teachNbabble

Video export from Voicethread to Viddler to Vodpod and embedded into a wordpress page. Kind of a cool way to display kids work. The embedded voicethread looks better than the videos but I need to make room on my ed.voicethread account for next semester. (Video Wall)

Wow looks like my first paragraph was deleted oops. Anyhow as I had said (never sounds as good the second time) I read a couple of blog posts somewhere, I forgot where, that lead me to Presentation Zen. Started looking at the links there and watched Dick Hardt’s OSCON presentation then moved on to Lawrence Lessig’s page and browsed his posts and videos. A while later I received a tweet that lead me to another Lessig presentation.

Wondered if I could get kids to try something different than the typical presentations I have seen this year-OK not really a presentation but more of a digital story. Anyhow, I created an issue based research unit, showed Lessig’s and Hardt’s presentations to my class and had them try to incorporate what we discussed about the videos/presentations into their own work. A mixture of text audio and graphics.

Image via Wikipedia

Thanks to http://ideasandthoughts.org/ and Dean Shareski creating a Video wall was a lot easier than I had imagined. I uploaded my videos to Viddler then added Vodpod widget to a Wordpress Page, to create a video wall, Video Wall also in the menu system top right. I have added the first presentation to the video wall confla by Bilal and will begin adding them all, plus our Voicethreads and old videos as well.

Any of the tools I have had the students use this year, Imovie, gdocs, a blog, a wiki, word could have been used to allow students to reflect on the process they went through to complete their projects. As I have mentioned, however, this semester I thought I would concentrate on using Voicethread as a tool that students could use for the purpose of reflection.

So after I am done with a number of projects what have I learned:

• I have a number of talented students
• they were willing to try something new and able to live with some of the frustrations we had with the network
• our network here is still causing problems with the uploading of images and audio.
• I need to get a more frequent analysis of what was done
  • this could be through a blog post or perhaps a quick screenshot and an audio post to voicethread
• need to get a broader range of analysis
  • add reflection prompts (Students might be asked to record thoughts, observations, feelings, activities, and questions in a written journal that is maintained throughout the project period.(Reflective Assessment)
• more clearly define expectations

Will try this again next year however, he are a few samples.

Another Sketch by Nick

Ketki’s Photoshop Project
Students were asked to pick a band and an album then analyze the album lyrics and try to discover a central theme. From this analysis they were asked to create a cd cover that incorporated the theme they found into the cover design.