BP8_Blog Comments

Follow me to my comments on two cool and relevant real and innovative learning scenarios!

Here's Dawn's: Dawn Blair's RILS

and here's Kim's: Kim's RILS

ETC_Final_Project_Publish RILS to blog

http://www.viddler.com/explore/nnagle/videos/7/

1. Target Audience- My target audience will be my classroom students, who range in age from 13-18 and grades 7-10.

Brief Overview: Students will familiarize themselves with the animation Web 2.0 tool: goanimate4schools.com and create an animation reflecting the topic they enjoyed most learning about over the school year.

2. Materials-

·      Computers

·      Internet access

·      Goanimate4schools.com accounts

·      SmartBoard for demonstrations

3. Objectives-At the end of this scenario the learner will be able to:

·      Assess and prioritize the importance of learning over the past school year

·      Design and create an animation that demonstrates an important concept learned over the school year

·      Share their creation with classmates

·      Analyze, critique, and comment on classmates animations

4. Procedure-

·      Teacher will sign up for goanimate4schools.com account

·      Teacher will set students up with accounts on designated goanimate4schools account

·      Teacher will show the following YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTtETTQUJD0

·      Students will watch the provided tutorial provided by goanimate4schools.com

·      Students will reflect on the past year of learning and choose the thing they most enjoyed learning about in the classroom

·      Students will create a written script or produce a graphic organizer reflecting their topic

·      Students will create an animation that expresses what they enjoyed learning about most in the classroom

·      Students will collaborate with their classmates as they create, offering each other suggestions and sharing expertise

·      Students will share their final project with the teacher and class

·      Students will comment on their peers animations via the goanimate4schools.com website

·      Students will provide a video reflection of the exercise

5. Web 2.0 Tool-  I have chosen the animation tool goanimate.com as my Web 2.0 tool for this RILS project. Goanimate.com is and entertainment website in which its users can create simple or complex "computer animated stories, satires, and sentiments. http://goanimate4schools.com

6.  Social Participation/Social Learning- Students will collaborate with their classmates as they create, offering each other suggestions and sharing expertise. They will share their final project with the teacher and class, as well as comment on their peers animations via the goanimate4schools.com website.

7. Making Connections-

a)    Students will think back upon the year and what they have learned in school and decide how to best communicate that knowledge via an animation.

b)   Allowing the students to choose their subject matter and sharing that with their peers allows for the inherent assumption of relevance to themselves and their peer group.

c)    Users of goanimate.com are able to upload their animations to various social media sites allowing them to share the content with both a local and global audience.

8.  Create/Produce- The end product will be a computer-generated animation.

9. Assessment-Due to time restraints, my students will not be able to become experts with this Web 2.0 tool, therefore they will receive participation points that will be factored into their final grade in the subject area that they choose to do their animation in. The students are expected to produce an animation that communicates something they have learned over the year. As long as they do that they will receive full points.

10. Reflection-

a)    Students will reflect on the experience and share their authentic feedback via a video interview.

b)   The teacher will evaluate the animations produced and reflect on the value of the experience. The teacher will also analyze the lesson and make adjustments for future implementation.

PE5_goanimate4schools

PE4_goanimate4schools

Hi again! I've already talked to you a little bit about my new favorite Web 2.0 tool: goanimate.com, now I'm going to branch off and tell you a bit about the site's sister: goanimate4schools.com, the education friendly version of the animation Web 2.0 tool. 

When playing with the original version, I was happy to come across the sister site which provides an individual site for school with up to 100 accounts for free! Goanimate4schools.com gives one administrator account per school as well as a limited number of teachers accounts to enable the monitoring and sharing of animations solely within the own personalized school site. 

All you have to do is register and upon verification of school affiliation a site, an email is sent to you authorizing your sight, administrator license, and student accounts. Yay! 

Once you receive your site and account information, it is time to start adding teachers, students, and setting parameters:

Goanimate4schools.com makes this an effortless process with its user friendly environment. The platform guides you through everything you need to to set up all accounts and permissions with visible tutorials and detailed instructions. 

Once teachers' and students' accounts are created, there is a plethora of sample animations to view in the lessons gallery, illuminating the myriad of possibilities this tool provides and helping to get the creative juices flowing. 

Here's a link to one that I found entertaining and particularly relevant to my classroom: http://goanimate4schools.com/public_movie/0j4itrp2Uoiw/1.

In addition to the lessons gallery, where users are able to comment on published animations, the site also provides a forum for community interaction, allowing for idea exchange, problem solving, and troubleshooting, making this a collaborative tool where the users are truly able to establish a presence on the internet. 

