Monthly Archives: November 2009

Nov 30 2009

Idea for Story Telling

Recently, I had the opportunity to watch @kentmanning in action at his digital story telling session at the Minds on Media session before the ECOO Conference. He had a great concept, merging a bunch of different technologies and so I told him I was about to steal the idea, dress it up with OESS licensed software and blog about it. Here goes…

First we head off and grab out digital cameras to get some pictures to establish the story. That’s easily enough done and I’m going to do a three slide comic using the Ministry of Education licensed Comic Life software. The difference, though, is that I’m not going to create a page with three panels; I’m going to create three pages by dragging each picture to its own separate page. Then, we add the comic dialogue. My volunteers for this project are Beauregard of this blog fame, and my daughter’s dog Cain the Conqueror. This comic has them musing about their Christmas presents this year.

Next, I’m going to head to Audacity and then record my very best dog impersonations for each of the comics.  For each, I’m going to save the sounds as an individual .wav file.  The teachable moment appears when both dogs are speaking at the same time.  Just make sure to have the two sounds recorded and played back at the same time.  And, remember that Boxers slobber!

Now, there’s some quality comic writing.  From the File Menu, I’m going to export the comic to images.  Comic Life will ask to put them into a folder so that’s great.  Comic Life also numbers them for me.  Most importantly, Comic Life creates the new images with the captions saved on them.

Now, to assemble this masterpiece.

Open Adobe Premiere Elements.  Here, you can sequence the events and put the voices with the pictures.  You can also use all of the effects that are at your disposal.  Be as creative as you want.  Throw in some transitions and other effects.  Don’t have Adobe Premier Elements easily available?  Windows Movie Maker does a nice job too.  Select your media and drag and drop it to the timeline.

Now, it’s just a matter of exporting your beautiful project to your hard drive and you’re good to go.  Looking to embed in a wiki or webpage?  Use the Adobe Media Encoder which is part of the Ministry licensed Adobe Creative Suite CS4 or any other way that you would convert to .flv format.  Then, you’re good to go.

 

Or, at least as good as you can make it!

Nov 30 2009

links for 2009-11-29

Nov 29 2009

Edublogs Awards – Day 3

 

Here’s Day 3 of my nominees for this year’s Edublogs Awards.  This morning takes me to some of the places that I head for resources and inspiration to continue to do whatever I need to do.  As with my previous posts, these nominees form major inspiration for what I do online. 

 

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Best resource sharing blog
Larry Ferlazzo calls everything “The Best of…” and his blog and he devotes considerable time, effort, and space to identifying resources for virtually everything that you might be interested about in education.  It’s a great place to go when you have something specific in mind.  He comments and annotates the resources that he identifies which is always handy to have before you spend the time wandering around an internet resource. 

 

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Best class blog
If I know what’s good for me, I’ve got to recognize the efforts that go into the efforts at Lawfield Elementary School in Hamilton and friend @zbpipe.  It’s hard to stay up with Zoe because she’s doing everything that she can with her students.  Whether it’s skyping with an author, working on her SMART Board, having an open-world test for her students, podcasting, or promoting each of her student blogs, this is one very active and connected classroom.  She documents her experiences online through Twitter and her blog is a launch pad to all of the opportunities made available to her students.  And, she uses the same theme as Larry Ferlazzo on Edublogs so you can’t go too far wrong.

 

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Best elearning / corporate education blog
It was tough to determine where to place this blog and so I’d like to nominate Angela Maiers in this category.  When I created my Alltop account, her RSS feed was the very first that I added and I haven’t looked back.  I had the opportunity to meet this wonderful person at the NECC Conference in Washington and was so impressed because the first thing that she did was listen to get the perspective of the conversation and then jumped in with her well-founded opinions.  Her online resource comes across in the same manner.  It’s not overwhelming, but you get a strong sense that she’s the master of gentle encouragement and her mission statement “Putting Learners and Learning First” really says it all.

 

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Lifetime achievement
It’s interesting that an awards competition that is 6 years old has a lifetime achievement award.  What really is a lifetime in the blogging world?  You would normally think of someone in a walker shuffling down the aisle to put up an award for this!  However, in my mind, there is one person that has made such a significant impact on the way that we think about using the connected world that it makes sense to nominate him.  I listened to Will Richardson at an NECC Conference and brought him into Ontario for his first speaking engagement at the Western RCAC Symposium a couple of years ago.  He stuck around for the second day and introduced consultants to the concept of blogs, wikis, and podcasts.  This was the inspiration that was necessary to set off a whole province on a new perspective of what it means to be connected and what it means for students.  Since that initial appearance, Will has been back many times, talking to Teacher-Librarians, Ontario Teacher Federation groups, school districts, and is now helping to guide the Ontario cohort of the Powerful Learning Practice.  He’s not ready for the walker but continues to exert a strong influence in this sphere.

I can’t imagine a time when I didn’t have access to the excellent resource that I’ve identified throughout this ordeal.   Whether any of the resources that I’ve identified over the past days “wins” or not, I’m just happy that I had the opportunity to identify them to those of you who drop by to take a look at my posts.  Voting concludes on December 16.  I hope that you’ll take the time to recognize those who have been identified here and on other blogs.

Nov 29 2009

links for 2009-11-28

Nov 28 2009

Edublogs Awards – Day 2

There are lots of categories this year and so I’m taking my time to think about what I would consider for nomination in the various categories.

