Screen Recordings

As I posted for our group discussion, screen recordings are powerful tools for demonstrating use of technology. It seems like the perfect means of teaching students how to use features of Adobe PhotoShop and InDesign, and give them a review of the MS Office programs we use (Word, Excel,PowerPoint). If it's the first time we're implementing blogs, wikis, moodles, webquests, then a screen recorder could introduce use of the technology in the context of our project. We could give them a tour and discuss appropriate parameters for the project using the same tools they'll use to produce their final product. The beauty of this is that learners can go at their own pace and access it at home as well.

Screen recordings would be great for skills that are only used intermittently, but expected in academia. I know that I'd like a quick file review for formatting bibliographies (MLA, APA) and works cited. The method of citing web resources is new to most of us and could easily be explained in a quick screen recording. If your class has a special format for presenting a large project, a screen recording would be a handy way to explain that. Many group project arguments could be averted by having 24-7 access to the teacher's instructions!

I also think that some cognitive skills might be captured in a screen recording. I could use my computer to show how to edit and recast sentences, talking through the thought process as I go along. I could demonstrate methods of scoring a script (a useful tool for dramatic character analysis) and show how different choices affect the characterization and performance. I think high school students could be asked to use screen recordings in their presentations as well. They could share information on "The Making of" their projects from how they used an effect in Moviemaker to explaining how and why they edited things out of their final products. Possibilities abound!

I will try to explore a few of these applications in the upcoming week and make one a part of my final Moodle. Stay tuned.

Using Flickr

I went to a reunion last week and immediately posted my photos to Flickr, inviting the other attendees to join my group and do the same. A few people posted to Facebook despite the fact that not all class members have accounts. A few others cluttered our email inboxes with photo message attachments. No one actually posted to Flickr. I guess I needed to give them the screen recording tour first!! (Hmm...maybe I should have students create FB accounts for fictional characters to demonstrate character and text analysis skills.)

In any case, I can see uses for Flickr in the classroom: from field trips to school events, point-of-view visual rhetoric to storyboarding and a clever way to put together a slide show of some show-n-tell project or billboards of found poetry. On a field trip, different groups could become experts on a specific area of knowledge and take lots of pictures to present to the class as a whole. Or everyone could compare their visual perspective on the same content. Slide shows could be set to music or narration.

I like that students could have easy access at school or at home and that the privacy controls are conducive to the classroom setting.

YouTube in My Classroom

I must confess that I'm not too keen YouTube. I feel my ROI (return on investment) is quite small. I always thought I had good search heuristics, but I found myself sifting through loads of rubbish, like a '49er panning through pyrite, certain there must be gold somewhere.

Here are the few nuggets I feel certain I could use:

For speech/drama classes: Voice Warm-Ups
This is the first in a series of exercises for actors, public speakers and anyone who wants to project a strong, confident voice. I love that the performer shares my sense of quirky humor and feel this would play well both in the classroom and posted on a wiki for practice at home.

For English classes: The Tell Tale Heart
This is a short animated 1953 film based on the classic Poe tale. The dark animation is exquisitely narrated by James Mason. Apparently this is the first British animation to receive an X rating. It's a gripping rendition of Poe's short story and frankly the caliber of work I had hoped I'd find for each one of my searches.

I had less success when hunting for a pair of contrasting works. I was looking for different tones of war poetry. At one end of the spectrum was The Soldier by Rupert Chawner Brooke, who celebrated and glorified service as had so many idealistic poets before him. At the other end was Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est with its grim depiction of war. I had hoped to show clips of more equivalent length. If any of you have suggestions, please share.

Although I am no fan of the horror story genre, I am enjoying Stephen King's nonfiction On Writing. I tried to locate an excerpt from this memoir, but could only find a clip of him advising Yale aspiring writers to read and write a lot. I did find a collection of other authors Inspiring Authors with more quotable sound bytes and a nice assortment of quotations from Writers on Writing.

