ETC Final Project

This too shall pass. And I'm not referring only to the deadline for this project.

This particular "lesson" has been the most interesting and also frustrating since my arrival in Kingdom. The end-zone news that I'd not be able to use VoiceThread not withstanding, the project did not go as envisioned. Still, in many ways, it was much better and also VERY educational. I'm so proud of my kids. Had we been able to upload the MP3 responses to VoiceThread, the culminating project would have been much more slick.

Again however; I will find a way around this and as parent conferences are in a week, it will not be long before I do. I reckon most of the "cam" recording will be done at home and the voice via my phone. I am looking forward to it.

Our kids were fabulous to sit and reflect on their learning and only a few were concerned that THEY were not in the video. I think that this project got-my-feet-wet for what is to come with my AR project on IWB's, Science and improved dialogic space.

RILS PLAN ETC 2011

1. Target Audience – Self-Contained Kindergarten classes (5 and 6 year olds) taught by Christina Schraeder and Christian Barnes.

2. Materials – Tubes, pipes, sand, vacuum hoses, large play area, digital video cameras, observational rubrics, signed model-release forms, video making software (i.e. iMovie) and Web 2.0 tool VoiceThread

or similar.

3. Objectives –

Learning Objectives: Student

1. Tell about your thinking with regards this to this weeks’ provocation (i.e. tubes and hoses and cooperative play in the outdoor area.)

2. Articulate your thinking in a recorded voice thread after watching video documentation of the event.

3. Define and describe the actions that you observe including your own or

your friends’ discuss and formulate an opinion/idea about improved future provocations – record a response.

4. Procedure –

1. Put provocative new materials in the outdoor area of school.

2. Assure that the materials are large or heavy enough to necessitate cooperation on the part of the kids.

3. (For the teachers) Make predictions regarding what you think the kids will do with the provocation.

4. Prior to the arrival of children, position videographers at prime locations to observe and record what ensues.

5. Use a movie-making program to splice together short clips of the play and “dialogue with materials” that ensued.

6. Gather together the kids to observe the video and discuss together.

7. Repeat the process above two more times – so novelty is not the only issue at play.

8. Create “identities” for the students on VoiceThread with their help. Use the IWB to facilitate a demonstration of the use of the Web 2.0Tool.

9. Practice with some of the online demonstration videos for example www.voicethread.com/about/doodling.

10. Note: Because we were unable to use voicethread for video commentary recording; due to our districts’ security, specifically the fact that video and voice recordings are controlled remotely via voicethread, the following steps are slightly different than initially envisioned:

11. In subsequent days interview children regarding their observations about the collaborations, which took place on the playground

12. Use the recordings to share with the students for continued dialogue about improvements in collaborative play and/or provocations

13. (For teachers) use the recordings to engage in dialogue to inspire better collaborative play and/or provocations. Use the recordings, predictions and observational rubrics to guide continued reflective practice

5. Web 2.0 Tool – Voicethread

6. Social Participation/Social Learning – Collaborative play as a rule is a social endeavor. The learning will take place during whole-group, guided group and non-interruptive pair discussions.

7. Making Connections – Learners will reflect upon past behavior and or attitudes at play and make connections to the video footage to describe their collaborative growth over time.

8. Create/Produce – The children will produce dra

wings and ‘written’ documentation about a small-moment during the provocation and share this with their peers. The teacher/child and Web2.0 tool will create a documentary episode for other children/parents to enjoy.

9. Reflection – The product is also their reflection piece. The entire process/plan is the product of reflective teaching practice.

Final Video

http://www.viddler.com/explore/ctina/videos/18/

PE_5_VoiceThread

What came first, the tooth or the thread?

We started showing the films of our outdoor provocations to our students this week. I have recorded some responses and they will be shown as prompt clips for our future voice threads.

All hope is not lost since the district shut me down.

Today I learned that my iPhone can record mp3's of children talking and that VoiceThread will allow the upload of those if one has the "pro" version.

No-brainer = I'm going PRO. Cost 60 dollars; parental involvement, priceless.

