Saturday, April 28, 2007

My Edutastic Movie

After several days of work, I have officially produced, directed, and starred in my very own five or six minute movie! Here is what I have discovered about making movies on iMovie:

1. I am undoubtedly breaking laws by making this movie:

1a. I can't believe how few photographs are out there that we can use freely. Something that I would change if I ruled the world (which I will someday) is make a law that says that as long as someone isn't making money off of it, photos can be used freely, because it's a pain in the tokhis to find photos that you can use at all, and then it's confusing to figure out what you need to do to use them. So, in short, copyright laws hinder my creativity, and the Internet is all about connecting and sharing, so why don't more people connect and share?

1b. I'm stealing music in it too, but since I bought it, and I'm not selling it, I don't feel too bad about it. I also give the artist credit in my credits, but it kind of freaks me out that I'm probably breaking a law by doing this. What can I say? I'm a rebel without a cause.

2. It's very difficult to do voice overs, even when the program that you're using is dummy proof. My soundtrack is pretty lame, with my personal mixes of songs, and my voice narrating the whole thing, but, hey, you work with what you've got, and James Earl Jones wasn't available to do the voice over, so I had to do it myself.

3. Computers are great, but when they erase everything you've done at random, forcing you to start over again, one starts to wonder if the old way wasn't better afterall.

But, all of those things are less important than my main point. As I was putting this movie together on homelessness, I realized that I could make a movie about just about anything (IF I had free access to more photos, that is). Initially, I thought about the fact that I could make a movie about my grandmother, because we have pictures of her that go back to 1907, and it would make an amazing movie to share with my family, but truly, I could make a movie about anything. Butterflies, slavery, ancient Rome... anything. That got me really excited, because everyone likes movies, and if you had access to enough clips and photos you could do amazing things with iMovies (or other programs like it). If I ever get some time to myself again, I'm going to look into making movies on all kinds of subjects with my own photographs on sinking and floating, George Washington, addition, and anything else that occurs to me.

Yea laptops! Yea idiot-proof movie making programs! Yea technology! Life is good.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

My Technotastic Lesson...

This Thursday, I taught my science/technology lesson. Of course, I had to send out an e-mail to the administrator earlier in the week to access the videos on YouTube, which I thought was because the videos might show something inappropriate, but apparently it's because they recommend that teachers not use YouTube videos for copyright reasons. It seems strange to me that if I go to the website, where anyone can view videos, and show videos to 21 five and six-year-olds, that there would be a copyright issue. Nonetheless, the administrators didn't tell me about that issue, or even tell me that they'd decided not to unblock the site, until I was frantically trying to figure out why the videos weren't working an hour before the lesson was supposed to begin. They ended up allowing me to access the websites for a few hours, which was, at least, enough to let me teach the lesson.
The videos made a big difference in the lesson. After we read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," the kids had a lot of questions about how a caterpillar makes a chrysalis and how the butterfly gets out of a chrysalis, and it's sometimes difficult to explain those kinds of things to kindergartners in words that they'll understand. So, the videos were a big help when it came to teaching the kids about some of the more complex aspects of the butterfly life cycle, and they're still to young to be sick of PowerPoints yet!
Throughout the lesson, I kept an eye out for who wasn't catching on to the concepts, because I was planning to pull up to five of them to do the webquest that I put together. I was actually surprised about which kids I ended up having to pull out of the class for more help. One of the kids is so quiet that I'd never really noticed that she has trouble paying attention and needs more time to absorb new information. The other little girl is one of the best students in the class, quick and well-behaved, and comfortable asking questions, but she was having a lot of trouble with this particular concept. The third student was a little boy who often has a little bit of trouble in lessons, but he's smart, and when he gets a little bit of extra help he does very well.
So, I took the three students who were struggling to the core computers, so that they wouldn't distract the other students while they worked on the computers. They go to computer class once a week, so by this point in the semester, they'd already learned a lot about computers. I read each little intro to them and then told them to click on the link under the intro. They knew what it meant to click on the back button, and to scroll down or up, so my job wasn't very difficult. I just helped with the reading, and the occasional double or triple click on the back button that sent them to my wiki's homepage or the school's homepage. It went really smoothly, the kids liked the extra time at the computers, and they all left the lesson knowing the four main stages of a butterfly's life cycle and the order that they go in, which was the goal of the overall lesson, and they liked the one-on one time with me and getting to use the computers.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Technology for Teachers - More Tappy Tappy, Less Walking!

A Little Something for the Disorganized:

Today I was filing collages while the kids were at lunch, when another kindergarten teacher came into the room...
"Come on over and take a look at the new computer thing that I learned about at the conference," she said.
"Ooooh! The use of technology in the classroom," I thought.
I headed right over to her room to find out what the computer thing was. The computer thing turned a new tool being tested out with a few of the teachers at the school. The first thing she showed us was that the software allowed her to enter information that someone would usually have to take to another part of the building by foot. The teacher marks whether a student is present or absent, or sends out the lunch order all from the comfort of her computer chair instead of walking around the school or asking her assistant to do so. The program also allows you to see the names and school photo of each child in the class, and allows those photos to be moved around the screen to create a seating chart. The teacher testing out the new program pointed out the fact that if a substitute came into the classroom for the first time, the kids couldn't sit in another seat or pretend to be another student, because the substitute would have their names, faces, and seat assignments right on the computer screen. The program even allows the teacher to click on a child's picture to bring up their parents' numbers, health information, emergency contact, etc. If there is an accident or a problem, the teacher no longer has to sort through note cards, files or papers, all she has to do is go to her computer and click.
I see a number of advantages to this software. First of all, every day the teacher's assistant in my classroom disappears for half an hour to bring the attendance sheet to the office, the lunch orders to the cafeteria and the library books to the library। With this new program, the teacher's assistant would not have to leave the room for half an hour, which would mean that the classroom would have two teachers in it for more time every day। In time, these minutes could really add up, and mean that more time could be devoted to small group lessons or one-on-one work with struggling students. It seems like something that could save time, and trees, in general, since things that we'd usually be fishing for in our desks or trying to wipe a coffee ring off of, would be organized for us on the computer, and I imagine that it could be expanded to help with other functions too, which could free up even more time for teaching the students instead of mucking about with other things.

Go Tappy Tappy on the Screen-a-ma-thing!

Yes, go tappy tappy, my friends. I recently had my very first experience with a Smart board, something that has existed for quite some time, but which I had had yet to see for myself। I was observing a third grade computer class learning about Malian mud cloths. The computer teacher had found an activity on the Smithsonian site that allows students to make their very own Malian mud cloth, learning about the process, the meanings of the patterns and placement in the cloth's design. She sat the kids down in front of the smart board and read to them from some websites, then went on to the activity. This was the part where I got really excited. She read the information on the screen, and then asked students to come up individually, tap on the board and make things happen. The students prepared the cloth, chose designs for different parts of the cloth, dyed the cloth, etc, all with their hands. It made it seem more like they were actually making a Malian mud cloth, because they were using their hands instead of a mouse. I instantly wanted my own Smart board, but the school only has one, and it stays in the computer lab. Still, I hope that one day, some wealthy benefactor will give one, because it was amazing to see how engaged the kids were when they had the chance to use this delightful piece of technology. It's brilliant!