Catchment Detox This online game doesn't really fit into any of my categories but is worth a mention. Found at www.catchmentdetox.net.au , it is a game from which a major government push was made to inform people as to the effect people are having on water quality. At the time major prizes could be won. Although now over the game is still available and an excellent resource. It is a free online game which, similar to the Sims has players making big decisions and also seeing the consequences. It would be too complicated for the younger ages but the Grade 5/6's could really enjoy it. It is engaging, interactive and fun. It may take a little time to get used to it so I wouldn't introduce it unless I was intending to use it across a number of weeks. Perhaps as an earlier finish activity. Its links are clear, to sustainability and the environment, as well as civics and citizenship as the player makes decisions which effect everyone.
Another great resource is the learning federation website. See image left. It has a large database of resourcesavailable that you can search through for the topic of your choice. The resources available mainly consist of browser run interactive teaching tools. It is what you would use if you had a smart board in the classroom.
I wasn't so lucky but still managed to hook up a digital projector and it worked a treat. See the brief of the percentage resource I used (left). It provides excellent engagement to children and is a welcome change from a boring verbal introduction.
Along with the Math 300 website it provided the greatest resource during my latest practicum experience.
If you are serious about 21st century education in the classroom there are a number of resources out there. These include the Intel Teach Program where they have been 'helping K–12 teachers around the world understand how, when, and where to bring technology tools and resources into their classrooms'. Alternatively you could register to the ICT in Education Victoria Professional Teachers' Association which runs publications, events and professional developments.
Before I started this subject Technology across the Curriculum I never knew how much software and resources were out there. Not only that, but the amount that is both free and easy to use. It is incredible. I have always been taken to liking the use of technology but now I feel a lot more prepared and inspired. It will undoubtedly become a feature of my teaching.
Students select all different aspects of their 'wild self'. They can choose between having a variety of human or other parts.
My creation is fast as a lion, with strong arms of a Gorilla and wings to fly. Yet I also kept bit of myself, as I still need glasses.
This software links to studies of the environment and animals and even a word study.
Your character is given an scientific name and you are also given facts about the animals which you have drawn from. In this case I was told facts of the African lion, Western low land Gorilla and the Californian Condor. Given this information, students could do a study of each of these animals. The teacher could specify that they want to know about each animals habitat, food, threats etc. It could be a engagement to a writing piece, a research assignment, an art presentation, a lead upexercise to a zoo or aquarium excursion or just a way for students to creatively respond.
On this website is a lot of content, but to be safe, there is a 'classic kid safe mini-mizer' page. Just click the link from the top.
In this is a similar concept except instead of creating your wild self you create your own Lego man. You should remember to use real Lego as well as there is no replacement for the benefit of tactile /kinesthetic learning.
Lessons coming out of this could be building lessons, a warm up to a space/volume/capacity class involving Lego. At the beginning of the year when you are trying to implement a set of classroom values this activity could be used and it could link to a discussion about community. In the same way it could link to lessons on civics and citizenship.
Sketch and Swap This can be found at www.sketchswap.com It is a online drawing website that through the use of a mouse you can draw a sketch. The interesting thing about this website is that after you are done you get someone elses sketch drawn on your screen, evidently the 'swap' part.
Unfortunately this uncertainty means that you don't know if unsuitable images are going to be returned back. As such I wouldn't use it in the classroom without specific permission. It would be used to develop students artistic ability, namely line and shape. Specifically as you see the 'swap' sketched virtually on your screen in real time.
As you can see from the images on the left my sketching skills of a boat pale in comparison to the mountain scene I got in return.
Rebus stories
Making story using pictures in place of some words is an activity that is easy to do. Using word, students can write their own story, you could specify what type of story or what it should include. Students then can easily insert images from clip art or elsewhere. Stories can be printed off or viewed on the computers. To make animated gif's to work the student will need to publish the word doc to web.
It is a different way to do writing and some student may really flourish, where they haven't in the past. See above a rebus story I put together in a 3 or so minutes.
