Final Project

I recently implemented a Web2.0 tool I have been blogging about in my personal classroom. It was very interesting and a lot of fun. I used a small group of students to implement this process and they did a wonderful job. I really enjoyed doing this and so did the kids. Here is a short clip on what we did in the classroom and below you will also find a short lesson plan write up about my objectives and plan for this Web2.0 tool.

You will find a link and also an uploaded video from iMovie due to a embedding issue.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/helenxiong/videos/11/


Please feel free to also click the following LINK to check out a timeline that one of my students have started. They have timelined the main events from chapters 1-4 and has already noticed how chapters do not vary as days do. He is beginning to see and understand that it can take many chapters to get through one day or one page to jump months. ( http://www.dipity.com/bmsxiong2010bw15/Number-the-Stars/ )

1.    Target Audience – A small group of 5^th grade students

2.    Materials – Computers, Internet access, Camera, and Number the Stars (Literature book)

3.    Objectives –

1.    Students will be able to use the internet based program “Dipity” to timeline the events that happen in Annemarie’s life into a realistic time frame

2.    Students will be able to compare timelines with other students and evaluate their final projects

4.    Procedure –

1.    Students will read the book Number the Stars

2.    Students will map out the events that happen in Annemarie’s life as they read

3.    As students read they will correctly timeline the events in Annemarie’s life using the program “Dipity”

4.    Students will also take their own realistic pictures that display the time’s events and upload them to their timeline to have a ‘real life’ example of what Annemarie is going through

5.    Web 2.0 Tool – www.dipity.com

6.    Social Participation/Social Learning –

Students will work together to map their events and also timeframe them correctly.

Students will also collaborate with each other in taking their pictures that will be real life events to help them remember the events that took place in Annemarie’s life.

The students whom take part in this project will compare their final projects and compare their timelines with each other as well.

7.    Making Connections –

In the book Number the Stars, students have a hard time grasping the time frame of events that happen in Annemarie’s life to a timeframe that is reasonable. Many times, students think that chapters represent days and that the events that happen are in sequential daily frames when they are incorrect. The students will hopefully make personal connections with the timeline of Annemarie’s life to a real life timeline of events.

8.    Create/Produce – “Dipity” timeline with pictures

9.    Reflection – Student will reflect their personal learning experience on video

My goal for this project is for students to understand that a book can take days, months, or even years of time in the events that they read about in a simple 12 chapter book. I want students to grasp the understanding of time through their reading to help them better understand events in history.

I hope that with the use of “Dipity” students can realistically correlate what they read about into what can really be realistically done.

PE5-Dipity

In my previous post I had blogged about students uploading their own pictures to their personally made time line for my RILS project this week. It really got me thinking about making video to upload to this time line as well. I thought it would be cool for students to video record their descriptions for each of their significant events for their time line and possibly acting out the scene to make it more memorable for the students.

As my practice round for this I made a new Dipity time line. What my goal for this was to make a simple time line where I could time line the video projects I have made for my past four months at Full Sail University. I originally started with a basic time line bubble of my most recent commercial on my web 2.0 tool I had made previously with HeyZap.

After the start of my time line, I decided to use my other web 2.0 tool called Viddler that I had used in my previous course to have a means of having the my video online because Dipity does not allow me to simply upload the core video from my files on my computer.

I then simply uploaded my HeyZap commercial and then found the links to help me link it to my Dipity site.

Once my video was uploaded to my Viddler site, I then had to go back to my video and get the code that would allow me to link my video to my time line bubble.

Then I had to go back into my time line and edit the bubble and add the link to my time line bubble.

Once my link was entered and I saved the changes...my time line seemed set. It took a bit of figuring out to find out in order to view my video the time line bubble had to be clicked on and it then rerouted me back to a Viddler site to view the video but it worked!

Check out the 'finished' simplistic time line at this LINK but please don't forget to click on the bubble to see the video!

I thought the video aspect to this tool was really cool but very time consuming. Viddler takes a LONG time to upload your raw video. It also took me quite a while to figure out where to find the link from the Viddler site to put into Dipity. I was also hoping that once I linked the video into Dipity that some sort of picture would appear onto the Dipity time line but it still showed the basic bubble. I feel that if the student's did do a video that we would probably need to add a screen shot of a video clip to make the time line visually appealing. I really like the appeal of the video to this time line project and think it would be really cool to add this feature but it took a lot more time than I had planned for. I would like to play around with this a bit more to become more of an expert in this area. I also think it would be cool to learn from my students as well....to see if they can figure out an easier way to upload video into our time line.

