Brian's+Opus

media type="custom" key="3436960" "I am digital, therefore I am...."

Task 1- Creative Commons I found the watermark symbol on the navigation bar of the pages. Step complete.

Part 2: I like the idea of sharing. I've not run across that CC symbol before on the net. I've been pretty ruthless about grabbing images, some video clips here and there, just to show kids "live" in class something relevant to our work. Creative Commons would be a better way to do it, although only if we as teachers take the time to explain the process we've undergone. We have some class videos up on Vimeo, but they are private and personal to our class. I like the idea, though, of linking kids to other kids with projects like book or movie reviews, etc. If an audible clip of a kid doing a book review of Harry Potter, for example, was made available to many kids, it might be the kind of thing that could spark audio responses. Could be neat. I don't see any negatives, other than you have to be good and aware of what you're doing when you invite the world to participate in your work. A real positive I could see is if some teachers put up helpful videos about how they have done certain school activities, like "how to set up a role playing game about history." A potential downside is the fact that if you use video you have to be conscious of what permissions parents have allowed for their child. Could get you tangled into trouble if you're not thorough. I own all my stuff now, but it seems reasonable to share some material, like quiz questions about a book by chapter. No reason for everyone who teaches Charlotte Doyle to have to reinvent the wheel. Why not just borrow my questions and use the ones you like? Very little of my student's work is digital right now. As that changes and students create more online, the CC issue could be very important. Copyright in general is important for us all to harp on, as they've grown up in an age when stealing digital media is entirely acceptable to the mainstream, so long as it's not "major".

Stretch: I checked out a kid video about a spy trial in 1777. Gives me ideas....

Task 2: VoiceThread

This is so fantastic. Amy had introduced this to a faculty meeting sometime last year, I believe, and I really liked it then, but didn't act on it. I am going to go ahead and pay for the ed.voicethread version so that I can put my kids up with their own identities minus an email. Then I am going to introduce weekly topics in a voice thread that they will have to comment on at some point during the week (maybe a project we are working on, a lit book theme, class issue, etc.) Some kids will figure out how to embed their own Voicethreads into their own mini wiki pages within our site, and then it could really take off.

Very excited about this one.

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Task 3: My Podcast

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Task 4: Currently Goofing on Flickr media type="custom" key="3437148"

media type="custom" key="3459656" Photo Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2127311117/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmmpereda/697939620/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisrustage/2375443354/ Photographer: Chris Rustage Note: I screwed up and didn't get all the proper info on the photos. If I were going to put this up for my class, I'd go back and do it right.

Here's an Animoto slide show that my boys put together after I learned how. They did this with very little help. media type="custom" key="3466156"

Thing 19: media type="youtube" key="ttz5oPpF1Js" height="344" width="425" I don't feel like I've really used YouTube all that well. I have mostly used it to look up a quick video that will demonstrate something I am talking to the kids about in a given moment--not so much something I hunt around in beforehand to find a video to use as a more central part of a lesson. I'd like to use it in that way more--in the planning stage. The TeacherTube site seems like a great way to bring the video world to the elementary level. I'd love to come up with some simple video projects that kids could make and post. Issue: we'd really have to make sure no parent had checked any of "those boxes" about images of their kid being used in a public forum before we start. I don't think I could do it this year.

Task 11: Screen Casting media type="custom" key="3667871" I am loving screencasting. Instead of Jing, I used ScreenToaster which Amy V. recommended to me after discovering it. The process was a snap, all online so no space is eaten up on my computer (unless I want to download it as either as a swf file or a mov file, an option you can't do with Jing unless you pay to upgrade.) I think having it all online has great implications for students, as they can do it anywhere without having to go through a downloading process. I would love to find the same type of program that records from a webcam and uploads online. Then students could film themselves doing something and then upload it without having to use iMovie, etc. Let me know if you've got ideas about that one.

Task: Google Forms media type="custom" key="3660981"

Test media type="custom" key="3725489"

Elisa help: media type="custom" key="3725549"

Twitter: I can't say I am too into this one. I think as a teacher it might be useful in an older group of students--college, perhaps--for building community and some class chat around a theme, but I don't think students my class' age would be able to put it to good use. I have received one or two good tweets from teacher-strangers. These have been links to good URLs to check out for classroom use. However, these have been few and far between, and this function it seems to me gets much better served by Diigo, a service I discovered while poking around. Diigo, among other things, allows a quick way for me to share links with others and receive an email of links from anyone in the groups I am a member of. I am in the Diigo in Eduation group, and get an email every day (you can also customize it for less often). I love that email. I can scan through the list, see the tags, and decide if it is worth checking out for me. Through those links I have found some good material.

Final Week: Using My Tools: One tool I will certainly put to use is the making of slide shows with one of the free sites we visited. I used Animoto, but others seem to work just as well or better. Students in my class could easily gather or take photos, upload them, then record themselves saying whatever verbal content is appropriate for the project, and put it all together in a way we can show (project) in class, or post on our website for us to view at different times. Also: The Google Forms feature has some great test-taking potential. With our 15 netbooks next year, I'll be putting that to use.

Sharing my Tools: Next faculty meeting I am going to share Writeboard. I've used it twice now with much success.

Pi 2.1 Reflections: Bravo, tech department! I thought this was terrific. I learned a lot and also got interested in discovering more. The tools were all thought-provoking, even those (like Twitter) that I don't envision being able to use all that successfully. I enjoyed the learning part so much that I ended up digging around here and there and discovering new services (Diigo, One True Media, Jaycut, etc.). I would absolutely recommend the course. It was extremely well done.