource for teachers to use. Google is so much more than a search engine and this podcast actually had a video that went with it and actually showed you how to use different tools that Google offers.
I liked that iTunes is very easy to use. However, I felt like there was not a lot of material that I could use with the students in my class. I also had trouble seeing the video to some podcasts. Overall though using iTunes to download podcasts was very easy. I could also picture myself creating podcast to use in my classroom. I also could see using Storynory for students in my class to listen to stories while at listening to reading center.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Classroom Resources
I always try to use technology in my classroom and after creating the Animoto video I understand how easy it is now for students to be able to make a video. The tools in Animoto allow very easy access to create a video about any subject. I think using this tool in my classroom for things such as book reviews, parent meetings, the beginning of the year, or even an end of the year video would be a great experience for the students in my classroom. I do believe my 3rd graders may need a little more assistance since I was having a few technical difficulties myself especially with adding the music. I tried to insert my own music but it was not allowing me. However, overall this was a very easy tool to use and incorporate into the classroom.
Since I could not enter my own music into the Animoto video I then tried Free Play Music. It was very easy to access the music on this site. However, it was a little hard to find a song that I felt was just right for my video. I did enjoy being able to look in different categories such as pop, dance, country, and so on. This allowed me to search for that perfect song a little quicker. When it came time to saving the song onto my computer I thought it was a very easy experience and went very quickly.
I had never used Picnik before but it was a great resource to edit photos. I had a lot of fun messing around with the different tool they had to change and edit my pictures. I really enjoyed changing one of my own personal pictures of a pasture into sepia. It added a new aspect to the photo it didn’t have before. Another picture I changed was a photo of a beach. I did the auto enhancing tool and the colors just popped out so much more. I also thought it was extremely easy to change my photos using Picnik and then enter them into my video in Animoto.
Overall, using all of these tools was an excellent learning experience. I could see myself incorporating all of these tools into my classroom.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
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