As an extension is creates interesting word activity, where different meanings could be used to change the story. It leads into strategies that successful readers use such as predicting, inferring using prior knowledge connections etc.
This is my favorite topic by far, due to my pre-existing love for creating videos. Please note that there are three embedded videos on this page, which may make loading slow. Please refresh or change browsers if they don't appear and/or play correctly.
In the classroom movies/video/ online stories can be created, used and incorporated in a wide variety of different ways. It falls under the banner of ICT for creating. Students can use these online tools to create a persuasive text, to inform and explain, to respond etc. Importantly students will be engaged as the quality of outputs and ease of use is astounding. Some students who are well suited to these activities may experience success where following traditional means of paper and pen they have not.
There is a wide variety of free web based software available. I will now give a brief overview of a few and comment on their strengths and weaknesses.
First cab of the rank is www.dfilm .com or otherwise known as 'Dvolver'.
This is easy to use, smooth looking web based software. You work on one scene at a time and select the background, characters, music, scene type and dialogue. It then gives generates a cartoon type video very quickly. See above video which I made in only 5-10 minutes.
Strengths: Free, ease of use (see image left), graphics, can embed and email straight away.
Weaknesses: Lack of flexibility and wait for it... Adult content!
Unfortunately the adult content is a real deal breaker to an otherwise impressive movie maker. Therefore all it can be used for is to prepare a movie yourself. Hopefully they come out with a children friendly version.
Next is the Zimmer Twins where, among other things, you can make your own movies. The URL is www.zimmertwins.com
This online software allows you to quickly and easily make an animated movie. It focused on three characters, the twins Edgar and Eva and their cat, "13". A story board is displayed along the bottom allowing quick review your piece. It works by allowing the user to select from a group of talking, action or other scenes. When you select a scene on your story board a list of variables are shown. These include the character, background and some objects.
Dialogue is made through speech bubbles in any of the talking scenes. Once selected, the text is simply typed in. Animation automatically occurs and you need to change the scene to have a different animation type. It is high quality and appears like a modern cartoon.
My criticisms of the website are that I couldn't save a draft. Once I saved the file I could no longer access it. This means it needs to be completed in one go, and any mistakes need to be corrected before you save. It would be nice if the video could be embedded elsewhere as is common these days however this feature was not available. Although understandable the limit to three characters is constricting.
Strengths: Free, graphics, ease of use, age appropriate content, excellent link to different emotions Weaknesses: Cannot save draft, cannot embed, limited character flexibility.
Myths and legends
http://myths.e2bn.org/mythsandlegends/ This online story telling software is focused on a theme of old time knights, castles, princesses etc. It is fairly easy to use with a lot of images and items to bring to your story. A useful feature is the copy function where the previous page is copied and you can simply make the small changes as necessary, not remake the whole scene. Unfortunately to the creators of this site the graphics pale in comparison to some of the others now available, this is 90's quality to the others 2000's. Animation is only minor, it is more a story book.
Strengths: Free, ability to save, ease of use, age appropriate content Weaknesses: Comparatively poor graphics and animation
Microsoft Photo Story 3 This software from Microsoft is free but is not web based and requires installation locally on each computer. As its name suggests it designed to incorporate photos and allow the user to tell a story through the input of text or sound files. Photos can be edited and tweaked, music can be added to the background, transitions can be changed. It is easy to use and primary aged students equipped with photos they have taken could prepare a high quality video. The video can be saved and shown locally or if appropriate, uploaded to a hosting website such as Vimeo or YouTube. One interesting feature, especially if the intention is to upload it to the Internet is the create music feature. This avoids copyright issues and allows students to make music appropriate to the video they have produced. I normally make videos using Sony Vegas Movie Studio. It is a more professional piece of software allowing amazing control of almost every detail. Below is a video I made using this software for the WebQuest.
In comparison Photo Story is very constricting, but the trade off would be price and ease of use.
