The Classroom 2.0 Live Shows are such a great resource. Even though participating live would mean being up at 3am (and I couldn’t guarantee the quality of my input even if I could stay awake until then) I can access the recorded show on the Classroom 2.0 Live site. In addition, each show is supported with links to many resources.

The show on October 10th was all about Weebly the ‘drag and drop’ web site and blog creator. The guest presenter was Dan Veltri the founder of Weebly who clearly explained how it all works including the new “Education” features. The questions from the teachers who participated in the live show answered the questions that any teacher thinking of using Weebly would ask. All in all I found it very informative and helpful.

The shows are recorded in Elluminate so the links load the file and open in Elluminate on your computer. The presenters provide a short Elluminate tutorial at the beginning. Once the show has loaded into the Elluminate window you can drag the player around to where you want to be in the recording which goes for over 2 hours.

There’s nothing like learning something new to remind you of what your students might be feeling or to refresh your pedagogical practice. The post below is linked to the Wikipedia article for Constructivism (learning theory). I wrote the reflection first and was surprised that my learning experience linked easily with the article’s explanation to the nature of constructive learning

LEARNING JOOMLA

I decided to teach myself how to use the Content Management System, Joomla for a number of reasons – I needed a new way to present the school web page, it fits in with my Master of Education studies in Online Education, I was curious how Content Management Systems work and it gave me a chance to be involved in active learning.
For me it has been a typical learning experience (responsibility for learning) in that I experienced the whole range of feelings and thoughts when faced with a challenge:

• at first it was all too hard
• I doubted the point of it and wondered if I should change topics
• I struggled to find the right information
• I had to change my preconceived views of what I could do (background and culture of learner)

As my daughter walked past and heard me exclaim “This is too hard!” she repeated  the message I had always told her while working on her maths problems “If it is too hard then maybe you are going about it in the wrong way.” My experience was that math problems have a way of working out if you are on the right track so if it is too long and complicated you’re probably barking up the wrong tree. As it turns out, it was good advice and along with this blog (quoted below) that helped me see that I was trying to change something that wasn’t meant to be changed.

“Joomla? Getting the right modules (in Drupal “blocks”) in the right place on template can be nothing short of a nightmare, especially if you get things set up in one template and then decided to try another template.”

I had to “accommodate” my approach and look for a simpler way to start to get to know Joomla. I stopped trying to change  how Joomla should look (at least for now) and concentrated on the content.

Gradually as I learned to place content I learned more about Joomla in total and I developed a better understanding of the other features. I felt I was beginning to make progress, but with each step

• I needed to practice it more than once,
• I needed a lot of instruction (online tutorials)
• repeating it helped me to understand the concepts and relationships
• success led to more success
• as I mastered certain aspects I really wanted to share that knowledge. (It reminds me so much of my classroom where the students want to share everything they have done which is one of the reasons why it is important to have class blogs).

MENTAL MODEL – LEARNING CURVE

My mental model of the  “learning curve”, is that it isn’t a curve at all. It starts pretty much as a steep cliff face where there is lots of input that doesn’t necessarily make sense and so progress is very slow. You need motivation, perseverance and stick-ability at this stage to keep going. The  next stage is a little less steep but progress is still slow and input at the “zone of proximal development” is required. Eventually however you reach the stage where you get some momentum and you move along much more quickly and the knowledge you have already acquired is useful in learning new modules.  Finally you come to the top of the learning mountain where you have enough skills and background to use intuitive learning to add new knowledge quickly.

I think it is important to have mental model of learning so that you know what to expect and understand the range of feelings that a challenge will evoke. It is important to know that if you keep going the odds are that you will learn.

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“We loved it, so much better than normal school! ”

This is the student response to inter-school debating online. I thought it was a fantastic experience all round – for teachers and students. Admittedly it was fairly nerve racking at first and I think the teachers were more nervous than the students for the first couple of debates but by the time we had completed three or four it became more routine and quite easy to manage.

