Adding a pod-cast

I'm using the ipods with my class. Now, I want to put their recordings on the website. I need help!

Pat F.

Second Blog Post

I have been able to (with help from Gary), record a few bilingual stories in Punjabi and English.
I have scanned the pages of a story book and then used keynote, done the recording and then exported to garageband to edit and add music in the background. Then exported to my webpage. I am not sure about copyright issues, yet. Does anyone, have any info on copyright?? My next step is to record a mixed version with Punjabi and English along with some comprehension questions.

Update and Questions

I've had some success using the computer with a couple of my students who are only in school part time. Google Notebook is working well with one girl and with another student we are using e-mail and MSN. It has enabled the kids to address personal issues in a less threatening environment and some good progress has been made with each student.

I started an AbbyNet webpage, but have gone to Piczo.com which is sooooo easy and familiar to my students. I can set the privacy settings so that only my students can access it or I can make it password protected. (I've made it open to the world for now if you want to have a look at it here.) For a divergent thinker like me (some would say ADD) the Internet is a major time sucker and if it takes as long to make the website as it has for me to figure out its use and format, it'll be up and running 4 years from now.

I feel quite apprehensive about using MSN and teen social networking sites. Talking on MSN seems to go so fast and feels so not like being a teacher and, while I've not said anything inappropriate (yet), I wonder:

• are there ethical and liability issues of which I should be aware?
• should I have parent consent to use MSN?
• do I have to allow parents access to the site?
• what about providing links to teen health sites that may link to information others may not think appropriate for Middle School students?
  
• am I being paranoid, or is this a common reaction for a digital immigrant?

Thanks if you made the time to read and respond. g2g ... jan

Web Page update

This is my second post...
I have been working on webpage development for the Dormick Park ESL program. In addition to web based learning links, I have now added a multilingual school information feature through a podcast. Parents and students can now get information in spoken English, Korean, German and soon Punjabi. My webpage is a link from the main Dormick Park site.
Kathleen Weinkam

iPods in the classroom

This has nothing really to do with my project, but I just had to share. I have one of the District sets of ipods in my classroom and introduced the recording aspect to my Grade 3's today. Talk about excitement! They were absolutely thrilled with the whole prospect of recording themselves reading. A few students had ipods at home, but the majority didn't. They quickly learning how to operate them. Talk about motivation!! Now they are busily practicing parts of their novel to read into the ipod. I'm going to attempt to post their reading on our classroom web site so that their parents can listen to their child read. What a great experience for my class. Thanks for buying the ipods for the District. Well worth the money.

new project

This is my second official posting to this blog, and is probably pretty late in comparison to others. However, since I was on contract in a Grade 5 class for my first blog, and original project, and am now on contract in a Grade 4 class, I have had to change my project, making this technically my FIRST description blog again, and VERY late.

My new project idea revolves around two central concepts or questions.

First, is their a correlation between the degree that technology is integrated in my classroom and the amount of instructional time used to teach non-fiction genres and writing formats (which has recently been proven to me to be disproportionate to the amount of time students spend reading non-fiction in their daily lives).

Second, will teaching students to use technology, specifically Keynote, to summarize learning (on a non-fiction subject, eg. First Nations fishing tools and implements) provide them with a tool that is applicable to everyday life?

The plan:
Students will be introduced to the various types of First Nations tools and implements through two Aboriginal Education center presentations, and the Our Beginnings Gr.4 text.
Then students will be asked to create a catalogue with descriptions of how the tools were made and used (of a certain number of tools), using Keynote.
They will then present their "catalogue" to the class as a Keynote presentation.
They will export their keynote presentation as a quicktime movie, to be uploaded to the class website, once it is built :)

I will try to keep you all updated more frequently.

Update on using ipods in the class!

Wow,  I do not know where to start!  Well, I started off with my question, which was "Can Ipods motivate students' writing?"    I started playing with the ipod and I started to record the students' reading on the garage band.  I did benchmarks, while capturing each child read in my  class.  I ended up having twenty one files on my computer.  The students listened to their reading and gave me two stars and one wish  (two things that are going well with their reading and one area that he or she wants to work on ).   The children self assessed and set their own goals.  I used these in parent interviews.  They heard their children on the lap top.   Next, my students took turns and recorded their expertise on the ipods.  I had students experts in transformers, jaguars, dolls, cars etc.  The children took turns listening on the ipods.  They wrote "I am an expert... in their journals.  They presented to the class.  I video taped each child.  They created a rubric with me.   We will watch the DVD and each child will self assess using their criteria  (speaking was smooth or bumpy etc).     It was great.  I have a 1/2 split.  My grade twos are training some of the 3/4 on how to use ipods.  The children wrote me a reflection on how they felt using ipods to write.  The vocabulary and feelings in the reflection were amazing!!!!!!! I have a grade one and a grade two reading into the ipods. They take turns telling each other, what reading strategy was used to figure out unknown words. It is really building community within the class.

