Digital Storytelling Part 1

Recently I had to make a video for my EME 5053 class.  I am going to give an informal overview of the process.

• I used Windows Photo Story 3 to put it into a slide show with music.
• I then used www.zamar.com to switch it over to a Mac friendly file format
• I used iMovie to do the voice over recording

Some positives:

• I was able to have a finished product 
• Photo Story 3 worked like I thought it would
• iMovie was easy to use

Some negatives:

• Due to the file conversion the video is a little pixelly
• Due to file conversion the audio is slightly off
• When trying to email it to my professor the file was too big and our college's email service did not allow it to be sent

The reason I had to switch over to iMovie instead of Moviemaker is because my PC does not have a microphone and my Mac does.  I simply converted the file to a .mov file and then made a project in iMovie to record the voiceover.  For a first attempt I am pleased with the end result.

Here is the final project.  Let me know what you think.

ePals is Up!

I am very excited to announce that I received all the information needed for epals.com and I have finished creating user names for my students. I am very excited to start with this project in my classroom. I now need to set up assignments and forum topics for my class and we are good to go!

Epals.com came with some pleasant surprises. Awhile back I was commenting to a colleague that it would be so nice if the students had email on the district server so that they can send and receive school related emails at school. I also commented that the teacher could send announcements this way to the students and it would be safe because district email is monitored. Well, my wish came true and I didn't even plan it that way. My class now has e-mail through epals.com. The great thing about it, is that it is teacher monitored. I can go and see what the students are sending and receiving and block messages if I have to. This is great because it is only supposed to be used for class.

As a side note this is the beginning of networking for my students and I am very excited to facilitate their networking and hope they can carry this on in their middle and high school careers.

Technology in My Classroom and How it's Failing

Recently I've been trying to integrate more technology into my classroom. It has not gone very well so far. One of the problems I feel I am facing is resistance from my school/district.

In my EME 5050 class we've been talking about blogs and how they would be useful for our students to connect to other students. I was very excited about starting a blog for my class and started looking into it. My idea was that I could get my students to write a summary of a book they are reading and post it then comment on other students entries. This would start a mini book club of sorts. I quickly found that it was going to be impossible due to "red tape." The first indication was when I asked some colleagues about it and they warned me it wouldn't work. I smiled at them and said that I'd like to find out on my own. The second indication it wasn't going to go well was when I tried to go to a blogging website while on campus. All blogging websites are blocked district wide. This is a major problem for me because I want my students that are not able to access the internet from home to be able to blog while on campus. So far this is placed on hold until I can get someone from my district to listen to me about the NETS-S standards.

I have decided that I will replace the blog with something temporary. I decided that my students will type a blog on Microsoft Word and save it to the student computers or email me a copy of it. I will then attach it to my website. The students will then have to find another student's blog on my teacher website and comment to it by typing up a response in Microsoft Word and follow the same steps as before. This is way more work than it should be but at least I am getting my students to use technology.

If anyone else has a better idea please let me know.