Photo Story in a flash. Strengths: Free, users can save, isn't dependant on Internet connection, easy to use, students can use their own photos. Weaknesses: Output file limited to .wmv, limited control
Xtra Normal The next video making software is found at www.xtranormal.com . The video below left shows you the quality of animation you could be making. The image to the left shows the user friendly way in which you create.
This exceptional piece of software enable you to create a lifelike video animation. It is prepared very much like a script. Switching between a few characters you can add dialogue. Then you can go through and like a movie producer add animations, expressions, looks, sounds and most impressively change the camera angle. It works through dragging and dropping the above changes into the script. They can be later double clicked to change.
I find this truly an amazing piece of web based software. Out of all the reviews in this blog it is the only software to do lipsyncing, lifelike characters as an option and generate voice from text.
Strengths: Amazing quality graphics, generates animation automatically, generates spoken dialogue from text, great degree of flexibility, ability to save, ability to publish and embed, ease of use and generally free to use. Weaknesses: Not all characters are free and require unlocking via a points system, voice from text can mispronounce some words (for example 'talk' in the video)
In essence all these websites make very complex tasks appear very simple. It takes away a lot of the control professionals and more serious video makers want but the flip side is it makes it easy. Now videos can be made in the classroom by primary aged students. They could create their own story, they could respond to a text etc. They can create videos that would impress everyone.
Dreamtime stories Today we were introduced to a website. www.abc.net.au/dustechoes is a website focusing on indigenous Australian dreamtime stories. These stories are told in video form through the use of excellently vivid graphics. They can provide an excellent lead into learning about the indigenous Australian people and links in with Humanities domain in VELS. Note some of these videos may not be appropriate for classroom use due to the adult themes involved.
Using Inspiration, screen shots of the video and a little cutting and pasting I have created a retell of the video. This retell method enables creativity and links to ICT domain. The value in this activity comes through students needing to consider the main points to the story, and to which screen shots to use. They will gain a really good understanding of their chosen story, and have a creative output to be proud of. A possible follow up activity could be for the students to present their retell to the class and then show the actual video, then compare the two and open for discussion. Another follow on activity could be to act out the stories in the class. Alternatively they could be used as a tool to develop prediction and inferring skills. I'd imagine this working by swapping retells with other students and uncovering the images one at a time. After each image is revealed students need to predict or infer as much as they can. Obviously this won't work if everyone is doing the same story or has already viewed them all online. Thus thinking ahead would make it wise to pick a story each for the retells.
Microsoft Excel On the left you will see a basic collection of data, a graph that has been prepared and an image inserted to make it look attractive. It uses the widespread and extremely powerful software tool Microsoft Excel, which forms part of Microsoft's office package.
This is an example of an output that could be achieved in a primary school lesson. This covers elements of chance and data and integrates technology. M&M's are used in this example although you could use a lot of focuses eg. hair colour, cars that drive past. It would be wise not to bring attention to things which may cause discomfort to the students eg. weight, friendship group.
This is a good introductory lesson into creating a chart. A suitable follow up, could be to prepare a football tipping chart. This would involve feature such as basic functions such as 'sum' and 'average', preparing a more advanced table, sorting and a more advanced chart. You could even introduce macros if you were game. Microsoft Excel's potential is massive. At the end you could pick the best work and use it to record the footy tipping results for the year.
If the cost of this software is an issue an alternative is availible. There is an open source (free) software package called Open Office. This includes a Excel equivalent called 'Calc'. Is available for a free download here.
This week we began by having a look at design briefs.They are to work as a tool to aid in higher order thinking. Greg suggested they be used and written all over, a working draft, then later a good copy could be produced.
Here is one we worked on in a group and I've typed up. Click on it to see the detail.
The use of this design brief proforma did seem somewhat cumbersome, and after the fact, as we came to most of the conclusions before even picking up the sheet. That said, I am an adult, aware of things such as potential energy, while the activity would be posed to primary aged students. Additionally once students become more familiar with the proforma I'd expect them to better integrate it into the process. The benefits of this proforma are to promote detailed, documented higher order thinking. This could then be used when assessing the students, specifically in the domain of 'thinking processes'.