The success was due to a number of key factors not the least being a very cooperative and keen partner school. Special thanks to @rakt for his help and organisation. It certainly did help to work with a school who had had debating experience and we learnt a lot throughout the whole competition. Our students were novices with no experience or training in the art of debating.

How does it Work?

The Draw

Create a draw with the debate statements. It is best if you have an affirmative and negative for each debate and then they can practise against each other and it helps prepare for rebuttal statements. In other words if you have 3 Debates you need 6 teams at each school.

Preparing the Arguments

Each team worked together on a shared Google Document that I prepared as a template with some indicators of what would be expected from each speaker. The teams had an “in school” practise debate against each other. They also practised their speeches against the clock to make sure they had the right amount of material.

Format

Each team had 3 speakers who had 90 seconds to present their arguments and rebut the opposing teams arguments. We allowed half an hour for each debate but this gave us plenty of time between debates. Older or more experienced students could have longer. The chairperson was provided by the affirmative team and each school was responsible for their own time keeper. We adjudicated our own students solely on their manner according to agreed criteria and compared scores on the screen while the students turned away or while the projectors were blanked out.

SKYPE Connection

We were fortunate to have a great Skype connection which we had tested well before hand. I had purchased a microphone especially for Skype calls that made it even easier. It allowed the students more freedom to present as it was much more effective in picking up their voices and easier to mute than using the internal microphone on the laptops.

In Summary

Debating is one of those authentic learning experiences where students develop higher order thinking skills. They work together as a team and it is clear which students are team players able to support and encourage others. They develop confidence in speaking and listening skills. There are so many teaching and learning opportunities within such a rich learning environment.

Skype enhances the experience by allowing inter-school debating without the  restriction of cost or location. It brings a whole new level of excitement and engagement when the students debate against another school. Our next debating exercise will be international with a school in New Zealand and I can see that it Skpe Debating will be a continuing part of my school program afterall it is “so much better than normal school”!

Image courtesy of Flickr – Balanced Debate

Create a Great Animation using Free Software

Tux Paint & SAM Animation

Animate A Science Concept

My students have been creating little animations to explain a simple concept such as the life cycle of a plant in grade 2 or a simplified explanation of Global Warming in grades 3 and 4(you can see examples here). The animation project was a bit of an experiment as we hadn’t used Sam Animation before. I’m pleased to say it has been a great success and I can see that the process has possibilities for many areas of the curriculum. SAM Animation is free software as I’ve explained in a previous post.

In a nutshell

1. we used Tux Paint (also free software that you can read about here)to draw a series of pictures and then
2. import the pictures into Sam Animation.
3. we created a series of sound files to narrate the animation
4. import the sound files into Sam Animation.
5. export to movie

It was easy to adjust the length of the pictures to the length of the sound and to finish off we added a title slide. The final step was to export the completed animation to a movie format that we could upload onto our blog.

This is  the detailed work flow for making an animated movie using Tux Paint and SAM Animation. The project can be completed quite quickly by taking advantage of the easy save features in Tux Paint.

Step 1.

Open Tux Paint and create and save the beginning picture for your series of pictures. The key to this, is to choose a topic that you can illustrate as a continuous process by adding a bit more to your picture each time. Add a bit and save but use “No. save a new file!” to quickly build up a bank of illustrations. Remember to save often until you have a number of pictures to illustrate your story or concept.

Step 2: SAM Animation

Open SAM Animation and create a new project. Click on the “Manage Time Line” section to import the pictures you made in Tux Paint.

Navigate to the “saved” folder where Tux Paint saves all the images. This is the trickiest bit of the process because the SAM import pictures looks for JPEG format images but Tux Paint are PNG format images so it can appear that your “saved folder is empty!