Here is a short VoiceThread of one of my students. His name is Kentaro. His father is Canadian and his mother is Japanese. I posted his image and as they were the first to respond to connecting via VoiceThread, I asked that their family record both a video response and an audio response to the thread.

The photo is an image I made right after Kentaro lost his first tooth. Unfortunately, he lost it on the playground and as our playground is covered in sand (this is Saudi Arabia after all) well, there was no hope of ever finding his tooth. We tried though.

Two weeks later Kentaro lost another tooth and then misplaced it as well. Before our December holiday, Ken was convinced that the tooth fairy and Santa were going to discuss how he'd carelessly lost the tooth and that Santa wouldn't be bringing any presents for him. I can't make this stuff up. Don't you love 5 year olds?

Shortly after our return from holiday, Ken had nearly forgotten that he'd lost any teeth at all. The following VoiceThread offers a gentle reminder of the event, which was something to be celebrated and not to be fretted over. The continued return to the thread will solidify the memory via a rehearsal loop. Really, how many of us can remember loosing our first tooth?

When I showed the VoiceThread to our two classes of Kindergarten students they all began to discuss lost teeth, teeth not lost yet, trips to the dentist and the joys and perils of eating candy. Had we been able to record all these discussions (see PE_4_VoiceThread) this thread would have several more postings. Still, we're working a way around that and as more parents sign on, there will be some valuable webcam postings from home!

I send out a personal word of thanks to the Barnes' family for letting me share this screen capture of our first VoiceThread conversation.

PE_4_VoiceThread

Little voice met with resounding "no!"

After sending home some initial feelers to my parents about using VoiceThread (VT) in the classroom, I've received my first enthusiastic response! A parent has taken the initiative, "I suppose what we should do now is set up an account and then send an inquiry to you?"

I'm thrilled!

My journey to implement VT as a tool for reflective practice reminds me of waiting in line for an incredible amusement park ride. Picture me in line; all these expectations running through my head, I've really built this ride up = somehow the endless zigzag in the summer heat will be worth the two minutes of whoopeeeeee! However; I'm concerned as I watch the tough guy with tattoos and bulging muscles turn, the words this ride is too scary for me whisper from between the furrows of his brow. Naturally the latter image is a metaphor for a co-worker of mine; someone who has been teaching for a long time, looking at the site and trying to work out how he will fit it all in . I've had this conversation before, I think. I want to scream "yep, I knew it all along you ARE too short to ride this thing!"

I know some other younger, more stealth version of myself has had the same thoughts about me, so I try hard not to judge. Unfortunately, this gavel must be magnetic or something; I can't seem to get rid of the thing. But I digress.

Made loads of progress this week with the RILS project. I'm happy to say that I've learned some things and also realized that you don't always get what you want. Appropriate that the girl who fixated on (VT) using Wiley Coyote is now serenaded by the Stones. Oh, if only I had my Principal under my thumb?

Today the official "decree" that VT will not be a tool that the district will support us with came down. The reasoning: the cam and mic are controlled by VT and not by our mothership. (Raspberry sound.) Worse when we try to use a cam or mic for recording student reflections, there is black air - literally, the screen goes black = blockage.

I will figure a way around this! I am invincible, I am woman....if you are singing along you're old AND cool, who knew it was possible? Certainly not me BB (Before Blogging not King.)

BP_7_One Minute Video

This is a one-off on how to create your initial voice thread. I have no voice so I couldn't record.

BP_4_Voicethread

I have been looking for the perfect tool for my students to use to reflect on their recent outdoor-play provocations. This is always a bit of a "sticky bicket" (as my Brit friend says) considering the people I want to do the reflections are at best role-play writing. I've been asking myself; would my kids type or perhaps write/scribble with a pen on the IWB to an up-loadable bulletin board? Have you ever seen second language learner Kindergarteners type? Picture Mr. McGoo hunting and pecking while immersed in molasses. It's all about the squinting and the speed (i.e. reverse.)

But I digress. I think I've found the perfect Web 2.0 tool and can't wait to get my kids using it. It is called voicethread. After a couple of tutorials, I ran to the tech admin at our school to talk about getting our kids accounts so that we can get started. He is checking on the site license right now. Yes!