Second Blog - Sorry It's Late!

Hello Learning Community! Sorry this is late, but here's my question that I want to investigate: "Will the use of blogging in order to discuss / write down their ideas increase interest in reading and comprehension. As well, will it and improve the quality of reading responses?" This project will be done during our daily reading block (25 minutes). Our six day rotation allows for all students to have one day out of six on the computers to blog about their novel - this can be their thoughts,predictions, or questions (in essence it will be kind of like a reading response, but more interactive as they will be sharing ideas from other students). The other students can use the time to read their novels. Students will hopefully be able to also access the blog on their own time. Students will be asked to choose from a list of novels that we have sets of at the school. If they finish their novel, they can then read another novel and join another blog. Time line will be late February to the end of April. Some markers that I will look for to assess my question will be: 1. Engagement in the blog / Quality of writing on the blog - We will discuss a good blog response (rubric) and have peer, self, and teacher assessment for the blog. 2. Increased AR points / percentage of correct responses on quizzes 3. Increased STAR results 4. Engagement in daily reading This pilot project will be done in house. If it is successful, then maybe next year I can do it with another school next year. Thanks all! Brandi

Hello all!

This post goes along with my "second blog post". Another great tool I found to use with my website is Survey Select. For those of you who have not had the chance to go to one of the workshops on Survey Select, I would highly recommend it. Gary makes it so clear and it's really quite simple to use. I'm using it to create baseline data and will use it again at the end of the project (along with other data) to see how my website has improved students' learning. It's really interesting to see the survey results!

TLN Project Take Two

After many setbacks which I won't go into right here I've reworked my TLN project so that it is both interesting for me and my students and achieveable. Originally, I had planned to introduce my students to blogging so they can communicate with other students at international IB schools. However, as all of the connections I could make with IB schools were in North America I decided that the whole point of increasing global awareness would be lost.

I'm very pleased with the prospect of my TLN project take two as it focuses on my passion of sharing the love of great literature and blogging. I call my revamped project Book Review Blogging. I've actually worked on a similar project for a few years with Gary Toews, the Abbotsford Online writing project. I'll be interested to see how this project works at the classroom level. My project will introduce students to blogging so they can share book reviews with other students. My goal is for the students to be able to increase the number of books they read through an authentic writing experience through technology. This project should also help improve the students' written output. This project will also promote the love of reading.
Luckily, I ran into James Klassen last week at Abby and he is now working on a book review form the students can use through First Class. Tom also helped me by reviewing the steps of getting the students logged on to First Class and accessing the book review form. I appreciate all of their help. I now feel comfortable in proceeding with this project with my students. I also have some ideas of assessing the project using both data and work samples.
I'm looking forward to our discussion tomorrow afternoon.

second try, second post

last post lost in the ethernet, this one is the Coles notes version:
resources found

ishowu: great program for recording a video screen shot along with audio commentary, great for tutorial creation.

stumble video searches great for finding videos of programs examples

tlite keynote speaker brain lamb great website and lots of resources

Arghhhhhh!!!!

After much deliberation, frustration, as well as plain old stubbornness I have decided (with permission) to change my topic and assignment. I was going to set up a class somewhere else in the world to email. I was hoping it would be in a developing country or something that was in comparison to Canada not very similar in many ways. The only contacts I made were with schools that are in countries that are too well off for my purpose to be valid. So.... I have decided as my Science classes are researching different types of energy and making a presentation on this to give them the option of their presentation being technology based. I hope now I am a little more motivated to make this happen. I will need to take another refresher on Keynote and then fly atter.

Do you really need to bring my mini-cam to the BC Winter Games?

Do you really need to bring my mini-cam to the BC Winter Games? Well, I lost that argument. You see, my youngest daughter will be competing in Karate for zone 3 at the BC Winter Games while my oldest daughter has been asked by BC Karate to be a junior referee. Everyone in my home (hubby and daughters) will be heading to Kimberley-Cranbrook around Feb 20......and the Net-Sharing Cam is going with them whether I like it or not. Sheesh! The nerves of them! Now that my husband and my kids have figured out how to use this nifty tool, they want to use it all the time. I'm truly sad because I've become quite attached to my little new toy.