In the next post, I will share one of my creations! See ya there... 

PE3_iMovie

The third part of the Lynda.com iMovie 'll training consisted of "Working with Audio," "Sharing your Movies," and of course, earning the coveted completion certificate. :-)

The most interesting part of these sections of training was the "Editing to the Beat" chapter. I did not attempt to use this feature for the following video, but am eagerly anticipating incorporating into one soon.

I thoroughly enjoyed this entire series of training tutorials. They tutorials really inspired me to kind of just play around with and familiarize myself with all of the neat-o features.

I was really excited to use the green screen effect and like the way it turned out for the most part. I think that the end product might be more crisp if I used a wall or backdrop that was a more saturated green. I also want to research and see if there is a way to position where your head is on the playback or if you just have to film off of center in order to get out of the center of the picture.

I also played with some audio features and even had my girls do a voiceover. The final is actually two separate voiceovers overlapping each other. I threw some music from iLife sound effects in also.

It was also beneficial to work with a still photo and learn how to adjust it to last as long as the overlapping video and apply the Ken Burns effect.

I worked with text options, transitions, and backgrounds too.

 All in all this was an extremely informational and rewarding experience. I'm looking forward to using all that I learned over and over again! Stay tuned...

'Til later...be well.

PE2_iMovie

These Apple people really know what they're doing. Wow! I knew I liked working with iMovie, but now that I'm learning how to really work with iMovie, I have a feeling that this is going to turn into a much stronger emotion. ;-)

So, here we go: part 2, sections 4, 5, & 6 of Lynda.com iMovie training. My head is spinning, what to talk about? What to talk about?

Section 4 was educational, but not wicked exciting so I'll focus on section 5, "Editing Video" and section 6, "Working with Effects."

A couple of things that I found beneficial in section 5, "Editing Video," were the "advanced edit tool," which is only seen when you have "show advance tools" selected under preferences, and the  "precision editor, " which is for fine grain control of your clips. The precision editor is especially good for starting video with audio cues and the like.  

Section 6, "Working with Effects," is far and away the best of all the sections thus far! You know when you receive one of those holiday presents that come in a huge box but when you open it you discover that you've actually received millions of smaller  presents? Just when you think you've found all that is comprehensibly possible, you take out another piece of tissue paper and find yet another gift. Section 6 was like that!

My favorite parts: learning how to use Ken Burns effect, jump cut at Beat Markers, Fade video to stills, and the Green (or blue) screen effect (I plan on delving into this one a little bit more in my next post)! Hold on to your seat! :-)

PE1_iMovie

OK. So there are essentially 9 sections to the Lynda.com iMovie 'll training, so for the purpose of this blog I have divided the sections into 3 parts each and will post respectively.

The first couple of sections of iMovie training is pretty elementary and benign... "welcome, make sure you have the latest updates, how to import video using devices I do not have nor ever will have again, blah, blah, blah." I'm somewhat familiar with the iMovie basics already and really thought that this first 1/3 of courses would be, frankly, an epic waste of time (as my 10 year old would say), but to my surprise, and may I say great pleasure, I was wrong.

The third section, titled "Understanding the Interface" proved invaluable, hiding several little tips and gems that promise to improve my efficiency exponentially.

This third section was helpful in giving key terms, showing how to switch project and events pane to create larger working area, and how to mute audio while skimming a project (something I find highly useful as it annoys me to no end when I'm trying to precisely split clips and have to hear the same bits of audio over and over and over and over and over...you get my drift). ;-)

Another feature of iMovie which may not save time, but definitely reduces anxiety, is its "auto save" feature. Any time the creator makes a change to the project, iMovie detects that change and saves it immediately, while also preserving the original footage, so there is no reason to have that "oh sh*t, what did I just do" moment. Making creation a "risk free" process. Yay!

Alright, so that's it for this post. Follow me to the next one, I'm sure it just gets better from here...

BP7

Check out my pitch video for my Web 2.0 tool of the week here: http://www.viddler.com/explore/Nnagle/videos/6/

BP6

I commented on Smitty's blog post about Web 2.0 tool, "Gliffy." See what I said here: http://smittysclassroom.blogspot.com/2011/06/bp4.html#comment-form

BP5

I commented on Kate's blog, find out what I said here: http://learningroxmysox.com/2011/06/11/pe3_imovie/#comment-9

BP4

Hello Again. I'm back with another wicked cool Web 2.0 tool to share with you...GoAnimate.com! GoAnimate is an entertainment website in which its users can create simple or complex "computer animated stories, satires and sentiments." These creations can be shared within a classroom or with an online community. "The site offers simple to more advanced innovative features that provide users with a multitude of possibilities for customizing their animations.