Once the pictures are on the timeline you can adjust the speed of the animation using the “fps” slider under the play buttons or the slider above the import buttons which will adjust the selected frames. (See above “Sam screen shot 1″ )

Step 3: Audio

You can import a music and or a narration or record directly into SAM Animation. Importing is as simple as using the button next to the import pictures. Once you have your sound on the track you can stretch or shrink your movie to match using the button. There are two sound tracks so you can have a mixture of voice and music.

Step 4: Movie

The final stage of the process is to export the animation as a movie. There are a multitude of choices but I have found that .Avi works well for us.

SAM Animation is another fantastic piece of free, cross platform, software that is ideal for schools. SAM originally stood for “Stop Animation Movies” which indicates what it does. The software has been designed by the TUFTS Centre For Engineering, Education and Outreach, with the noble purpose of:

-  increasing student and teacher excitement for learning STEM;

-  improving student & teacher skills so learning is more enjoyable in all subjects;

-  increasing the general public’s technological literacy, and

-  increasing the awareness of the importance of STEM for society.

(STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

SAM Animation is easy enough for primary aged students to use, with impressive results, but would be equally  suitable for older students or adults wanting an application to illustrate a concept or tell a story. It has a variety of sophisticated tools to capture, import and manipulate images and sound. It even has the ability to apply the chroma key effect.

Once you have finished your animation there are options to export it into various movie formats which means it is portable for home computers and easily published to a blog or wiki.

The SAM Animation site has a very thorough “help” section with easy to follow movies. It has links to “Latest Animations”, “Related Web Sites”,  research, a forum and community. You can try the online version or download it for your personal use or for educational research. If you register as an educator your principal will need to verify the details that you have supplied but then you are able to use SAM in your school.  All this and its free! Schools should definitely make the SAM investment -  their students will love it.

I started this post with a view to have the “Here Comes Learning” presentation below, support my staff Professional Development presentation about the importance of blogging. I’m sure a number of teachers still wonder why they should consider starting a blog. I spent some time working through the considerable information that Will Richardson presents in just the first twelve minutes (the rest of the presentation will have to wait for another post) and now I realise the question is much bigger than just blogging or wikis.

It’s not “Why should I blog?” but “Why should I be connected?”

Will Richardson is a renown author and leader in the field of Web2.0 technologies in education. He was a presenter at the NECC09 in Washington and I, fortunately, was able to attend the session. His message to teachers is that they must be part of the huge technological shift that is happening, that they must use and own the technologies so that they understand them and so that they will ready to teach students what they need to know about using web2.0 technology in ways that are effective for learning.

Here Comes Learning by W.Richardson and SNBeach

Here Comes Learning – Wiki with more links to this presentation

My summary of the Importance of Teachers being Connected by Will Richardson

• Students use the online world for social reasons but, also, increasingly to learn things -see the video about the bow drill which Will mentions throughout http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuFsDN8dsJU&feature=channel_page
• Will quotes Clay Shirky when he says that the ability to form global groups about things we are passionate about which include all levels of expertise and the power of the group in an online world are part of signiificant change – a “Techtonic Shift.
• We have incredible access to raw data (see the Iran tweets, photos). We no longer depend on the traditional news sources to know what is happening. We need skills to critically analyse the information for importance and accuracy.
• These new technologies are having an impact on businesses. Companies monitor the conversation and how people form groups around their products. This is easily seen in Twitter when businesses follow and respond to those who use their product name in their tweets.
• Information Literacy has changed not just the way we write (Twitter and blogs) but the way we read and critically analyse information. New literacy skills are needed and suggested by the National Council of English Teachers :

Develop proficiency with the tools of technology Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

• Students are using the technologies Primarily to Socialise but now they are beginning to connect in interest based ways tapping into the millions of potential teachers, who are out there, when and where they need to do it

The problem becomes that many children/students have no adults that can teach them how to use technologies for ways that are effective for learning. Teachers need to understand these technologies, understand the shifts, own the technologies and make connections for themselves.They need to take time to immerse themselves in internet type environments to meet the challenge of providing students with the skills they will need in the 21st Century.