The task itself was completed in small groups, where we were given an rubber band, some card and a small frog cutout. The instruction was to make the frog jump. This turned out to be a simple yet effective open ended task, where there were many ways to achieve the goal.
As is my nature, I enjoy competition, and would of enjoyed a competitive aspect to the task, for example a high jump competition. As a teacher though, I realise that a lot of students don't like competitiveness, to the point where it can prevent students participation.
We then moved on to look at theQuia website, which is an excellent resource to develop interactive online learning tools.
You can easily develop you very own quizzes ( see image left), as well as a whole lot of interactive games. You can also search existing quizzes or activities created by other users.
This website is thorough, and does what it is intended to do, very well. It is easy to use, navigate and tailor to very specific needs.
The amount of settings which you can change is surprising including input settings, access settings, feedback settings and reporting settings. These include randomising to inhibit cheating, question value changing, grading open ended questions online, setting time limits and secret question to restrict access (see image left)etc.
Features of the website include:
Matching game
Flashcards
Concentration game
Word search puzzle
Battleship
Challenge board
Columns activity
Hangman game
Jumbled words
Ordered list activity
Picture perfect activity
Pop-ups
Rags-to-riches game
Scavenger hunt
Cloze activity
Patterns
As a teacher I could specifically develop a quiz for my topic (eg. inferring) and tailor it to the level of my students. I could ask a group, or the whole class go onto the computers and access the quiz, via the URL I'd written on the board, or from my quiz homepage which could be saved as a favourite on their computers. Later I could print off the results for evidence for reporting (Assessment of Learning) or to tailor the teaching for struggling students (Assessment for Learning). See image on left for results screen.
As an early finish activity I could have another activity, which needs the secret word to access, which I could give them, when I am satisfied they have completed what was asked of them. This lesson would enable students to get on with their tasks without the need for constant teacher aid, which would free me as the teacher to rove the classroom and give help in other areas needed.
Quia offers a 30 day trial in which you can see how good this website is. A one year subscription costs US$49 per instructor licence. Group discounts are available. If you were to use Quiaextensively then the cost would be well worth it. Even better if your school were to pay. If you only used it once or twice a year then perhaps just using the trial version is your best bet. The biggest downside though is you'll lose your work once the trial expires.
Today's review is of Microsoft Publisher. This software forms part of Microsoft's 'Office' package and is thus installed on most computers (well not Apples). With this software being so widespread I was surprised that so many people hadn't used it before.
We used it in the workshop to make a travel brochure (see image left). Publisher is great for these template type designs. It makes attractive designs at the click of a button and requires only the user to insert correct information. The user can then play around with the design, e.g. insert images, change fonts and colors.
As a classroom activity is it appropriate for students as young as Grade One. I have had the experience of teaching a lesson where the output required was a yearly calendar. The image (left) took only a few clicks of the mouse to create and was similar to what I was expecting from Grade Ones and Twos.
However when students don't have the basic editing and navigational skills, simple tasks can become very complicated. Thus developing these skills is really important, as they are transferable across a whole range of software products.
I ran this class twice, with two different groups and learned some things in the process.
Even when I tried my hardest to give clear step by step instructions (demonstrating on projector and writing up the steps on the whiteboard) the class was chaos. The students without the core computer skills were all having problems. Even if something only takes a few clicks to make, a few clicks in the wrong direction can get you somewhere else entirely.
Students couldn't retain the whole group instruction, I was getting a lot of questions and I couldn't answer individual questions at a fast enough rate.
Therefore I came up with a solution the second time I taught the class. I created a video playing it on loop through the projector. It shows how to get through the simple yet difficult steps. That meant I didn't have the same amount of questions being flung at me and I had time to manage the classroom and do other things teachers do. E.g. fix the printer.
