Technology Tools to Assist my Lesson

Last night I attended a TIN PD.  TIN stands for Technology Information Night.  There were three presenters.  Each presenter talked about a different way to incorporate technology in their classrooms. The first presentation is related to a lesson I plan on teaching in my next placement.

The first presenters spoke about iMovie and how you can make not only movies but trailers.  We were taken step-by-step through the process of creating a movie trailer on iMovie.  This was really good because there are limitations when making a movie trailer when using the trailer function through iMovie.  The second presenter spoke about how he used movie trailers as a book report assignment for his grade 6 class.  Listening to the presenter speak about his experience was great for me because I intend to do a similar assignment with my grade 7 class in my next placement.  This lesson I have mentioned in previous blogs but once again, my students will be creating commercials to promote how they would like to make an impact in the world.  I recently found a book titled "Pay It Forward Kids".  This book will provide my students with current students around their age that have made a positive impact within their community.

To help along this project, today in my ICT class I was introduced to a site called "Inspiration" were you are able to create concept maps and graphic organizers.  This I plan to use as an activating strategy to get my students thinking about the different types of community involvement or ways to make a positive impact within their community.  This way students can become more familiar with deeds that may inspire them to develop what their commercial will be about.  As a class we will make a master mind-map, before they break into pairs/groups to begin creating their storyline.

Having the option of iMovie or iTrailer will allow my students to use the program that will best challenge them to create their final project.

I like that with this program these projects, with permission, can be exported and uploaded to the class website so that parents can see what their children are working on in class.

As this lesson comes together, I will keep you posted on how the students are enjoying the assignment and how the lesson is going overall.

~ Miss Laing

Movie Making in the Classroom

After experiencing how much fun it was to make a movie, I began thinking how could I include movie making in my next placement.  When I am out I am teaching Math and ELA, and co-teaching Science and Social Studies.  I want to teach a bit of everything.  So in Math I teaching Integers, not ideal for a movie but an option.  In ELA, I am teaching a Multi-Media unit.  I am still trying to decide what my unit will consist of.

In talking with my Co-Operating teacher (CT), one thought we had was to find inspiring novels of adolescents making a difference in the world.  This idea came to me when watching a TED Talks video.  I really do believe that pairing Multi-Media with a novel study will allow me to show my students the positive impact Multi-Media has on today's generation.

Sadly, I have not been able to find a time to meet with my CT to look at the selection of novels we have at our school.  Thankfully I am told we have a large selection of books to choose from.

I want my students to find something that inspires them to make a difference, somewhere they can make a positive impact.

So to include Multi-Media I want them to think about what makes up Multi-Media, how they use them on a daily basis, and how they could use them to make a positive change.  They will then create a script for their "movie".  Their movie will be more like a commercial about the positive change they want to make.

I know with how good students are with todays technology they will be able to pick up on the editing process quickly.  I found that when my group and I were editing our video it was a lot easier than we thought it would be.  I still have to check with the school to make sure that Movie Maker is on the computers so that students can do their editing.

So as promised here is the video my group and I made last week.  Enjoy!!!


~ Miss Laing

Creating My First Movie

This week was dedicated to making our own movie.  Our instructions were to split up into groups, decide on what our movie would be about, it was to be around 3 minutes long, with limited, if any, voice audio.

I was in a group of 3 and we decided that we wanted to do a spin off of an old silent comedy from the early 1900.  One of my group members was looking on-line and found a site that had free old movie music.  Finding that music put our project into full swing.  It look us no time at all to create our story-line, decide who would be which character, and began filming on our first day.

It was interesting to see how some shots worked out perfectly, some needed to be re-shot, and some needed to be cut shorter.  It was so hard to not shake from laughing while filming, and I am not sure how the picture is not shaking in some scenes.

We also attracted a lot of attention while filming because of one characters costume and our groups excessive laughing sparking peoples curiosity.

Once all the filming was done we could not wait to begin the editing process.  We had filmed our movie on a i-Pad but wanted to do all the editing on a Mac lap top.  It took us awhile to figure out how to transfer the video from one device to another.  After trying multiple options sharing a file created on iCloud with each other, we were able to access all the video clips.

We also had to create slides to include in our movie.  We found a blank template to use for our titles to help our viewers be prepared for what they were about to watch.  We were able to import the slides from Keynote directly to iMovie.

Once everything was in place we figured out how to delete the audio from the film and added our song we found on Creative Commons Ragtime.  Our next step was cutting clips and stretching certain clips.  We were so proud of how our movie was coming together.

The part I feel we struggled with the most was trying to change our picture from colour to black and white.  The only part that made this difficult was when you are looking at the menu its not listed as an option.  After google attempts, and patience we realized we had over looked where the option is.