Ok, so I have about one month before they leave so now I have to tape, tape, tape. Anyhow, I figured out how to use my new GC1 Net-Sharing Cam and have videotaped some of my grade 7 students practicing their plays (reader's theatre). It took me awhile to get to this point and I have to thank some of my techno students for that (this explains why I never posted a clip of me talking about my site). What a great tool and boy is the quality incredible! I never thought for a minute that something as small as a pocket size Kleenex pack could produce such quality work. There's only one problem.....I CANNOT POST MY VIDEOS ON MY WEBSITE DUE TO CONFIDENTIALITY/PRIVACY ISSUES. You see the problem I am having right now is that my website is not password protected. Anybody can visit my website without having to login. I wanted to keep my site accessible to others because I wanted people, such as other teachers, to see the possibilities of what they could do for their students. In fact, I've told many of my French Immersion teacher friends, who teach in other districts, about my site. It is always a struggle to find resources in French Immersion so I figured that by having people visit my site freely, they can use whatever they want. I have to find a way to post the video yet at the same time be able to continue to offer my resources to others. Anybody have any suggestions?

The clip you are about to view, which I allowed the kids to tape on my behalf, is a play that was created by some grade 7 Late French Immersion Students. The goal was to create a play about a character of a novel we read (La nouvelle maîtresse - the new teacher). Students were to do the play using stationery positions. This group created an awesome play. However, the sound is weak and the kids were talking wayyyyyyyyyyy too fast. It is a bit difficult to hear what the kids are saying. We are planning on doing a second take or a third, forth, etc...and make sure we practice and focus on the oral traits we talked about in class.

The kids are pretending to listen to the librarian, Mlle. Charlotte, who is reading a story. The kids fall asleep and start dreaming about something. It ends with the librarian waking them up as she finishes the story.

Enjoy!



Louise Jenkins
CDGMS
http://frenchaudio.net/ljenkins/Welcome.html
louise_jenkins@sd34.bc.ca

Moving to presentatons ...

I have been having a lot of problems trying to blog. After many trials and failures and help from both Gary and James I am finally here! This problem solving has been frustrating but I guess it is all part of the learning process.

Since acquiring iWorks '08 I have decide to change my focus to working on MYP using Keynote for presentations and Pages to create templates. During the vacation I worked on a Keynote presentation for the Shared Learning Conference. There are some really interesting features to enhance the presentation. I went to a workshop presented by Gary but had to learn by trial and error because,"if you don't use it you lose it". The gap between going to the workshop and using it was too long for me.

I am learning to use Pages which is similar to Word .I have used Appleworks and am now learning to navigate around Pages to produce documents and templates for MYP/Ib and Ubd

Update- Second Blog

I have been so busy working on my website that I forgot to post my second blog. I have created a website for my French Immersion Kindergarten class and parents to use. I created different pages (Learning, Vocabulary of the month, Homework, songs, resources etc...). I have received lots of postive feedback from parents. They especially appreciate the audio clips for the pronunciation of words, letters, numbers etc...I created the homework page to see if students were actually visting the site. I put up pictures for them to print and colour with audio instructions. This went over well as they received a special reward for completing their work. It also gave me a good idea of who was visiting the website regularily. I am hoping to have a session at school in the computer lab to show parents the site and how to use it. Now that I have a basic site, I would like to add more interactive components for students.

Blogs are great!

Here I was, worried about what to put in this blog entry because I was still feeling pretty conflicted, unimpressed etc. with the progress I have made on my project. So, before posting, I opened up the blog and I read. What a very good idea that was! First of all, it still impresses me the number and type of projects that people find to do with technology. Many of them sound so interesting. I found a couple of ideas to try and even left a comment or 2. This was even better than reading! Leaving a comment made me feel more like a part of a 'team' and then when read the comments on my previous post, I hit the jackpot!! Thanks for those comments!! I definitely needed to hear some good, positive advice and I am going to take it. Now, feeling infinitely better, I am ready to press on.

I have been encouraging our staff to use our Del.i.cious book mark site. Today when I checked it, I actually found bookmarks I hadn't put there!!! Success. Here is the link: http://del.icio.us/abbystaff
I'd like to network with other staff who have done the same thing so we can all help each other and together, some day, take over the world............ Sorry, too much Pinky and the Brain over Christmas! But seriously, if anyone can tell me how to network or wants to join us, please let me know.

The next thing I have done is set up our staff wiki and again, when I checked it, someone had posted some material. Another Success!! We officially started adding stuff at our last staff pro-d. Each department presented a lesson on literacy and they were supposed to post it and any related worksheets, etc. on the wiki. Here is the link to that:
http://collegiality.wikispaces.com/
The positive side is that some people did add things. The disappointing side is that most did not, even those who were specifically asked to do it. Never mind! Thanks again, Gary and James! I can hear those precious comments ringing in my ears :).

As I was reading through the wiki, I figured that I should lead by example and add something new to my "technology" page. So I added a link to http://www.teachers-pet.org/
This is a great little site if you teach English or Socials or Elementary. If you have Word (Mac or PC) installed on your computer, it will run . It makes flash cards, puzzles, takes out punctuation etc. for grammar exercises and it is FREE!!!

