Monday, December 13, 2010

Voice it with Voki

Avatars are a "computer user's representation of themself or alter ego" that kids love to design. Blame it on the Wii or the movie by James Cameron, but lets face it, avatars are a big part of our student's world. Provide kids with the ability to make their avatar talk, makes this learning tool just that much "cooler" to use. What a great way to get kids motivated and to participate!!

Voki.com has it all! It's ideal for various school projects at any grade level. It has powerful and easy-to-use features to make personalized avatars with 150+ customizable characters and 500+ costumes. Students can record their own voice using a mic or phone, or type-to-speech and choose from various voices and languages. Have your students create avatars that talk about events in history, book reviews, vocabulary words and definitions, original writing pieces, outcomes of lab experiments, poetry, ...basically, whatever you want. The process of writing a script, knowing the content of what they are going to discuss or analyze, designing a customized avatar to match certain criteria, are all great ways for kids to use those critical thinking, evaluating, and analyzing skills while having fun at the same time.

Here's a voki that some crazy lady made where she recorded her own voice, but also inserted audio files downloaded off the net.



Enjoy!!

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Teaching with Digital Images....the COOL Way!

If you use digital images in your teaching, you will love this free web-based photo editing and design software. BigHugeLabs.com goes above and beyond basic photo editing. It provides a ton of fun photo gadgets allowing you to create customizable photos in an array of different layouts. Examples include magazine covers, jigsaw puzzles, inspirational posters, trading cards, pop-art posters (Warhol), badge makers, and much more. OK, so you are probably thinking...big deal...another free photo editing site...right? This one is a little different as they keep adding more and more "cool tools" to use, it's free, and you can create an educators account allowing you to sign-up your students ahead of time so they do not need to log-in with an email address.

I could see this site being used for a variety of creative learning activities for your students. Keep in mind that any of the "enhanced images" can either be printed or saved. Take it a step further and incorporate these image masterpieces into programs such as Prezi, Movie Maker, PhotoStory, or PowerPoint.

Here are a few ideas of projects you could use with your students. Enjoy!

1. JIGSAW PUZZLES: Teachers could create "Famous People in Time" jigsaw puzzles printed on card stock. After putting the puzzles together, students would have to name the people, and provide at least one thing each person did in history that made them memorable (make it more challenging by allowing them to only use their notes and text book....no Internet!!).

2. MAGAZINE COVERS: Have students create a magazine cover that reflects a certain period in time, science topic, important people in history, current events, famous artists, or characters from a recent book they have read.

3. TRADING CARDS: Assign students a topic (Example: diseases, famous artists, etc.). Set a limit for the content of the cards for students to summarize the most important facts.

4. INSPIRATIONAL POSTERS: Add some motivational artwork in your classroom.

Here is an example magazine cover I created within minutes.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Using PowerPoint to Create Images

Lately, I have been doing a lot of digital storybook and video projects using PhotoStory and Windows Movie Maker. Kids often have a story or movie idea in mind that involves two characters to appear in the same scene. If you are having your students use images from the web, chances of finding "the perfect picture" with both characters doing or saying exactly what the student wants, is slim to none. Or, teachers and students want to create a title slide with a little more pizazz than the features in Movie Maker will give you.

Here's a little trick you can use with your students that allows them to use their PowerPoint skills to create and design their own images and title slides. PowerPoint allows you to save a slide as an image file (jpeg, png, etc.) that can later be imported into PhotoStory or Movie Maker.

Here are a couple example slides that I designed in PowerPoint but saved as .jpegs that could now be imported into PhotoStory, MovieMaker, or any application that works with images.










Have your students design a PowerPoint slide using multiple images, snazzy backgrounds, fill effects, clipart, WordArt, etc. Then, when they go to save the file, in the "Save as" window, have them change the "Save as type" option from the default "Presentation (.*ppt) to one of the available image file options (.jpeg, giff, png, tiff) using the drop-down menu. You normally can't go wrong with .jpegs. The program will ask you if you want to save just the current slide as an image or every slide. After choosing the appropriate option, a message appears telling you that the file was successfully exported into a separate folder and the location on the network.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Got Music?

One of the most frequent questions I get asked when working with classes doing some type of a multi-media project is "Do you have any good sites for songs and sound effects?". Music is something that can really add to a project to show expression, concept understanding, or as a simple tool to keep your audience's attention. However, finding royalty-free music can sometimes be a challenge. Another hurdle, is finding media files that can be downloaded and in a format that the application you are using can read. It seems that MP3 files are the most commonly read file format for most applications.

Three of my favorite sites for royalty free music and sound files are PurplePlanet, Jamendo, and SoundBoard. All sites are free, easy to use, and provide direct downloads in MP3 format.

Purple-Planet is a donation funded website whose music can be used for any type of media production (movies, podcasts, blogs, etc.). No account is needed to use and download from the site.

The songs are grouped by moods (such as dramatic, horror, mystery, etc.) making it easy to find music to fit all your project needs. Click on the mood of your choice to display a list of tracks that you can preview and download. Quick and easy!!

