Stupeflix

Stupeflix is an online tool to create movies with your photos and  video clips. I found it was very easy to use and quickly created a product with from my garden photos that I had already sent to Flickr. Once you have collected your photos Stupeflix lets you organise and group them into sets to appear in the order that you prefer . You can select the transition effects, add text and music. I used Creative Commons, Royalty Free music from Incompetech.com. A site I have often used with my students.

When you are happy with your arrangement (which doesn’t take long) you can generate your movie. I found the .flv movie was better resolution than the larger YouTube option but both movies were successfully generated in a reasonable time. The finished video can be downloaded to your computer or shared using the link. The final step was to upload it to a site like Edublogs.tv so  I could embed the movie in my blog.

It might sound like a lot of steps to work through but when everything works smoothly, as it did with Stupeflix, it’s worth the effort.

My Garden – 2008 – 2009

Thanks to Free Technology for Teachers for introducing me to Stupeflix

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.

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.

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

Blogging like anything else has protocols and “political correctness” that you become aware of once you are part of the environment. Linking is one the big must dos, not just because it is the right thing to give credit if you have used others ideas and writings, but for self interest because it helps people find your blog as well.

Others have written about this in a far more eloquent way than I have so the following links are ones that I have found practical and very informative.

This post from the Problogger clearly explains why you should link in your blog and how it can help you develop an audience.

The Edublogger tells you how to link to other blogs and gives the following reasons for linking

1. A person’s blog if you mention a blogger.
   
2. The post if you are talking about a particular post on a blog”

Linking is an important part of blogging but do it for the right reasons. Don’t overlink or it’s a bit like crying wolf. Readers will only follow your blog if you have genuine content with relevant links.

Photo thanks to Flickr

Tux Paint, Tux Typing and Tux Math are three of the ongoing projects belonging to Tux4Kids. Tux Paint, Tux Typing and Tux Math are free software applications that you can download and run on your home or school computers. If you would like to know more, you can read the reviews I have written in my other blog

The aim of Tux4Kids is two fold;

1. to produce free software of educational value so that all schools, children and parents  will have the opportunity to use it
2. to produce an alternative to proprietary software for schools thereby removing the cost and legal barriers to accessing quality educational software resources.

You can find the sites to download the software by clicking on the images below

TUX PAINT                           TUX TYPING                          TUX MATH

Invite To Everyone in FLE.

Please help make a WORDLE.

I’d like to create a Flexible Learning Environment image/logo for the Skype podcasts. Could everyone respond in the comments with 10 words that they think describe a Flexible Learning Environment. It doesn’t matter if we repeat words – that’s what makes a Wordle interesting.

I’ll put them together in Wordle and publish them. It might be interesting to make one now and then repeat the exercise again at the end of the semester to see if we have changed our ideas.

Thanks for your help.

THE FINISHED WORDLE

I liked the way this Wordle is shaped a bit like an arrow – as though we are moving forward. Thanks everyone for your contributions, if you look carefully you should see your name.