Finally, I have done an on-line survey for my staff about their use of educational technology in their classes. I got quite a few responses. One of the most interesting things I learned is that it is really hard to write a good survey question!! I am looking forward to our session on the 16th so I can learn what I am supposed to do with this data now that I have it. I hope that I can use it to focus in on areas that might encourage people to try some new things.

Pressing on,
Les

TLN Blog 2

This blog is proving very difficult to write ... every time I start, I think I would rather work on my project and that's usually what I end up doing. Also, I think if I'm going to post, I had better read everyone's blog and always run out of time to do that as well. And now, because I'm so late with this blog #2, I may just get it posted and not read everyone else's post and for that, I'm sorry.

I am trying to work out an online environment for a group of my students. Here's some things I've checked out: Facebook, Moodle, KeepTookKit (here's a link from a workshop I attended), iWeb, AbbyNet, Google Docs and am now working with Google Notebook.

I love Google Notebook for my own notes and with it, I've had the most success. Here's the link to a page of assignments I created for a couple of my students who are currently not in school full time. This is as far as I've gotten. I haven't used it yet with the students.

For students who struggle to complete and hand in assignments, I have tried a couple of things:
• Created a template for a title page that students can access from my Public Folder. With very little instruction, two students easily used the template to create their title page. One student added some color and ended up with the first title page he'd every done that didn't look like it had been done by a primary student.
• Taught three students so far how to use Keynote to show their learning. One student did an adapted version of a Mesopotamia project and handed it in electronically to his teacher. It was well received and his teacher thought she might use the strategy with her whole class.

I've been using 2learn.ca a lot; I've had some problems getting to some of the search results but I've worked around it and found some excellent interactive sites for students and tons of resources for me.

I've also finally started using my Del.icio.us bookmarks and have saved myself quite a few slaps up side my head for not bookmarking a cool site.

My thinking about information and communication technology has changed drastically since hearing about Web2.0. I'm still a newb, but am gaining confidence and a better focus for my efforts to use it with my students ... it just takes such a long time to check out resources; I'm forever getting caught up in interesting threads and often forget what I originally set out to do, like has everyone seen this: WWI:Experiences of an English Soldier.

The Nano Push

The Nano Push
This project has really reminded me of how technology inherently is a network. One gadget leads to another new idea and then the next new gadget leads to another, and so on. I love it. My research started out as using Nanos to record students reading as a way to track and celebrate student progress. We’re still focused on using Nanos to track reading, however, I realized very quickly how excited and motivated the students became of their accomplishments and so I wanted to give them a DVD of their recordings for the end of the year that students could take home. Very soon, I decided to start using video to record memorable student activities, field trips, parties, etc to include on the DVD. So the goal soon became providing students with an end-of-year DVD that celebrated all their growth....academically, physically and socially.
Then I found out about the new Macs. They can actually record students reading while videotaping them! We have one of these in our library and I would like to get students reading their books into them so students can hear and see themselves tracking text, their intonation, etc. I still want to use Nanos so that students can plug in with their headphones and listen to themselves and their guided reading groups, however, I’d like to start using the new Macs and my camcorder to video them for the end-of-year DVD. I do feel that the Nanos have been a remarkable motivator for students as they are so wonderfully portable and fun for them to use.
The resources I’ve found and used for this projecct have simply been trying out the applications, such as garageband as a way to manage/store video and sound files. I’m pretty new at garageband so I’m taking a hands-on approach to figuring it out along with using the Start Learning team for support.

ROSIE, the former talkshow host AND ME

There's no denying that I love the Internet. Since I love it sooooo much, you can bet your money that I will spend a lot of my free time discovering the world that is virtually at my finger tips.

Lately, I've been visiting various websites because I want to check out some of the design elements they have. One of these sites belonged to Rosie O'Donnell, the former host of The View. www.rosie.com. I checked out her site and the features she had on it. I found her site to be colorful and very interactive and just plan fun to visit.

One day on her blog she mentioned something about a neat tool called the FLIP/FLIP ULTRA. Now, I cannot remember word for word what she said but I do remember her saying that the FLIP was an inexpensive and excellent tool that makes short video clips for the Internet (in fact, I believe this is the tool she uses for her website). Well hearing about this tool got me all excited and when she mentioned it was inexpensive, I went running straight to London Drugs.

I asked the electronics clerk at London Drugs if she had the FLIP. The clerk did not know what I was talking about but when I explained what I wanted, she showed me a product from SONY called GC1 Net-Sharing CAM. I bought it for less than $200 which I thought was not too bad. Anyhow, I haven't used it yet because I am in the process of charging the battery. I do plan on creating my first video this weekend and then post it on my classroom website. My first video will be a feature of me explaining what my classroom website is all about. I cannot wait to use my mini cam.

Thanks Rosie for the great tip!

Louise Jenkins
CDGMS
http://frenchaudio.net/ljenkins/Welcome.html