I was amazing with how quickly this movie came together.  Our project started on Tuesday and was finished on Thursday.  This includes all the filming and editing.  As soon as I show my class the video I will post the whole video for you to see.

This clip is pre-editing and does not include music but it will give you an idea of our film.  Enjoy!!!

~ Miss Laing

Digital Story Telling: Pictures and Audio

Ok so this week we have been working on picture editing.  I'm not going to lie I may have been playing around with the different sites to avoid working on other homework.  I don't see this as a waste of time though.  For one I am practicing what I learnt in class, and two I'm beginning to develop an assignment for my next placement.  Different sites offer different options for editing photos.

One we looked at has recently become an app for smart phones called Aviary.  Apparently I have this app on my phone.  I'm pretty sure that my sisters had downloaded it for me.  Although I may have only used this app once, now that I am more familiar with it I just might find myself using it more often.  

One site that I know will come in handy is Pixlr.  This site allows you to blur out parts of your picture.  If you are wanting to post a picture but someone in the photo has not given permission or does not want to be recognized this site allows you to blur out faces.  I recently used this to blur out a product label, although this proved to be irrelevant with how the editing process went:

original:

edited: 

With a few clicks I had a new picture.

Some of the other sites are:
- Ribbit
- PhotoFunia
- Citrify
- BeFunky

Here is an example of one I edited of one of my sisters and I using Tuxpi:
before:

 After:

I think this skill is a good one to teach students because it is one they can use when creating posters for projects or promotions.  The students can get creative.  

One of the assignments I have created for my next placement requires my students to prepare a presentation about a cause they are passionate about.  For some of their visuals, students could edit their photos to add meaning.  

I am so excited to see how creative my students will get incorporating photo editing into their assignment.

Another tool we looked with photo editing is how to create your own video with the edited videos.  As a class we were to finish the saying Learning is ...., find a photo to represent your saying and edit the photo for added effects.  When all the photos are sent to one person, in this case the teacher, they can upload the photos to different programs; Movie Maker for PC's and iMovie for Macs.  When the photos are uploaded to the program you have choices of what you want to do.  You could add different transitions between slides, add music, adjust music level to match audio if audio is included, if you do include audio and say your students needed two takes you are able to delete the part that was messed up, add time or decrease time between slides, and more options that I am yet to discover.

I have so many ideas for how I could use this in my classroom.  This could be used as an exit slip where students say a comment and after editing I could play it as a review of the previous class, for assemblies, to show parents what we are working on in class by displaying it on the classroom website, or having students include this kind of technology in their presentations.  The possibilities are endless.

~ Miss Laing

Personal Inspiration

For my ICT class, one assignment is to read a book and discuss it with our classmates.  This book is amazing and full of inspirational stories.  One author who has stood out the most to me is Shelley Wright.  I love how she recognized that teacher based learning just wasn't enough for her students.  I'm inspired how she took a leap of faith to change her teaching style to student based learning.  I admire this because change is never easy.  Just like when Shelley I too had teachers who lined up our desks in rows and stand at the front of  the room and lectured for the majority of the block.  Over the years I have recognized that I learn more when interacting with my peers and since I have recognized this a lot of what I have planned for my student teaching placement is where students interact with each other rather than listening to me stand at the front of the room talking to them.  It is teachers like Shelley that help install the confidence I need to believe in my students and the results will follow.  I do recognize that at first this may not be a success but that is due to students not being provided with the opportunity to learn from each other.

So far in the book Shelley has had two entires telling her audience about her decision to change her teaching style and how her students exceeded her expectations.  Reading these stories and watching Shelley talk at Ted Talks, how could I not be inspired to go out and want to make such a positive change in my students lives?

I had met with my Cooperating Teacher (CT) before I had read Shelley's second entry and we had mapped out what we were wanting to cover with our students, what subjects I would take the lead in and about the projects/presentations our students would be required to complete.  I had told my CT that I would love to a unit where my students would have to find a cause out in our world that excites them and have them research that cause and present on it in pairs or small groups (depending on numbers).  My CT loved this idea because it tied into their Social Studies unit.  I was so excited that she loved it.  I am still working out the details of the assignment but it will be integrated into ELA multi-media unit.  So naturally when I read Shelley's second entry in our book club book I immediately thought of this assignment and how I want my students to learn from each other, and to get excited about making a difference in the world.  That is the kind of teacher I want to be.  I want my students to be excited about the future and how they can make a positive impact, positive change. I want them to realize that they can be leaders and that with motivation they can do anything even if faced with challenges.

I know I have so much to learn but that is what makes me so excited about my future as an educator.  I am just starting out so why not start my teaching career with student based learning?  Hearing Shelley's story makes me so excited about my future as an educator.  So if you have never heard of Shelley Wright here is the video of her speaking at Ted Talks:



~ Miss Laing