Follow up to yesterday’s posting….
So, I have recieved my free unlimited account to Animoto. Their response time was great. If you are an educator, please get started using this in your classroom. In an effort to show my teachers and students how to use this, I thought I would create my very own sample. With the new baby, I am adding about 20 pictures a day to my google album.
One of my favorite aspects of this program is the idea of using “up and coming artists.” In any of the videos I have created, I have used these pieces of music, rather then importing already famous artists. You should notice that each music selection will actually alter/direct the way that your movie plays. I mean that the beat of the video flows to the tempo of the music.
Well, I hope you find this of use and would really like to see the work of others. I am mostly interested teachers are using this with their students. I had a conversation today with my art director and I can already start to see his teachers using this to showcase their work.
Happy learning… Hope you enjoy my full length Animoto.
I thought I would share this web based video creation/sharing program with you. One of my students had presented this as a hot topic in the graduate class that I am teaching. If you are an educator, please do not miss out on the free membership. Currently, Animoto restricts is “basic” user to a 30 second video.
Go to http://education.animoto.com/ to register your free account and get started on creating full length productions.
With each new school year I become more and more anxious and excited for a new set of learning opportunities. When I say learning, I refer to my one on one interactions and digital interactions with my fellow administrators, teachers and of course our students. On a much larger scale, I am have a renewed committment to extending my own global network.
I guess I was never a good learner as a child, or for that matter until I nearly graduated college. I can remember the day my brother (who was more tech savy than me) came to my rescue as I prepared to present my research to my science professors. At that time, the Internet was weak, limited and unreliable. Software applications like PowerPoint and Excel were barely being used in our school, and if I had a few $’s and an inside scoop, I would have made millions off a company called Google.
This experience was a game changer for me. It started to re-shape my future and certainly lead me to develop a new belief system for teaching and learning. After many years, I am a bit upset that I was never able to experience this through my K-12 academic career, but thanks to my brother and many other educational leaders who have inspired me, I am grateful to dedicate my entire life to reaching both teachers and students.
I recently met with my new teaching staff in my district and we talked about the future needs of our students. We spoke about the year 2022 and the year 2042. 2022, represented the year that today’s Kindegartners would graduate. 2042, is the year that they would have to work until, in order to collect a full pension. My game changing experience came at the most important time in my history (perhaps the most important of everyone’s). This was 1999 and the Internet was nothing like it is today. I guess I never thanked him for this, but I definitely will.
So, what do I want to do this year? First of all, I am going to be a new dad! I can’t wait! But with this added responsibility, I will be more focused then ever before. As I approach my practice, my decisions are made for various reasons, but most of all, what would I want to see for my child? Are our school meeting the needs of the 2022 graduate? Are we giving the teachers the tools to facilitiate these learning experiences? Are teachers ready to do this? Is the school system or community ready for this? There are so many more questions, to which I don’t have the answers. I am very excited about tomorrow (1st day of school). I can’t wait to work with my fellow administrators to develop new models for teaching and learning.
This year, we are going to increase our critical mass of web 2.0 users and re-think the way we approach teaching and learning for today’s teacher and today’s student!
Happy St. Patty’s Day to all. Today I am attending the 2008 ASSET technology conference with 800 other educators. This is always a very exciting conference. Its great to see all the educators from across Long Island, as well as getting a chance to see the latest and greatest from our technology vendors. I really enjoyed the keynote address given by Rushton Harvey. This was the first time I participated in a keynote using a classroom response system. Rushton was able to use this interactive technology to poll the audience on various topics. I am going to use this space to share my experiences and notes from todays conference.
I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you a new site I launched with Mike Keany, Director of Long Island School Leadership. As Mike puts it, this site is a “town hall” for school leaders. Please check out the new site and be a part of our learning community. The goal of this site is to open up the conversation and enable professionals to share ideas, practices and experiences in a more direct manner. In addition, I hope that this type of collaboration will open more people up to the power behind “social networking”, which I prefer to call “professional networking”.
I can remember the first time I used the Internet for research. I can remember the first time I connected with others and created my new network for learning. That was back in the late 90′s. It was an empowering experience as I looked into the crystal ball of what my career in education would be. Luckily at that time I had a nice computer (at that time it has 1gig hard drive and about 32mb or ram) with lightning speed Internet access of my 56k modem. The bottom line is that it completely changed they way I saw myself in this world. This was truly an empowering experience that all students should be able to go through. Do you think we are meeting the needs of the 21st century learner through our current instructional practices? This is a great presentation that I found on Slideshare.
When I refer to network, I refer to a group of people whom you share a common interest with. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a site call Ning.com. Since them, I have been pretty addicted to exploring its use inside and out. As soon as I learned about Ning, I immediately began setting up my own networks and since then, I have connected with other school leaders as well as friends from all over the world. I even get to see photos and videos from these people. So far, I have a number of teachers already using the most popular ning site, called Classroom2.0. I have never learned so much, so well and so fast than I have with Ning.com and other networks hosted there. While I am now looking at the best ways to use this with our students, I am anxious to get any feedback on how your students have been using networks like these. Thanks for your help!
This post is going to be short and sweet! Frontline: Growing Up Online by PBS. Perhaps you can share this with the non-believers! It tells both stories…what conclusions do you have now?
I hope to reach out to a big audience with this one, because it sure is a relevant question these days. From one generation to the next there are differences in opinons on what it means to be literate in the 21st century. I for one have always found video and music to be a powerful means of delivering a message. Maybe you have seen this or maybe you haven’t, but please watch this. To my fellow bloggers, please share your ideas on what it means to be literate after watching that show. Comments will be posted and I am setting up our very first podcast regarding this topic.
This Monday I had the pleasure of meeting with David Warlick and Karen Cator, chair of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills at the 2020 Vision Now conference on Long Island. It was a great day. One of the conversations I had was about the Classroom 2.0 website which I found great. That night I came across some great student videos. Check out this video.
This morning I attended a seminar on 21st Century Skills over at NYIT with Stan Silverman. If you havent already immersed yourself in this framwork, I urge you to do so. In addition to the desired skills, there was a very good overview of the Intel Teach Program which I plan on utlizing in my district.