PE4-Dipity

This week we are becoming 'experts' at our web 2.0 tool that we had originally picked. I am also going to use this 2.0 tool in my classroom  for my 'Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario' tool for my ETC course. The tool that I am going to use is the Dipity time line tool I had posted earlier about.

The purpose of my relevant and innovative learning scenario implementation of this tool will allow me to use this interesting and new 2.0 tool in my classroom and become an expert at it myself while using it in my classroom to show how this free tool can easily be relevant and innovative within a learning environment.
Objectives:
(Time Line) What I would like my students to get out of this project and my 2.0 tool is the understanding of how literature books work in a sequential time lines just like our own lives. I really want my students to understand that while they read, usually a chapter or two at a time, that each chapter does not represent individual days and make these types of connections as they are reading other literature or learning in other subjects.

(Technology)
I would also like to see my students grow in their use of technology within the classroom. In this past month, I had implemented the use of wikipages within our learning environment. I had made a classroom wiki page and last month my students have been working on building their own and using it as a writing tool for our past literature book.  The kids became very skilled in uploading and linking pages to each other and also using pictures within their page. (They also became very involved with their writing.)
Another objective towards this project is for my students to be able to manipulate and explain their web 2.0 time line tool they are learning about to the whole class.

I would like my students to take this use of images to the next level by taking their own pictures that are related to our reading and uploading them into their Dipity page as well.

To prepare for my RILS assignment, I made a basic time line to become more familiar with this tool. It was very easy to use. If you would like more about Dipity and also a simple 'how-to' step by step in making the time line please follow this LINK.

What I decided to do today was to practice my technology objective for my RILS assignment. I used my basic time line I had made for my week of assignments and edited a simple time line bubble I had already made. I simply clicked on my 'Language Arts: Number the Stars' bubble.

After clicking on the bubble the following appeared:

 I simply clicked the 'edit' button in the upper right hand corner and then the following box appeared which then allowed me to edit the time line bubble. In order to input a picture into this bubble I had to find a picture that would be relevant to this post. I found a picture of the cover of the book Number the Stars and took a screen shot of it and uploaded it to the next screen.

(picture from: literarysojourn.blogspot.com)

I then uploaded the picture to this time line bubble and clicked ok to finish editing the post.

After uploading the picture to the time line bubble the student can therefore see a visual that is connected to the significant idea they input into their time line!

I would say with this technology objective my students will easily grasp the upload tool but the challenge that arises is my students being creative in taking their own pictures for this project. I am really excited for my students to play around with the technology objective with taking their own significant pictures for this project and uploading it to their Dipity time line.


To view the basic template on Dipity that I just built with the picture uploaded into the time line please click this LINK.

BP7_HeyZap Commercial

I previously had blogged about an online web tool called heyzap. Here is a mini commercial on why you should check it out! In this video I used the program tools of screencapture, screenshots, and iMovie. Within the platform of iMovie, I used some skills such as picture in picture, audio overlap, music, and titles. Enjoy!

*sorry for the scratchy voice...I lost it at the end of the week during the past basketball game because the cheerleader's refuse the cheer quietly so my basketball boy's can hear me* :)

BP4_Dipity

In the past few years, I have noticed students having a hard time with their perception of time and dates. I found this really neat tool called dipity can help students become more aware of how their perceive time and dates. It is a simple web2.0 tool that can be easily manipulated by anyone. In my practice of this tool I made a very simplistic timeline for some of the events we covered this past week and upcoming week of events in my personal classroom. Some ideas I had for this site to use personally are:

timeline for my FS projects (CBR, individual courses, and group and personal projects)
timeline for teacher lesson planning
timeline for students to use and make to show their understanding of events in social studies or even literature
timeline for students to use and make to show their processes through mathematical understandings

There are soooo many ways for anyone and everyone to incorporate different types of timelines in to their lives but I must say that dipity is very user friendly and FREE!

Check out the following pictures and easy to use steps to set up your own dipity timeline!

