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.
So I made it through the first week of school and was feeling pretty warn out from all the action. I was looking forward to just relaxing on Sunday with my wife and catching the NY Jets and Brett Faivre. Then, as I went to Dawn’s computer, I couldn’t resist the urge to check my new twitter account. LIke most of you reading this, I have that problem sometimes. It was all over after that. I had read David Warlick and Jeff Utech’s last post on twitter about a Second Life meeting this morning. I immediately clicked these links and was teleported into my new life. I had tried second life a few times and just couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. Most of the time I had too much going on to focus on this. I have to say, if it wasn’t for my twitter account I may not have made it there that morning. For almost two hours I relaxed on a bean bag and listened to ohter chat about this upcoming conference. At the same time, we (the audience) carried on a live conversation through text. This experience for me will continue to drive my passion for the way we look at teaching and learing. I felt surrounded that day by pure genious. In my entire educational career I was never more engaged in listening, then I was at this time. Some critics believe that these sort of spaces are not going to play a role in the education of our students. Folks, the time is now. We must reshape decision making, reshape policies and restructure our schools to provide an educational system that is relevent to the future needs of our children. Our children are bored! Get them engaged. Teachers…are you on sites like Classroom 2.0 to get new ideas. Are you contributing to this conversation or are you just living within the walls of your classroom. Join groups that share a common interest. I dont care if they are school related or not. Get a grasp on the New Web. Create your own learning and do it through a digital community.
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 thought I would make it through the vacation not doing too much working and focusing on relaxation, exercise and the new book Bob, Karl and myself are working on. Then I stumbled onto probably one of the coolest applications I have seen in a while. I am going to start using this on my own and in my school with teachers, admin and athletics as well. If you come across this blog entry and have been using this or something similar…please share your thoughts and streams.
This morning I woke up and my mind was going. I found what I believe to be a new tool, which could make a big impact in classrooms all over. Voice Thread allows a user to upload a picture and enables other people to record their voice or type in their own comments about the picture. I went through a few of them and was amazed at all the different perspectives each person had on the same picture. How can we use a tool like this? Are there any implications with safety and security of our students?