So what is it?

“A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways.”

You can use your microphone or a telephone and leave voice comments on someone’s video. But the fun doesn’t stop there; you can leave text, audio or video comments and then share your images, video or your comments on someone else’s video with your friends. Then they can comment as well.

The tutorials are super user friendly, even I can get it. Now if I can just upload my videos, you too will be amazed.

This movie was a capture made with Telestream's Screenflow of a tutorial on the voicethread site. You can watch it yourself at http://voicethread.com/about/features/sharing/

This naturally was the first "feature" that I was interested in watching a tutorial of as yesterday's fiasco with the 12 hour upload was not a feature that I was interested in repeating. I'm thinking super easy, let's watch more. I really like the way the tutor used the yellow pencil to highlight areas of his screen. I see something in the sidebar called "doodling" and think, I want to be able to do that. I then watch the following tutorial for "doodling" but still never get where he actually picks up the pencil. There is no button but I do learn how to pause and play a video. I then spent way to much time pondering the significance of the fact that the subject of their tutorial is Wiley Coyote a.k.a. "Super Genius" and also my profile pic on Facebook.

"I'm sure that the universe conspired to bring me to this site!" - she said to herself.

Anyway, I will show you this next blip and you'll see what an "collaborative multi-media slide show" really is...oh and if you see where he gets the doodling pencil, let me know. This S.G. is on the way to making a voice thread of her own.

PE_3_iMovie

Finally, I'm beginning to feel like I am getting somewhere.

I now know that when my background music track morphs from green to purple I have "pinned" the music to a series of clips. I also know that there are royalty-free tracks ripe for the picking already in the "jingles" that I find when clicking on the media browser. I feel like such a doofus for spending so much time at ccMixter (Creative Commons) trying to find royalty-free music when there was some right under my nose.

That is why Lynda.com in the morning is so wonderful; she has this lovely way of waking you up with a "duh" and hopefully a little laugh (at yourself.) It's a great way to start your day!

What I have yet to discover, and am quickly running out of time to do, is how to get the music at the end of a project to fade to black. Yes, I do know how to manually override the fades and yet the desired effect is still eluding me. Back to the drawing board. Tutorials await!

So I watched the last of the music related tutorials and am still just getting the same message that one has to use the manual override and change the fade transition. I've done that in a previous project and was not satisfied with the result. However, I endeavor to do something new and so I will insert my "jingle" to the project first then mannually add "beat markers" (Wow, I'm such a geek, who knew?) Guess what? I'm even going to use the SHORTCUT = m for marker. I mean how hard can it be?

I've chosen a piece of music that is exactly one minute in length so that I don't go over. This project, acording to the assignment, does not have to be professional nor finished but I needed to learn something new, which I'm doing. So here goes...I hope you like it.

It is now about ten hours later: Pesky little job that I have. Thankfully at some point earlier in the morning, I realized that this assignment was not due until Sunday. I spent some time on the beat markers and then dropped in photos and everything was wonderful until I started adding video. iMovie cuts the length of your clips down to match the beat markers and so the "story" gets muddled or lost. SO...although I did finally figure out how to exit the movie with a nice fade, I'm not convinced that sacrificing transitions for the beat is the way for me.

I tend to learn more from my mistakes than my successes. Today I learned that if you change some arbitrary clip at the beginning, middle or end of your production and then republish all the "ducking" will be lost. I discovered this in the most annoying way as I was showing the movie to my little stars and we could no longer hear their voices. Ducking, Ducking, GOOSE!

My advice to anyone wanting to try the beat marking thing...line up all your clips in the exact order that you want to drop them into your film in the event browser. Then manually mark the beats before you drop the clips into the project and iMovie will do the work for you. If you make any edits to your clips, the beats will be a bit off but not awful. My beat markers are true through the stills and one movie transition in my film, the others are still giving me trouble. Still, I'm happy with the project and my kids were thrilled.