Upon your arrival at dipity.com you will see the main page and currently it is being updated with a timeline on the current protests that are happening in Tunisia. As you can see these timelined events can also be marked with pictures and specific descriptions that are linked to the event.

Ok, now that you know the basics....all you need to do is make a free account and click 'create timeline' in the upper left hand corner of the screen...

From here you will then enter the information you would like listed for your timeline. What is neat about this section is that you can allow your timeline to be private or public and set the parameters if people can edit or just view your timeline.

What I think would be cool is to make a public timeline for students to manipulate as they are learning about current events or even learning about a specific time period in their units in school.

After entering the basics for your timeline, you will then be redirected to a page for you to add any additional tags, blogs, videos, pictures, or even comments to your timeline. This settings page is also available throughout the making of your timeline.

After you have finished the skeleton of your timeline, you can then start making your timeline. You simply have to click 'add event' and enter the descriptions that appear and it will automatically add your event to your timeline. You also have the availability to add pictures and videos to your timeline as you work.

On the left hand side of your timeline you will see a scrolling bar where you can zoom in or out of your timeline dependent on if you want to see your timeline by years, months, days, or even hours!

Once you have completed your timeline you have a few different options on how you can view your timeline. The viewing choices you have are either timeline, flipbook, list, or map.

Here are the various views of the timeline once you have it completed and you want to view it as any of these options. The only one I had a hard time with is the map option. The screen kept blanking out and did not allow me to view it any other way. If you are able to get this to work, please comment below to help me out :)

Timeline (Week)

 Flipbook (You do have the availability to upload pictures into your timeline which would then show a picture in this feature of your flipbook)

 List

Lastly, another neat feature the dipity allows you to do is to share your timeline through various other platforms. All you have to do is simply click on the web platform you would like to share this with and you are on the go and social networking!

I definitely see this web2.0 tool being helpful in and out of the classroom. It was very easy to use and the best part to it is that it is completely FREE! Whenever I talk to my students about timelines we end up using our spirals and turning them the hot dog way and draw a line and continue a timeline that way...Many times our events become skewed with their times because of how it is listed in our spiral. Using this tool would definitely help students become more motivated and precise in their understanding of time and eras in our lives.

BP6_link to Mark Lillquist & link to Jude Rathburn

Follow this LINK to view my comment on Mark Lillquist's blog!

*I know that our assignment was to only post one but after I had already completed this project I had some issues with creativity in the one minute video message...so I "dabbled" around and ended up on a peer's (Jude Rathburn's) site to see what she had done with her one-minute video blog. It was interesting to see what she had done and it helped me get my creative juices flowing in my own brain. I thought this would be significant to write on my own page and comment for the link because blogging is to help us social network with others and use ideas from others to incorporate into our own...and this definitely has helped me do just that! Thanks Jude and I hope you don't mind I did this!

Follow this LINK to view my comment on Jude Rathburn's page!

BP5_Link to Sheri Brinkerhoff

Follow this LINK to view my comment on Sheri Brinkerhoff's blog about wikipages!

PE3_iMovie

I am definitely thankful to have the Lynda membership because I know that as my iMovie skills grow and continue to be used in this program...I will need a refresher on many of these skills. I really do appreciate all the "quick type" options that can be used to make editing my movies easier but having the availability to click on a minimal amount of places to edit the audio or video also makes it easier to remember. 

With the closing there was another quick screen capture of the presenter as my closing which was nice to see again who has taken me step by step through my iMovie training. 

Upon my completion, I received a certificate of completion of my iMovie training.

In my previous course, I was assigned to make a short video on some of the way I incorporate technology into my classroom. I used the similar video I made from that class to help me complete my project for this class. I played around with the music, video, audio, and clip adjustments. I think the end project is pretty funny and I know my kids in my class will think so as well. See if you can pay close enough attention to each section to see what was changed... :) I hope you enjoy it!

In order for me to be able to share this video with you, I also watched the simple click on how to share my videos and upload them to this platform. It was quite easy but it also takes some time.

 On the top of the iMovie bar there is a button that says 'Share' and simply clicking on that a drop down window will appear that allows you choose where you would like to share your video to. I have noticed a majority of the time I will just 'Export Movie' because in the previous classes we were to upload our video to our Viddler accounts.