The second part of this presentation was concerned with the Professional Development model that will support teachers to develop deep seated skills and connections.

This is a step by step guide to creating a VoiceThread using still images created in Tux Paint or with photos.

PART 1- Create Identity Pictures on TUX Paint

1st Week- Get the students to draw an image of themselves on Tux Paint (a new program on the network).

The drawing tools are similar to other drawing packages but when the students click “Save” it saves automatically into in a folder called “saved”. These pictures are much more user friendly for PhotoStory, Voicethread and blogs as you will not have to export them before you use them.

Here is a link to a short video on how TuxPaint works.

Ask students to draw themselves (head and shoulders will do). Save it and start a new file for free drawing (use the new button to avoid copying over the image that they have just done.)

Use Save and New to start another drawing.

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PART 2- PHOTOS

Take photos of the student’s work – no faces but you can be creative if you want to include the students holding or pointing to their work somehow. Photos will work better if you don’t use the highest resolution on your camera because the photos have to be uploaded to the internet and smaller size photos will load more quickly.

Alternately you could have the students draw about the work they are doing in Tux Paint.

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PART 3- VOICETHREAD

3.1 Photos or Pictures

Go to the VoiceThread site, click on “Create”and Login with the details you used when you signed up. Upload your photo or photos from your computer. You can have a page for each student, or a page for a group of students, or a single page.

If you haven’t signed up yet, and you need some help, you could use these directions How to sign up for Voicethread as an educator.

3.2 Identities

Make an Identity for each student in your class. Once these are made they are in your account for any new VoiceThreads that you make- you only have to do this once!

Type the student’s first name only and then browse to find their picture that they have made in Tux. (At our school it will be in “L drive” in the students folder in “saved”.) You will be able to see the image if you view the thumbnails. VoiceThread automatically allocates an icon for each name so the Tux pictures can be added later if you prefer by using the edit button.

Once the identities have been made you are ready to start recording the student comments.

3.3 Audio Comments

Comments can be added in a number of ways.

Method 1: In my experience it is easier to have the students record their comments with their buddy helper using another program and then to upload the comments into VoiceThread as they are finished. If you are using this Method then I would use AudioTouch (which is in the programs folder) to record the audio. The students can record more than one file as VoiceThread allows more than one file on each identity or you can “join” all the audio files in AudioTouch to make it quicker to upload.

Method 2: You can have the students come to the teacher’s computer with VoiceThread and record directly onto their identity one by one. Similar to a class Photostory.

Make sure you choose the right identity for each recording. It is easy to forget to change and it can not be moved to another identity- it has to be deleted and redone.

There are VoiceThread tutorials on your VoiceThread account which are well worth a look. If uploading photos and sound takes a long time then the settings on your computer may need adjusting.

Once you have finished your VoiceThread you can embed it onto your class blog. If you update the VoiceThread then it automatically updates on your blog as well.

The Mathtrain is Eric Marcos. He is an amazing teacher because he inspires his students to learn and in particular to love maths. My travel buddy, Jenny Ashby and I had the pleasure of meeting him at NECC09 and to hear him present. He was at the Camtasia Studio Booth ( the makers of JING great free screen capture and screen casting toos)  showing how his students use screen casting to share their mathematical knowledge.

I first became a fan of Eric after listening to an Ed Tech Crew Podcast where he was interviewed. I have mentioned him in an earlier blog post when I was looking for examples of students articulating their learning. I think this is why I admire Eric so much. I am a strong believer in students using their voice to tell us what they know. I am sure it is one of the crucial steps in constructing knowledge. Using screen casting, as Eric does, not only builds student’s confidence as they tell an audience what they know,  but helps them crystallize their learning into solid knowledge.

