Reflections of a Techie

Amazing Voicethread Projects

Here are some of the amazing VTs that I've found so far.

Another Episode in the Continuing Soap Opera of Getting Technology to Work...Voicethread and webcams

The soap opera continues.

I've gotten my Triangles Scavenger Hunt started, have successfully added some pictures that students have sent me and even added comments.  The Voicethread site is the easy part.  I just have had a million problems getting the devices needed to do all this working....the webcam has been difficult.  Probably should have bought a more expensive one (I tried to go cheap since this experiment is all out of my meager pocketbook) and that had some reasonable documentation.   Go and see our first try and leave a comment.  The kids would appreciate it....so would I. 

Nevertheless, we have triangle pictures up there and the kids were thrilled to make some comments on how they believed a couple of triangles should be classified.  Now I know this isn't the deepest of conversations to have but I believe it is a good, safe beginning project.

We also created a broadcast of our Evaporation lab yesterday.  Got the camera working and forgot to click the record button during the first science class.  Now isn't that a classic goof-up???  Then I remembered the click the record button during the second science class but realized afterwards that the microphone we used isn't powerful enough to pick up sound in the midst of a whole class work.   They look great but it's a silent movie!!!  Probably another classic goof-up.

I never realized how much learning would go into this.  Even something as simple as making the introductory comment on our VT was challenging.  First of all...does every hate the way they look and sound?  I'm no exception.  My first attempt had the camera angle so low that I could only see how big my nose was....no ability to think about what I was saying.   So I moved the camera higher.  That was difficult to get all the duct tape to stick.  THEN I realized those little prongs are so it hooks onto the monitor.  Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Honestly I think all those mistakes are the things that keep many teachers from continuing.  You feel so dumb and helpless...I asked my Twitter friends for help and some of them actually offered ideas. thank you everyone...you're the best.   But the most basic of my concerns went unanswered as I am sure that people couldn't believe I was so dense.  It is way easier than when I was pioneering in the early 1990s but it is still not easy enough to get mass adoption.

Solving how to get this stuff into the classroom easily is the hurdle that 21st century learning advocates must conqueror.  I think if you're a techie it seems easy...just keep trying and eventually it will work.  But that's not the case with most people....they can't tolerate feeling inadequate and they quit.

Can you hear the organ music starting up....this must be the end of this episode of our soap opera but don't worry...there will be another episode undoubtably next week when we try again!!!!

Shifting Theory into Practice--Web 2.0 Interactivity

By George I really think I've not only got it but I'm really getting it.

Twitter and Voicethread may be the mediums of my understanding, but I think I'm finally moving into the next phase of growth.  OK I've always gotten that Web 2.0 is interactive but I never fully understood how that might happen for me....and the students that I serve.

Just been working with Twitter.  At first it seemed like I  wasn't really interested in the same things that "my" network was writing about.  So I deleted some people and added some others.  Eureka....then I got it.  "My network" started to have more things about which I care.  I am being transformed from the passive member into a dynamic learning environment for me.  Tom Barrett has written about this idea and has some terrific graphics that cemented my own thinking.  And that's the crux of what a personal learning network does...it helps you flesh out what you think, helps you formulate the ideas you want to persue and gives you feedback in doing that.

Voicethread is where I think I'm putting those same notions into action with my students.  We are developing a simple, first time project on classifying triangles.  It's something that stumps many 6th graders...so why not let them take photos from their worlds, post them and have a conversation about which method of classification best describes these triangles.

Will it help them on the state assessment?  You know that's the question that everyone wants you to answer before you do anything.  Honestly I don't know.  But I don't think it could hurt and maybe it will be 1) more engaging for them and 2) help us incorporate more authoring tools for them.  Now I know this project is very teacher directed and doesn't have its origin from students.  You have to start somewhere and this is my where.

I can tell you that one of my early adopter kids has taken the seeds sown by the Triangle project (in its still infancy stage) and create his own account.  He is doing a social studies project about ancient China and got my teaching partner to let him use VT to present his research.  So it begins!!!!!

