More Google Sites!?

This week in class we worked on another Google sites assignment. In a previous reflection I told the world how I felt about Google Sites. All of the things we have to do for this assignment can be done on my UEN and I think UEN lookes nicer and is already organized well for this purpose. So maybe I will want a classroom website on Google sites if I'm unfortunate enough not to have access to UEN. Like, if I end up teaching at a privare school. I don't know if you have to teach at a public school to use my UEN?

On a HAPPY note, our digital story is finished. I'm getting ready to burn it to a CD, but it is also published here for all to see.

Our Digital Story

Photo Story

I love this program. It does have a few limitations, like not letting you animate titles and not letting you overlap imported sound files. Overall you get a great looking project with a lot of ease. I can see my 5th or 6th graders using this program easily. I'm looking forward to seeing how easy it is to upload it to my blogg. I would like to create a personal movie for my familly blogg. Can't wait for you to see how great our digital story is.

More about digital stories

In Class this week we learned a little about Audacity. I'm excited about this software. For some time I've wondered how Students could record themselves at a station in the class room. I think having them answer assessment questions orally would be a good way to asses content knowledge. But an oral quiz given individually by the teacher is time consuming. If they could record themselves during a station this could give the teacher added insight into thier understanding. This could be a good pre-writing tool. Students could record themselves telling the story or giving free association ideas about a subject. This would be helpful because many children find it cumbersome to write all of their thoughts or to keep up with their thoughts with pencil and paper. The draw back to this idea is transcribing their recording. Maybe a parent volunteer. A CD of students stories in their own voice, poem recitations and songs would be a fabulous addition to their portfolio.

Our digital story is coming along nicely. We just need to record our narration and find some music we like then we are ready to plug it all in. I can't wait to get started on photo story.

Digital Story

This week in class we went learned more about digital stories. I partnered with Brittany. We are excited about our topic: Child labor in late 1800's early 1900's. We found some great photo's and quotes. So far I think what we've worked on influences and touches. I'm going to be extra aware to make sure it informs. This seems tricky right now because we want to avoid describing or narrating the images. I'm looking forward to learning the new software, photo story. I'm most excited to learn how to pan across an image.

What Our Snowmen are Doing

In class yesterday our teacher, Mary Sowder, was modeling cooperative learning. She read us a story about snowmen and in groups we made our own.