I want to make sure that I’m giving shout outs to the best things that are working for me now.  The operative word, it seems to me, is NOW.  I went through some of the previous year nominees and winners to find that some of the resources have just dropped off the face of our connected reality.  That’s fine.  Hopefully, they have used the opportunity to move on to something better.  But, I think that it’s important to recognize people that are doing things right now.  It’s NOW that makes all of this so important.  So, here are some more of my thoughts about the Edublogs Awards.

 

 

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Best educational wiki
In this category, I would like to nominate the Benson Bobcat Wiki.  This wiki is managed by Teacher- Librarian @kellmoor and is designed to give an entire school a collaboration space.  The wiki is actually in its second incarnation.  The first one was successful and really used as a learning space for all, including the teacher(s).  At the wiki, you’ll find interesting activities – watch for a return of the MeSpace activity designed to talk about internet safety in online user profiles.  This wiki excels at two levels – first it’s a great opportunity for the students at this school and secondly, the original lessons developed are easily modified to other classrooms.

 

 

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Best new blog
Best new blog would be a really tough category to be nominated in.  You never know, really, the goal of the author and whether they’re just experimenting or whether this is their plan for the development of something good.  I’m hoping that by nominating ms. weir’s musings in the category of best new blog that she’ll be inspired to continue to share her thoughts.  She’ll confess to being a relatively new teacher but seems to be taking all of these concepts from zero to getting it in short periods of time and is taking her readers along for the ride.  As an English teacher, her writing level is certainly at the highest, professional level but so are her ideas and insights.  I would have no hesitation recommending this blog for anyone who is asking the question “Why do I want to do all this collaboration stuff?”  I think that’s the highest recommendation that can be given to any educator or to any blogger.  You need to look at this blog.

 

 

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Best educational use of a social networking service
At Belle River District High School, they have used the blogging platform as the basis for their online magazine.  The blog itself is incredible rich with content and makes you think about the possibilities.  Because the driving forces behind it are English teachers, the writing is really at a highly polished level.  I think that it speaks volumes about education and that we don’t have to buy into a compromise of language protocols just because we’re using the web.  I really like the concept of have a student in Grade 9 blogging their Grade 8 to 9 experiences.  Such a unique concept and just reinforces my thought that this is just one of the best educational uses of a social networking service.  So, I nominate The Noble Scene in this category.

More to come tomorrow.

Social Bookmarks:
Nov 28 2009

links for 2009-11-27

Nov 27 2009

Edublogs Awards – Twitter Category

It’s time to consider nominations for the 2009 Edublogs awards.  I hope that everyone takes the time to consider doing something to promote your favourite blogs.  There are lots of blogs that are available for nomination and only a handful will “win” which is pretty typical of awards everywhere.  It’s unfortunate that there have to be declared winners because everyone who participates in this form of communication is a little out there on a limb trying to influence the direction of things, one reader at a time.  By nominating your favourite read, it’s just a nice way to say thanks for those who take the time to work in this media.

There are the big blogging categories and it’s my intention to share what I like over the weekend but there is also an opportunity to recognize “Twitter Uses” which it seems to me really gives the respect due to this micro-blogging service.  So, I’d like to make recognition this morning.

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
How will you ever make a decision in this category?  But, let me nominate a couple of things that have had a significant impact on me.

The first is actually a Twitter list that’s available at:  http://twitter.com/dougpete/ontario-educators.  This is a list dedicated to people that I’ve identified as Ontario Educators.  These are folks that keep it real and in context for me on a daily basis.  They have their own column in my Seesmic Desktop and comment on the happenings in our province and how it applies to us.  At the recent ECOO Conference, I had a chance to meet many of these people face to face at a Tweetup and we had a great time continuing our online conversations to face to face.

The second is actually a hashtag.  http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ontarioplp This is a continuous stream of comments and learning from those of us involved in the Ontario cohort of the Powerful Learning Practice project.  It’s our way to remain connected and communicating between face to face meetings.

Both of these nominees provide a continuous stream of educational consciousness that I highly recommend following.

Best individual tweeter
I’d like to start off by saying that, if you have to follow a sheep, you might as well follow a clever one.  @thecleversheep has a column of his own on my computer.  In a day and age when people claim to be “progressive educators” by copying the actions of others, Rodd Lucier is out front carving new directions for those who would follow him.  I’ve told him a couple of times that he’s probably 2-3 years ahead of us in his ideas and thinking.  While there are bloggers and podcasters and Twitterers and screencasters out there, Rodd uses all of these tools and more to constantly stir the thinking of those who would take the time to reflect.  His website is a stream of thinking about the future and what it might be in education.  Many times, you’ll hear the phrase “He’s worth a follow” – well Rodd is worth a column in Seesmic Desktop or Tweetdeck.  There really is no noise that comes from him; it’s all good and his links will take you far off course to ponder how this might have an impact on your thinking.  In addition, he has an incredible ability to write teasers that force you to follow the link just to find out what he’s found this time around.

The second person that I’d like to nominate in this category is @jeffpulver.  You might find this a little difficult because Jeff is not an educator in the traditional sense.  He’s an entrepreneur with a terrific resume in the realm of the online world.  He hosts breakfasts to bring business folks together to discover what he calls the “State of Now”.  His international 140confs are an opportunity for people to immerse themselves in new and immediate conversations.  I’ve blogged before that education needs to be constantly aware of what is happening outside of school systems.  When you follow Jeff and really reflect upon his message, you can see that it is shaping a new thinking about a connected society and education needs to stand up and take notice.

I like this Twitter category.  It does give an opportunity to give a shout out and recognition to those who are so influential.  I wish them all the best and would encourage you to discover what I’ve discovered with them.

Social Bookmarks:
Nov 27 2009

links for 2009-11-26