Astronaut Stephen K. Robinson, STS-114--cool image

This image inspires us to think bigger than our Earth.  It ignites my spirit of adventure.  It makes me remember back to gathering in my elementary school cafeteria to squint a TV up on the stage where John Glenn and other Gemini flights would blast off.  Hundreds of us looking at a 15" TV.  We were excited, stunned to think that this could happen.

So now NASA posts these kinds of images so we can see something even better than my long-ago TV.  Everyday!!!!

Tiles in Math: Flickr strikes again

tiles,
originally uploaded by Claudecf.

This photo will be a perfect way to speak "math" using percents, decimals and fractions.    It should inspire my students to seek out there own kinds of photos that could be represented by different kinds of math language.

My first audio file project of a teacher meeting--using Audacity and uploading audio to Typepad

Well, I've finished my first attempt at producing some kind of reflective audio file of teacher's deliberating about curriculum design.  I think I found myself too absorbed in the most interesting parts of the conversation and then worrying about how to operate my iPod.  But I did manage to gather a couple of audio voice notes into Audacity.

It wasn't as easy to edit the audio as I remember GarageBand being, though.  I couldn't figure out how to position the playheads at the just the right place.  So I'm not very happy with some of  it and I would have included more little bits and pieces of other people's voices had I known how to do this...

Download 08012005meeting.mp3

But it's a start and I felt like I needed to get going with my experiments.  People were very happy to accomodate my efforts for the most part.  I also think that some of what I recorded will be excellent to have when we must present this curriculum to the school board's review committees.  These are authentic teacher voices saying why their work is important, valid and useful.  Hopefully I will get better at editing and can provide a much better set of opinions.

Hopefully I will also gather steam for folks listening to this and leaving their ideas. The notion that these voices are here for people to react to and to stimulate thinking.  WOW.  If that would happen, I'd be thrilled.  We'll see.

Lastly I've never uploaded any content like this onto my blog.  So I'm wasn't sure how this would work...so far so good and it uploads like any other file.  That was probably the easiest part of this effort.

Morphing Podcasts from Talking at You to Talking with You

After listening to Amy's Gahran's podcast about what is podcasting, I'm being to refine my idea of what a podcast needs to be...now I'm coming to understand that they are conversations...they need to be interactive and responsive to the audience. Having listeners respond with comments helps to build the quality of what is said.  So given that I think it might be a fabulous way to engage my students and their parents into coming to understand more about conceptual-based math.  Instead of just sharing and then going onto the new podcast, it would become a "component" or instructional tool.  There's a terrific show at Learning Times Network that has a panel that is exploring this idea.

I think this would best workout if I were to start off a unit with some basic comments...maybe the overview concepts that we will be learning.  Then use my students to elaborate on what I've said and react to it.  Use the blog to house notes/illustrations/diagrams to enhance what is being said.  I can use my voice recorder attached onto my iPod to capture recordings to combine and edit for my information.

Using Audacity for my classroom podcasting

I've ordered my voice recorder for the iPod.  Had to settle on the Belkins or iTalk device.  Since I don't know a thing it was tough, but after reading Amazon's reviews I purchased the Belkins.  Probably the wrong thing, but I couldn't just be frozen with indecision anymore.

Then I did a bit of scouting around for some instructions.  I knew that the Learning Times Network had some good stuff.  They use Elluminate so you can see a shared application demonstration.  What I didn't know is that there is a Learning Times Network in Australia.  Bingo.  I just finished listening to a one hour tutorial/presentation on how to use Audacity.  I actually think I might know how to get started now.

I also found a reference to another blog, Audio Activism, that has quite a few tutorials that can help me put my hopes into action.  I'm going to download Audacity and hook my son's old microphone (used to play CounterStrike!!!) and give it shot. 

In this session, they talked at length about having students do recording and editing them down.  That is exactly what I've wanted to do.  It sounds like the beginning is a bit rough but what isn't these days.  Apple has tons of examples of how other teachers have already tried this.  I'm following their lead and sticking close to what has already worked.  My only twist is that I'm doing it in math and science.