The software( BB FlashBack) comes in a free version for download. Note image quality has been reduced when converting to the blog's media player, image quality is normally excellent.
Coming back to Publisher we also covered the use of it for making a e-Portfolio. This is something I have never done before and was genuinely impressed. It enables users to make a website (browser run file would be more appropriate) in a quick, easy, attractive way with a range of detailed templates to use. Although these templates were aimed at making a business website they can be easily changed. The links on the page were also easy to change which I was particularly pleased with. Now to get onto my own e-Portfolio!
An other practical issue you might like to consider is the availability of color printing. This can make a big difference to the quality of the final piece. A solution could be to tell students before hand to that it will only be black and white and to show them how to preview in Gray scale. The even better solution is to get access to a colour printer, although expensive, it makes a real difference.
If you are new to the world of software mind mapping then you will find it fantastic. That is because it really is.
I am familiar with a free online version called MindMeister, so with it in mind, I will analyse them both, and then compare and contrast the two.
Both are great for mind or concept mapping. Both are fairly easy to use. The above image is a piece of work from Inspiration. The use of this type of software in schools is an example of using ICT for Visualising. For more information on this refer to theDEECDwebpage on this topic.
Inspiration would be my choice if I wanted more flexibility in my design. It enables a much wider choice in buttons, images, changing colors and backgrounds. Children often enjoy simply playing around with images and this software enables this. One major problem is that this software costs money. Check out the DEECD website for costings. It does however have the support of the government education system already through a software toolbar called eduSTAR. I have seen this frequently on my practicum and during my fieldwork. By following this link you can see the range of software available through eduSTAR. Inspiration's inclusion in eduSTAR overcomes the cost problem in most schools.
Some of Inspirations other features include the ability to enable hyper-linking and the ability to include sound-bytes. Students cannot edit from home, however files can be exported to word easily once completed.
'Mindmeister' would be my choice if you simply want to mind map or brainstorm. It organises your thoughts quickly, easily, effectively. It's output is attractive. It's a sleek mind mapping machine. Its is free so students can continue their work from their home PC. It also overcomes any licensing concerns. Possibly the biggest plus is you can invite others to join online, you can edit away and the same time, chat in the chat box and do it from anywhere in the world. This is called ICT for Communication. Mind Meister thus incorporates both ICT for Visualising and ICT for Communication in the one tidy package. It is also flexible in its outputs and can generates PDF's or a variety of image files.
You can see a picture of my partner and I, mind mapping away for an assignment. You'll notice at the bottom left we have a chat open.
The practical difficulties you may need to consider include the need for the Internet connection, and the need for an email address to sign up, log-in and use. Internet connections are fallible and an electrical surge can have your internet down for weeks. If that is to deter you though, then most of today's software will. The need for students to have an individual email account may give you more pause. Perhaps just a quick query to the class to give a show of hands as to, who has an email account they can access from school, would be enough to highlight a possible issue. Solutions may include organising students to sign up for a free web-based email account. Due to the unsupervised content email can bring, it would be wise to send a permission slip to parents, waving you the teacher and the school from any liability. Anyway after all, everyone needs an email account this days. For more information on the ethical, legal and security issues associated with ICT then follow the link to the departments website.
Mindmeister vs. Inspiration at a glance
Mindmeister Advantages: Better graphics, free, easy to use, can chat online and share work, more efficient brainstorming tool, students could use from home Disadvantages: Requires email and Internet connection
Inspiration Advantages: Greater flexibility, greater ability insert and manipulate graphics, sounds, colors etc. Disadvantages: Costs money
Last of all a website Greg told us about. The place to buy educational software! This is good to know as licensing is a major issue when integrating ICT. If you can save your school, or your classroom budget, or your own money then do it whenever you can.
Catchment Detox
Another great resource is the learning federation website. See image left.
It has a large database of resources available that you can search through for the topic of your choice. The resources available mainly consist of browser run interactive teaching tools. It is what you would use if you had a smart board in the classroom.
