Sunday, March 8, 2009

Using Voicethread in the Classroom Part 1

There have been many reviews about VoiceThread out there, but I wanted to give everyone a "from-the-trenches" look at the power of this 2.0 app!

Our Global Issues Project is the culminating activity from my digital literacy unit in Language Arts 9. Students are challenged to look at their position in the world, their perceived power, and what they as teenagers can do to change things. The song Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer is the jumping off point for this project. 

Students listen to the song, then blog about the meaning of the song. They then listen to the song and again respond in the blog about the meaning of the lyrics. Finally, they watch the music video several times and pick out all of the keywords, imagery, and allusions they can. This is done with a graphic organizer in Google Docs which they share with each other. I'll share another awesome use of Google Docs later this week!

Students then must pick an issue that is important to them, create a video essay depicting the issue, and choose complimentary quotes to display in their video. We use iMovie to complete the videos because of the ability to use the Ken Burns' effect with images. Just a small amount of movement and zoom can provide a lot of interest and depth to already powerful images. 

Note: There is a teachable moment here that you should incorporate. We talk about digital citizenship a lot in class, and the use of creative commons and copyright, so I have my students select photos that they have permission for, which they then have to include in a photo bibliography complete with links to the source of each photo. 

Where does VoiceThread fit it to all of this? 

If this was last year's class, the project would have ended with the completed videos and students handing in their accompanying written materials. I've seen VoiceThread and had already signed up for an account last year, but never thought I could use it for this project. Connecting with other like minded people (Thanks Neil and Deana) has taken this project to the next level. No longer do students just simply hand in the project. We now use VT as a powerful peer and self-evaluation and reflection tool. 

Neil Stephenson's work with VT was the starting off point for me. His approach fit what I wanted to do to a "T". It took a while, but I figured out how to upload a custom CSV file I created in Excel, which gave each student a username and password based on their email account. Next I signed up for a class subscription in VoiceThread, which was the best 60 bucks I've spent for in my class for a long time! Students logged in and within 10 minutes we had exported from iMovie as "web quality" onto their accounts. 

Here's where we hit a snag. One student's videos would not post. Our technology integrator Terry Kaminski was in the room observing and he spent half the class converting this poor student's video in various formats. Meanwhile, the rest of the students had finished their uploads, but I couldn't seem to add them all to the class account, some were complaining about how grainy their videos were, it was going downhill fast! Will there be VoiceThread HD? I have 3 or 4 students who already want it! 

I pulled something special out of my special place, and within 30 minutes of starting, we could see each other's videos, and the power of VT became very apparent. Students used guiding questions to comment with voice and text on each others videos (Thanks again Neil). They gave feedback to their classmates about what images where most powerful, what they were most proud of in their own videos, and what their peers could improve on. 


The best part of the peer assessment was how well the students responded to the feedback when it was done through the web. It was interactive and was constructive and all students were very pleased to use the feedback to improve their projects before submitting them. I also asked students to include a personal reflection on their videos (only a few did). This will be more integrated next time around. 

I will certainly be using VT often in my teaching. I'm just scratching the surface of using this technology as an assessment for learning tool. Anyone else using VT? How does it stack up to using Youtube's Annotations? I'm thinking of creating a private channel and trying it out that was as well. Have you used Youtube for this purpose?

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Reflections From a Rookie ADE




"Too often we are so preoccupied with the destination, we forget the journey."

This past week I received an email telling me I had been selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator, class of 2009! After a lot of hard work, (although admittedly I've only scratched the surface) the efforts I have put into integrating technology into my classroom and in my school has resulted in this amazing opportunity. 

A couple weeks ago I had commented to my colleague Terry Kaminski that while I would be disappointed if I wasn't selected, the process of application was a powerful learning experience. So the journey of reflection began and I set out to apply to be an Apple Distinguished Educator. 

I owe this opportunity to my students who have become my guinea pigs when I get crazy ideas for teaching with technology. My colleagues "in house" have given me invaluable advice and a place to talk my ideas through. To Twitter, Google Docs, RSS, Voicethread, Animoto, and all of the web 2.0 tools: thanks! To the new colleagues I have joined to create powerful learning opportunities for my students in Language Arts and Multimedia,  your contributions have been invaluable. 

Mostly, as many out there have already commented, it is the interconnected HUMAN interactions across the globe which make us better teachers. They remind us that that the internet and web 2.0 tools are just pencils and hammers that are useless without proper application in the hands of students with solid pedagogical foundations. It takes the creative teacher to find ways to incorporated it seamlessly into their teaching and to make it meaningful to students.  

Here's to the unlimited realms of learning that will, and to the new additions to our personal learning networks that happen every day.  I am very excited to have a new cadre of people within the ADE Group to share and learn with.

Photo Credit
http://flickr.com/photos/lushpup/3321655795/sizes/o/






Sunday, March 1, 2009

Addicted to the Blogosphere

So, It's 11:30 pm, and this is how my night has gone so far...

7-8PM: shovel my grandparents' driveway

8:03- Check my blog roll
8:20- Do the dishes
8:40- Check my blog roll
9:00- Check email and then read more blogs
9:30-10:00- Snuggle with my 3 month old daughter and skype with a friend (while keeping an eye on Google Reader)
10:00-10:15- Search for the latest copy of L&L magazine I have misplaced
10:15- 10:30- Check and read blogs
10:30- Go to bed
10:31- Read more blogs on my iPod touch.
11:25- Turn off the light
11:30- Tet up to blog because my mind is racing about many of the great posts I have read this weekend! I need to post!

I guess the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem.

David Warlick's article about PLN's in the latest edition of L&L is a great guide to helping newbs to the world of blogging but it also provides sound advice to us addicts. I will be sorting my blog roll more effectively as of tomorrow morning! I really like his categories of Daily, Weekly and Monthly reading. 

The problem is- oh sorry I have 17 new blog posts to read, I'll be right back.

The solution to this is organizing my blog roll into an informative and effective content delivery system. Warlick also suggests loading up on blogs and using RSS feeds to gather information you are currently interested in rather than just adding things haphazardly as I often find myself. This is also a by-product of my late entry into blogging. 

Currently, thanks to my fellow ADE Neil Stephenson, I have been trying to take my projects to the next level with more self and peer assessment with feedback loops. In his recent post about peer feedback Neil comments:

Students should have as many opportunities as possible to share their work, hold it up to standards and rubrics, receive feedback from as many voices as possible, and then have time to revise and improve. I think this final step is so important. If we value student feedback and self-assessment, we must honour this by providing time for students to improve their work after receiving suggestions for improvement.

This comment came at exactly the right time in my teaching, which is another plug for the power of blogs in teachers' lives. I am in the middle of my digital literacy unit and we do a global issues project using iMovie and flickr images to help students discover the power of images. I start the unit with the song Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer. They also have to blog daily responses to images, video clips and current issues. (Don't tell them that it is a writing unit in disguise!) The missing piece of my global issues project was the peer feedback piece. I dove in head first after advice from Neil and introduced Voicethread. I will also be giving students 3 more classes this week to improve their projects after receiving feedback from myself and their peers with the project rubric in hand (on our class wiki). Tomorrow's class blog post will also ask students what they thought of Voicethread, because I asked them to bear with me as they were effectively technology guinea pigs last Thursday in my class. 

More reflections on my class' Voicethread experience to follow.

I've just completed the blogging addiction test. Which you should take as well. It says I'm 77% addicted to blogging. A pretty fair assessment. How addicted are you? How has reading blogs or blogging changed your teaching? 

It's now 12:14- I'm going to check my blog roll one more time...:)