Lastly I imagine I will find some way to use my all-time favorite Bob Newhart Mo Collins STOP IT skit for a humorous introduction to self reflection and inquiry. What do you fear? What thoughts or habits limit you? Is there anything you wish you could just stop?

I would like to just stop searching for better YouTube materials now. If you need me, I'll be curled up with Stephen King's memoir...right after I wash my hands.

Wiki Wiki

In my morning email, I learned that today is "the birthday of Larry Sanger, born in Bellevue, Washington (1968). He's the co-founder, along with Jimmy Wales, of Wikipedia." In The Writer's Almanac for July 16, 2009, you can read or listen to the account of how these creators chose the name "Wiki."

Using Podcasts in the Classroom

I'm excited by the prospect of posting podcasts for students to practice awareness of breath and body and how these impact their use of projection of voice and character onstage! I've just begun posting audio podcasts and will progress onto video as soon as I overcome file format and storage issues. I am hopeful that the Teacher Tube solution proposed by PBWiki and our own Worth Weller's suggestion of a magical Prism converter will do the trick! You can see the skeleton of drama podcasts on my Wiki. I think it's fabulous that motivated students can download the exercises that will be the foundation of maintaining their vocal instrument and assist them in mentally and physically preparing for any audition or performance situation.

I have many ideas for English podcasts. Nationally syndicated podcasts such as The Writer's Almanac and Grammar Girl or the blogger Sentence Sleuth could be regular guests of our class room. Classic clips from The United States of Poetry, Billy Collins Action Poetry, The National Bookfest, LivePoetsDotCom and The Favorite Poem Project can inspire our own critical reading/viewing experiences. Student models of their own electric poetry interpretations or their own favorite poem projects can be published via podcast.

High school students could partner with younger reading buddies in an elementary school class and both sets of students could produce podcast readings for one another. Likewise language learners could perform for one another or model fluency in brief audio or video podcast productions. I think the more we offer this as a platform for exchange of ideas, the more creative connections will be made in our community. Cheers to podcasting!

Blogs in Schools

Our district does block blogs and social networking sites. I do not blame them; I cannot imagine the chaos of trying to supervise a computer project while students were surreptitiously sending instant AIM messages or engaging in pop-out chats on Facebook.

I think I could formulate a good case for petitioning to have specific classroom use of blogs. Blogging is a form of literacy familiar to our students, but one that I think they have mostly explored superficially. I aspire to use this motivational form to develop critical thinking skills in our students. Blogs can be used to respond to literature. They can be easily used in reader's workshops and writing workshops. Peer review is certainly simplified by use of blogs. The speed of publication and dissemination can increase a sense of audience for our writers and build a community of readers relating to one another's ideas and it makes efficient use of our resources. I find the notion of conserving paper and time (in regards to storage, retrieval, archiving of works in progress) very appealing. Our means of communication is evolving and we need to prepare our students to be adept at expressing themselves in the media of their times.

Views about Internet Safety

I believe that we need to exercise the same amount of caution and awareness in the digital world as we do in our daily world. I remember when my oldest son was in the 8th grade and earned the nickname "Beast" from his wrestling teammates. One day in the US Mail, he received an invitation to view beastie.com and he assumed that a classmate/teammate had created a site to pay his wrestling skills homage. Although I trusted that the sender's intentions were naive and innocent, I immediately thought that the site would surely involve bestiality and forbade my son to visit it. He was stubborn and decided one peek wouldn't hurt. The next thing we knew, plaintive mooing was broadcast from our speakers and pornographic images began to assault him. We were bombarded by all kinds of unsavory pop-ups after that and we had to scrub the computer.

Logic dictates that we set some boundaries and work to build awareness about personal safety, identity theft, and common sense about what we want to be publicly seen on the media. We also need to educate students about technological threats of viruses are spread. I'd like to ensure that we educate ourselves about verifying sources of information from the internet just as we would in the "real world." I'd like to see students (and my adult friends) checking Snopes.com before hitting the "forward" button for more fearful stories. In short as we explore the possibilities of virtual lessons, we must include a component that aims to develop respectful, responsible, ethical citizens in this realm.