After choosing how my video needed to be shared, I was then able to choose the export size and choosing where the video was to be exported to.

One my video was exported I simply clicked on the upload button the platform I wanted the video uploaded to!

It is crazy to think that my computer that I have been using for the past three years has the platform of iMovie on it and I had only used it three or four times! After completing this training, I hope to use iMovie more frequently now that I feel much more comfortable with the platform and the usability of it.

Another interesting aspect of this assignment was using the platform of the Lynda learning lounge. I know that we have had this account for some time now, but truthfully....other than logging in the first time I got the account information...I hadn't touched it! After learning about the platform of iMovie on it, I already searched for the platform of iWeb. Currently our school uses iWeb for our basic school and classroom websites and being able to use it to a technical aspect would be helpful. The only side to all of this is the time it takes up. Finding the time to set aside to use and find all of these easy, quick and most importantly free resources is a skill I need to find! :)

PE2_iMovie

Audio, effects, themes and finishing tips!

In a previous course, I believe in month one, I really wanted to add some music to my movie projects but had no idea how. I personally thought it was unfair to work with iMovie when I had no idea how the program worked but it was a lot easier to work with than I thought it was going to be. I didn't accomplish my goal in adding music to that project but after these short videos...it is SO much easier than I thought. I also greatly appreciate how there are some iLife Sound Effects which are free of credits.

It is also pretty cool how audio tracks can be easily added to the entire video or to specific clips. The audio options are very easy to manipulate, as if you were editing video.

Even the simple clicks of editing the video are quite simple...and not only does the same 'click' allow me to edit the audio but it also allows me to edit the video!

Not only does this option on the video allow me to adjust or edit the audio and video but also the clip itself. Once the selection is made, the platform used through iMovie is a easy click and drag. It is quite helpful that the editing portion of any part in iMovie is the click and drag.

After making the selection to edit the video, audio, or clip this simple editor comes up for you to choose what you would like to do. One key element to this that I thought was interesting was the stabilization to video that is shaky. I can already think of multiple videos that I could have used this option for.

With so much to do in so little time.....these videos definitely flew by. It is interesting how much this simple but complex program can do!

Not only does iMovie allow you edit the basics of your video but it also allows you to become a professional and make specific and precise edits to your video, audio, and clips as well. By simply clicking, iMovie and then Preferences you can allow the availability of the advanced tools to appear so that you can make precise edits to your video.

 The precision editor allows precise and professional edits to your video.

The iMovie videos were very helpful and insightful in the ways this program can and will help me in and out of this Full Sail program.

PE1_iMovie

To be or not to be an iMovie "expert"...to be (because it's an assignment)

I have recently began my journey in learning about the program called iMovie. I hope that this expansion will allow me to use this program to its fullest capacity. In my first sitting, I watched about 6 session of the class and have already been overloaded with some great information that will help me with my video usage in and and out of the classroom.

In the school I teach at, we are very fortunate to be a mac based school. I have used iMovie in the past 3 years of teaching about 3 times....sad I know! It has been interesting these past few months viewing other peer's work that was produced by iMovie and I have this yearning feeling that I want to learn more about it!

Some lessons that were quite significant to myself were the lesson on learning how to make folders for you 'finished' videos. In the past, I really didn't know what to do or how to move the movie's that I had finished and just clicked and deleted them and now I definitely regret what I had done in my past experiences. Even thinking back to the beginning of my FS education....I deleted those as well! But the ones that I did still have, I followed the simple steps of the training and rearranged my video's into easy to located folders.

With a simple click and drag, I was able to make new folders, label them, and organize my past videos. It was SOOOO easy. Now instead of opening an cluttered and overwhelming program full of videos...it is now neat and clutter free!

Another significant lesson included to use of importing different types of video, which I could definitely see being useful for my family videos that are located on a an old school VHS camcorder!

I also enjoyed learning about how to put different themes, title pages, and even credits to my videos.

Not only does the picture above show you the skills of adding a title page or theme to a project but it also shows the usability of the active and non-active parts of the video. I was also so confused with how the screen was split and why the video had green lines but after the trainings from the first 6 sessions it totally make sense now!

I have really enjoyed the trainings that I have done thus far with my iMovie training. Below you will see a simple snap shot of the titles of the trainings I have completed thus far.