Jamendo is the world's #1 platform for free and legal music downloads. Available in seven languages, it offers the largest catalog of music under Creative Commons licenses. Songs and playlists are uploaded from artists from around the globe! Downloading from Jamendo is quick and easy. Once you create your user account, you can download from an artist, album or playlist page, or even straight from their player.

SoundBoard is awesome!! The web's largest catalog of free sounds and soundboards - in over 20 categories. Some of the categories include Politics, Celebrities, Movies, Science/Nature, Historical and many, many more! What are soundboards? SoundBoards are like an audio album or soundtrack/jukebox for all your favorite Mp3 soundbytes and audio clips. You can build a soundboard for your own listening pleasure or upload your sound and share it with the world.

Enjoy!!

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Rock the House with Animoto!!

Digital video projects are a great way for students to creatively express themselves. Our digital savvy students enjoy making movies because the media they choose for their movies typically comes from web resources they use in their private lives such as YouTube, PhotoBucket, Flickr, iTunes, PlayList.com, etc. Because digital videos can be shared with the world through sites such as SchoolTube or TeacherTube, these projects create a "real audience" that motivates student learning. If you are fan of video hosting sites such as YouTube and TeacherTube, you know that videos can be designed to fit any subject and grade level.

Videos are a snap to make using Animoto! Free for teachers, Animoto.com is a web application that creates MTV-style videos with the click of a button. "Animoto videos have the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video." Users can upload their own pictures, videos, and music, or can use Animoto's bank of media resources (images, videos, and royalty free songs donated by the artists themselves)! Animoto does most of the work so students can focus on learning the content, instead of focusing on how to use the application.

Teachers can apply for a free Animoto for Educators account that comes with a few more "perks" than the standard Animoto account. Teachers can create group accounts allowing them access to monitor student's progress. In addition, these account holders have unlimited video creation rights!!

Below is a video I created on Animoto entitled "From Seed to Flower". It took all of 5 minutes to make (after I found the images, video, and song).



Click here to see some case studies of how educators are using Animoto with their students. Or, check out this one entitled: "Top 100 Children's Books".

Monday, March 22, 2010

Put some Pizzaz into your Presentations with Prezi!

Have you heard of a website called Prezi? Prezi is a digital zooming story telling and presentation tool that helps you create outstanding visuals for your thoughts. The site allows teachers to create engaging and interactive presentations in which you can ZOOM into specific key points according to the discussion in class. Once you are finished presenting to students, you can give them the web link to review the presentation at home.

What's neat about Prezi is that all your information such as text, graphics, videos, etc., are placed on one big canvas (no additional slides are needed!). You move around from topic to topic setting up paths from one to the other. You can ZOOM out to see a whole concept, and ZOOM in to take a closer look at it's parts. It blows PowerPoint out of the water!!

Here's an example of a prezi that I created (click the link below). Not only was it fun to make, it was really easy to do. Once my prezi opens, use the on-screen arrow keys to navigate and the magifying glasses to zoom in and zoom out.


Let Your "Poly" do the Walking...Polycom that is!!

Every time I sit down to write a TechTip, I struggle with its' topic. Being that this is the first post for the 2009-2010 school year, I thought it had to be something more substantial then just featuring a nifty website or showing you a quick trick for some application. I had my "aha" moment during a workshop I attended last Friday that focused on how to use our new Videoconferencing equipment....the Polycom! What a cool piece of equipment that is very easy to use. If you can call someone on a cell phone, you can use the Polycom!!

The concept of videoconferencing is quite simple. It allows two or more people at different locations to see and hear each other at the same time. This opens the door for collaboration projects across a school district, or with classrooms from around the globe. What an exciting interactive experience for students who may never leave their hometown, much less, visit with people from another country. Another nice feature, is that most classroom to classroom connections do not cost anything.

The Polycom is made up of a webcam on steroids, a projection unit, a mega microphone, and a computer tower. Using the equipment is very simple. Connections are made between one Polycom and another by calling the remote's site IP address. An IP address looks like this (231.456.785.786). You place your call by using the Polycom's remote control that was designed to resemble most standard cell phones.

The first step to videoconferencing is finding a collaboration project to participate in. Maybe you want to start small and connect with another classroom within your district. Two-classroom projects are a great place to start because they are simple to organize and implement. Or, if you like to "go big or stay home", use one of the many videoconferencing websites to find a good match with a classroom somewhere else in the world. There are many online videoconferencing portals that are available. Many are designed to allow teachers to search their database for existing projects in need of partnering classrooms. Others, allow teachers to write and submit their own projects.

Some example activities that one could do with a classroom-to-classroom connection are: Field Trip Experience Exchanges, Quizbowl Challenges, Community Exchanges, Guest Readers, Multicultural activities with middle and high school foreign language or ESL students, and compare and contrast activities around a certain topic. The possibilities are endless. If you have a laptop or document camera (ELMO), connected to your "Poly Pod", you can even collaborate over software applications or Elmo activities.

One of the sites that I like to use is CAPSpace: Collaborations Around the Planet. This site has both features described above. Below is a short video demonstrating how you can search for existing projects or create your own.

Enjoy!