I attended the Vermont Google Boot Camp and Summit this weekend, where I learned so many new things that my brain is oozing information! Luckily, most of the presenters linked their presentations to the Web for easy access later!
I'd like to report that I bravely took part in one of the demo slams, but I didn't fully gather up the courage that I needed to transform intent into action. With encouragement from a friend at Brown's River Middle School, I am going to try to be a little braver in the future.
My goal for my next post is to test out a private Google hang-out, Snag-it, or Screencastify to teach a trick with Google Drawings! Now that Google Drawings has added increased functionality in the form of cropping and masking tools, the possibilities are virtually limitless!
PowToon EDU is a fun way to create animated presentations using creative templates. While I was out sick, I decided that PowToon would be a perfect way to communicate with students from home while they have a sub.
Here is my first PowToon. I think that students would really enjoy the process of using this for school projects!
You may embed your work directly from the app or upload it to YouTube, which I personally recommend. When I pasted the embed code, my presentation was not viewable on an iPad.
Here is my second PowToon, using a different template. These presentations could easily be added to ThingLink projects, too!
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I've left the original embedded presentation here, at the bottom of this post, to serve as an example (in case you are viewing it from an iPad.
Today I made my first tutorial using Movenote and Tellagami. I was home sick without a voice, so the text- to-voice function of Tellagami came in handy!
This afternoon, my 14-year old daughter and I decided to create our first animation using the iStopMotion app on my iPad. She drew the background and I molded the aliens. We worked together to move the characters, and I manned a remote camera on my iPod. Through this process, I learned that it's important to position the camera horizontally rather than vertically!
I hope you enjoy our first movie, titled Alien Earthquake!
As a requirement for a class that I'm taking, I combined the use of Google Drawings, Pixlr photo editor, an animation app on my iPad, iMovie, and YouTube video editor to create a visual essay. I enjoyed the process.
Recently, I have been teaching Digital Citizenship in my class as part of a unit on building a Google Site. In the process, I have been teaching about the importance of students learning more about Creative Commons, copyright, and Fair Use. I am currently taking a course at UVM that requires me to write a literature review about a topic of interest. Since I chose "Digital Citizenship in a Remix Culture" as my topic, I created this Symbaloo web mix to keep track of some of the resources that I've come across on the Web.
Today I learned today that Mozilla has a remix platform similar to YouTube's video editor. It is called Popcorn Maker. I haven't checked it out yet, but it's something new that I plan to try!
This week, I've been working with my students to create their own Google Sites, with the understanding that any images or video that they post to their sites need to be licensed with a Creative Commons license and properly cited.
After several failed attempts, I created my first video using YouTube's video editor and was able to successfully create a screen cast of my process!
Here is my first mash-up video:
Here is my screen cast, explaining how to create your own mash-up video.
Here is a copy of my copyright dispute! While the original YouTube video was approved, the screen cast of me teaching how to create the video was flagged for using third party content, the song "Hot Buttered Popcorn," which was featured in the clip. This was a terrific lesson on the nuances of copyright and fair use.