Eric played a number of examples of the student’s work which can be seen on his Mathtrain.tv site but he talked passionately about the students and their enthusiasm for the process. I know that his students love the screen casting and publishing their work, but would guess that they also love the feeling that comes when they know they have learnt something new. The process that Eric Marcos goes through with his students lets them experience that feeling every time they create that snapshot of their math’s lessons.

• maths has suddenly become much more language focused
• Penelope is now the one in control
• using the screen casting lets Penelope realise her learning it completes a process
• screen casting to an authentic audience makes the learning more “imperative”

Screen casting is not a magic cure. It is clear that Eric Marcos does a lot of Math teaching before the students hit the screen casting stage, but it certainly changes the stakes for the students by giving them the opportunity to articulate their learning to an authentic audience.

I was fortunate to hear Peter Reynolds speak and to receive a free copy of his software “Animation-ish“  while at the Constructivist Celebration @ NECC09 in Washington. This is the one piece of software that I would like to put on my school’s 2010 budget. Peter Reynolds is an inspiring speaker, a talented artist and author.

• I admire the philosophy behind the development of Animation-ish.
  • Peter Reynolds believes in giving children a chance to play and experiment through their passions and unique abilities. Animation-ish is designed to give them the opportunity to express themselves through drawing and animation with the ‘ish’ concept that tells the world ‘back off, I’m trying to figure this out, and right now this is the way I do it’ – gives us some room to play, experiment, LEARN.
• I think it is easy to use but creates a sophisticated finished product in a reasonable amount of time.
  • You can draw with Animation-ish in three very intuitive levels, “Wiggledoodle-ish”, “Flipbook-ish” and “Advanced-ish”.  It is best to have a tablet to draw with but many students these days are used to drawing with a mouse. Animations can be looped and exported in a number of formats. You can read a more detailed review here.

• It has excellent support material, is generally very appealing and works well with the web 2.0 publishing world of today.
  • It has excellent tutorials and “Inspire me” files to get you started. You can register for a series of tutorials taking you through each level of Animation-ish

My first little animation – just so that you can get the idea how simple it is – created in less than an hour.

The only problem is the cost. I was hoping for a whole school site license for less than $2000 (our school has 750 students) but it appears it can only be bought as a volume license for 25 computers at that price. Our school would need 4 or 5 times that just to cover the computers for students in grades 3 to 6. As much as I love it, and can see its advantages, that is far too much in our budget… I can only hope that a whole school site license is released at a more manageable cost.

I’ve just read another blog with a similar view of the Animation-ish software and its value for the classroom.

More Links – The Live Wire

Why Do We Need to Have It?

When I find a blog that interests me I inevitably check the “About Page” of the author before I decide to subscribe. It’s the same for Twitter. I will not follow someone who doesn’t have a Bio of some sort, and preferably a link to their blog. Why is it important? I think it is about trust. I’m letting people into my Personal Learning Network and connecting to their network. I want to be associated with credible, interesting and talented people or at least people with similar interests and careers. The “About Page” is the social chit chat before you get down to business.

What Should Be On It?

Once you have shared a little bit of information about yourself – a balance of professional highlights mixed with smidge of personal interests – so that you start to create a connection with your readers, then it is time to move on to the  purpose of your blog and the sort of things you will be writing about.

Michele Martin from the Bamboo Project Blog has an excellent example of an about me post and a separate post on what to find on her blog.

Another interesting post written by Skellie  How to Write the Perfect ‘About’ Page (by Numbers) is quite helpful if you are at all in doubt about what to write.

And finally the QuickSprout blog lists 4 essential items for an “About Me” including a picture of yourself “no matter how ugly” you are!

It looks like I should take my own advice and update my “About Me”, which up until now has been a short paragraph in a text widget in my side bar. The text widget is a nice way to keep and extract of your bio but it probably should link to the “About Me” page which has all the extra important details mentioned above.

Photo: Flickr – Tony Hall