For more on beat marking go to lynda.com and watch

Adding beat markers to music
chapter: 9. Editing to Music
course: iMovie '09 Essential Training
author: Damian Allen

It is now 2:30AM again...frustration. I awoke with my head-cold worse than before and the video had never uploaded. I'm trying again now but using the encode from the video. BTW, it only took 10 minutes to upload to Viddler. One day this all gets easier right?

BP_6_Link to another's blog

See what I've written to Dr. Jude Rathburn

Thanks Jude,

I may have to do a little dabbling of my own.

Ctina

BP_5_Link to another's blog

See what I've written at Tigers Talk Books!

PE_2_iMovie

It's 11:30PM, do you know where your brain is?  So, I've just started watching the video tutorials on Lynda.  I love Lynda but her taste in men...sometimes, I swear she is blind.  No offense to the bloke she chose to give this tutorial.  I think that he just said that once you've dragged and dropped the first clip into the project that you can just click and highlight and 'then just push the e' to continue to add clips.  My question: Is that an Aussie thing? Does 'push the e' mean hit "enter" or do I literally hit the e key as in some sort of shortcut?  Or more likely, am I so tired I'm mishearing?  Probably the latter.

I am about to make a huge mistake and try and get some sleep before waking early to finish the tutorials and start on my video of the kiddos discovering their prvoc8un (that's sms for provocation, I'm so hip.)

In the morning I intend to stretch my iMagination by finding out what "pressing the e" is all about and how to make the sound drop off more gracefully at the end of an iMovie.  I know that is something that bothered me in my last movie about Xtranormal.  I think the "precision editor" is another feature that I should look into.  I click on it and then immediately throw up the "too hard" flag and return to the self-taught way of doing things.


5:00 AM - Here I am again and with only 1.5 to spare before school.  Some of us have to work on Sunday...gotta love this country.

That is what the instructor said, "press 'e' key" - he took the time to elaborate in a later tutorial!

Very cool I've learned that I don't have to drag and drop all pieces to the project in the same way that I've been doing.  Believe it or not, in my other attempts I have selected a section of film in the browser and then gone to drag it into the project, only to somehow drop it en route and then have to go back and re-select the clip.  Total time-suck.

YES - some instructions for those of us who forget "shortcuts" within 5 mins of learning them 

So here is my other question: Why is it that "natives" think so easily in shortcuts?  I can't even remember, which combination of cmd + ctrl + etc +F3 or F4 we are supposed to use to take a screenshot.  I have to go to "Grab" every time.   Is that just an immigrant thing?  A Christina thing? Yeah, that figures.

So I'm finally getting somewhere with the "fine tuning" information, though I have to say that I've always just double clicked on the beginning or end of a clip head and gotten the same result.  I am happy to know what the numbers that pop up mean = the number of frames being added or edited from the film.

PE_1_iMovie

It started with a provocation.  The oh so popular term "provocation" that all early childhood teachers worth their salt are throwing around these days. Can't you hear us?  We are galavanting about the playground, twisting up our pearls with one finger, martini surrounded by the others a la Thurston and Lovey Howell all the while going on about our bloody provocations? 

I promise, I harbor no ill will toward this word, moreover the pedagogy surrounding it.  It is just that the word itself, like "unpacking" has become so prevalent in Early Childhood vernacular that I've got the same nausea that I felt for Michael Jackson's "Beat It" when it was in it's 45th week on the top 40, you know?   

For those of you who teach adults or children whose eyes are above your navel;  a provocation quite simply is an object or situation that provokes.

Our Provocation

At end of last week, my teaching partner and I put some vacuum tubes, dryer hoses and large PVC pipes out on the playground.  We then sat down to ponder what we thought our children might do upon encountering said provocation and then armed ourselves with cameras.

These next three posts (i.e., PE_1_iMovie through PE_3_iMovie)  will be my documentation of the dialogue with materials that our children were having and the resultant "Professional Learning Community" ...drumroll...provocation that our teaching team proposed to our boss.  

These posts will also be about how I stayed up all night once again to complete an assignment for school whilst being driven absolutely mad by iMovie. 