In order to create animations using GoAnimate.com you must sign up for an account. The basic account is free, but has quite a few limitations as far as choosing characters, backgrounds, special effects, and so on. The basic account does allow the user to upload their animation to certain sites social networking sites, but requires it to be 2 minutes or less in duration. There are paid accounts which allow for the download and sharing of longer animations and there is an educator account that lifts a lot of restrictions.

To get started with your animation creation-i like the way that sounds :-)- you can choose to create a video from scratch or you could decide to use one of their pre-made story templates.

For this demonstration I have chosen to make my story from scratch. The screen shown next is the default screen.

From here you can personalize your scene by changing the background, adding characters, and dialogue (by way of mic recording, text to talk, or text bubble).

There are many other customizations the creator can choose from, such as: adding props

and audio effects

GoAnimate is extremely user friendly and a great way to integrate technology in the classroom. GoAnimate allows for students to exercise their creativity while synthesizing information...all in a way that is fun and entertaining. Another great Web 2.0 tool for bringing the classroom into the 21st century!

BP2_CNNStudentNews

I am a secondary English teacher who has been charged with addressing the social studies and current events strains of our state standards, sans textbooks. As you might imagine, as a trained English teacher, I do not have all of the information necessary to effectively teach my students readily available in my "pretty little head,"<used here as an expression not an arrogance.:-)> thus have searched for tools to assist me. This search has yielded several helpful Web 2.0 resources, however I wanted to share one with you that quickly become a part of my daily routine: CNN Student News (http://www.cnn.com/studentnews/).

We start the day by watching the CNN Student News video, which is created specifically for a school age audience. This video does a good job reporting the headlines of the day, but also strives to balance these stories with educational and empowering content.

After the newscast, my students and I have a discussion about the day's events, followed by an enrichment activity which typically is either taking the CNN Student News prepared "newsquiz" or a specific journaling assignment that is borne from the provided newsquiz.

Aside from the features that I have mentioned, this tool also has other advantages for students. There is a career connections link, downloadable resources, and links to go to for more in-depth discovery, just to name a few. The newscast also pulls from the linked blog responses for daily "shotouts" and other incorporation of comments into the video production. My students like to compete to see whose response is able to get mentioned on air. Another benefit I have discovered for my students, all of whom have similar cultural, economic, and geographic identities, is that they are able to read the responses posted by students from places they have never heard of before and are thus exposed to perspectives they have never considered.

This tool not only teaches my students about the world around them, but helps to develop critical thinking skills that will prove invaluable to them throughout their lives. I highly recommend it.

Until next time...be well.

BP3_iGoogleScreenShots

BP1_Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my first ever blog. Yes, that's right, I'm a virgin. The following direction is taken from our assignment board for this particular assignment: "Your blog posts may fall under four different categories: a learning experience, a link to a comment on another blog, an embedded video, or an optional post."

What?!? So, really, we can post whatever we'd like, right? I started this morning thinking I certainly don't have time to make and embed a movie, I don't follow any blogs, and I'm not creative enough to come up with some optional post. What, like a music review? The life and times of a woman in a desert wonderland (I'm from Phoenix)? I pondered what I would write over the course of the day and still didn't have anything in mind when I came home from school (aka work). I donned my running gear, went for a mind-cleansing run and voila!...it hit me like a hammer. I'll write about what is right in front of my face, what I can't stop thinking about even when I try. Are you on the edge of your seat yet?

So, here it is: I work at a school full of beautiful souls who unfortunately find themselves at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy. They often come to school just for refuge from the madness, uncertainty, and pain of their own lives. I found out 3 weeks ago that this school will shut down when the semester is over.  I don't have a job anymore.

This weekend my partner of 14 years told me that she is leaving our kids and I. I don't have a partner anymore.

Yikes!

Now, the first thing you need to understand is that my partner is not a bad person. We all know that the failure of a relationship has shared responsibility and this one is no exception. The second thing you need to know is that I am typically I very private person and I am certainly not looking for pity.

At this point you're probably asking yourself, "then why in the world is she telling us all this?" Well, thanks for asking. I'll tell you...

It's because I learned something today. What? you ask. Well, I learned that

just like my students, I came to school for refuge from the madness, uncertainty, and pain of my life too. The thought of calling in sick to work, even with puffy eyes and no sleep and soooo much to figure out, never even occurred to me. Why?!?!?!? Because, these kids, who need and deserve soooo much more in their lives, give me everything they have. It just so happens that today it turned out to be exactly what I needed. What a lucky girl I am!

Until next time...