Skype Session 2

I must admit that I am getting hooked on the ideas of skyping both for myself in terms of connecting with far flung family members and a brother in the Service, but also as a teacher. While I still don't have my own classroom after 2 years searching...I have gained so many ideas of how this classroom technology can be used! Lisa posted a video from the classroom of Ms. Dunsinger which I was blown away by. Lisa's Blog  With students going back to their neighborhood schools, teachers are incorporating a multitude of learners, with and without disabilities into their classrooms. Having worked with children and teens with Autism, making a video to introduce them to the space they will be coming to seems like such a no brainer, yet I have never seen it done, nor thought to do it myself!  This use of technology is even easier with small devices such as flip cams, with these, we can record the daily happenings in our classrooms, even students can be incorporated in this recording process.
Ms Dunsinger's blog is motivating for beginning teachers, like myself. I especially like the story telling aspect that was recently posted. This can give students the chance to post their stories online, collaborate and expand stories and allow parents to view what their student is working on in school. I always thought that creating a blog, wiki space etc would be one more thing I would have to keep up after school hours.
Our skype session with Ms Dunsinger and her students opened my eyes to the fact that we can allow students to take the lead on this classroom technology. This session also let me see how useful Skype can be when teaching classrooms to be "global learners". We can easily collaborate with students in different countries ( as we just did), different states or towns. We can compete, collaborate and learn from one another in a way that was not an option when I was a student.

Digital Storytelling

 

http://karinebaghdasaryan.edublogs.org/



Digital Story Telling was first introduced to me at the end of my student teaching experience. My cooperating teacher was the most technologically savvy teacher in the building and thus passed on bits and pieces of this know how to me. Throughout my time there, students had been working on recording their Reptile Reports and syncing their voices with illustrations. What better way to make writers workshop meaningful? The students were writing for a purpose, and to them, this was better than being "published" in the traditional sense where their work is laminated and compiles into one classroom book. At the end of my time there, the class made me a digital story, with photographs of each child, accompanied by there voices giving a farewell message. These final products can be put on disk and copied for each child.

I loved the following youtube video depicting the process in a third grade classroon. The teacher narrates the "how to" video with pictures of her students and explains her process in terms that are very understandbale.



I have also been playing around with animoto and inserting my own pictures from trips or events. I have done this before in MovieMaker and played music along with the "movie" as I saw you could do in Animoto, but I am still wondering how I am going to record a voice without the use of a microphone. Students without these tools in their classroom would still be able to see their movie but I feel it would decrease the overall experience if their voices were not a part of the project.