BP_2_Xtranormal

Ok,

I had one of those inspiring moments while I was trapped under my bed yesterday. My epiphanies usually happen in the shower; however, yesterday I was so disgusted looking at the luggage and all the things that were still littering my 400 square-foot hovel, that I had to unpack and clean-up my act.  I think we learned something in month two about cluttered environs and their effect on easily clutterable minds.  I'm just saying.
Something that I brought back to make effective use of my limited space were some of those bed risers. My bed sits in a little inset in the wall no wider than the bed itself.  To say it is wedged into a hard place is putting it lightly.   In hindsight it was perhaps not the best idea to crawl under my bed wedged between two walls in order to place the two risers under the front legs of the bed only to have to wriggle out with the full weight of the bed on my back. About half-way to freedom, I thought, "By Jove, I've got it! I will use an avatar to teach my class!"
I decided to use xtranormal to create two "calendar leaders" to help my kids remember all the things that they are to do as part of the morning calendar routine.  There are still some little quirks that need to be worked out.  I could certainly add more animation but my class was really excited to have two robots instead of their teacher leading the class.  The program is easy to use and lends itself to a number of presentation applications.  I can't wait to get my little ones making movies of their own!

As my kids don't actually read and write with acumen yet, I could see type-to-text taking a great deal of time.  Perhaps someone knows of a program I could use that records their words for use in this way?

BP_3_iGoogleScreenShots

Home Page

FSO Tab

AR Tab

ETC Tab

Resources Tab

As is often the case in these days of wine and jet-lag, my eyes flew open an hour ago despite the fact that NO indicators were present at the time of their untimely interruption to my slumber (i.e. dawn light or frequent feral cat visitor who often stalks my kitten in the wee hours.)  

So, I got up and glanced at the clock on the stove to see the time, "What? Already?" I said to myself as I scrambled over the baggage from trip.  Two days and I've still only managed to unpack two of the three cases and have yet to manage to remove them from path to toilet, does it ever end?  Ouch! My shin is going to curse me tomorrow.  I'm stressed, it is nearly time for school and I've yet to turn in today's screen shots because I fell into a coma after yesterday's 24 plus hours of sleeplessness compounded by birthday celebration with my favorite..."home brew."  Have I extolled the virtues of living in a DRY country?  I don't mean the desert. 

I grind some beans and hobble to the  loo, the smell of Amungme Gold (coffee) slaps some sense into my crippled self. As I reach back to grab a mug I focus on the clock on the stove again.  It's 9:45PM (same day I went to bed at 7PM)...not 5:45AM next day. 

I've got to call that Doctor who performed my Lasik surgery.  So here at last...my screen shots.  I'm still struggling with two of the required apps (suspecting Saudi cyber-cops) but hey, this too shall pass.

Any suggestions for how to go back to sleep when you've pounded three cups of coffee at 10PM?

BP_1_It's My Birthday

Today is my birthday and appropriately the birth of a new blog.  One I hope will appeal to other "digital immigrants" who, like me, begin to channel their  inner Wiley Coyote  when put in front of a keyboard and monitor. "You want me to do whaaaat?" "Where's that?" "By Golly, I've got it!" (tic, tock, tic, tock) "What's that sound...?" Kaboom!

Today I've decided that I'm not middle aged but instead will borrow the M and A and refer to myself henceforth as Mentally Agile.  As I embark on this journey into my mentally agile years, I have decided to spelunk the neural pathways where no tech-knowledge has dared to remain and learn something new.  Old dogs beware!  I plan to blow your excuse. Not only will I learn new tricks, but this woman, who was graduating high school when "digital natives" were just a twinkle in someone's eye, plans to teach a few as well.  I'm hopeful that my presumeably hilarious trips down cyber lane will give you a laugh or at least a "I'm not alone in this frustration" epiphany.   I can't wait to see where this year and cyber highway take me.  If you can "feel me" (I'm already getting hipper) then please join in the conversation because I'll look funny cursing at my monitor alone. Besides, laughing too hard at myself can have embarrassing consequence.

I include a photo my sister and me and a short comment she sent to me on this auspicious day!