Under the Sea Productions, S & K

Our last part was the funnest because we decided that we wanted to make a movie. Unfortunately, the movie will not upload and I have been trying but it will not. However, we have our story board. When she decided that she wanted to make the movie, I was like "OK", how do you want to do it? Since we were doing fish, she decided that she wanted to have a Pets Mart theme in which she came in wanting to buy a fish and I was there to give her the information about each fish in order to help pick out the perfect one. It was a lot of fun and she looked over the tools for creating a movie. She understood everything until the upload portion and that's where she was done. When I was discussing digital storytelling to her she was very interested and told me that it makes learning a little bit more bearable than just reading from a book and was excited about the idea.
Before the production I could have definitely learned how to upload the movie on her computer because it would not work on hers or mine. Also, I could have definitely thought about how to get the information across to her in a way where the understood the first time. I assume that is something I will learn over time though.
Storyboard

Under The Sea Research, S & K

Throughout this process it was different having learned the information and trying to portray it to someone else. I had to think about how to word things many times because my student would look at me with a blank stare and knew I was not making sense. This excercise showed me that I need to think about how I word information presented to my future students. Ironically my student already new alot about what we were doing because she took web mastering in school that year, so quite a bit of the information was old news to her.
I showed her many of the tools we had learned in class, told her look through them, find the ones she liked, and think of ways to use them for projects or research purposes. From what I noticed she found one good search engine that gave her all of the information she needed and she started looking at movie maker to think about movie possibilities.
Our work cited

Stephanie and Kristin, Under the Sea

My student was Kristin and this is her blog.
With this student, I had her think about her favorite subject to learn about. School is out and it is summer time, so I asked her what she learned last year that was very interesting to her. When Kristin's answer to my question was science, I was extremely happy because I know a lot about science. The next step was to find out what she found intriguing and she said fish in the ocean. She had to research this subject while in school, so she enjoyed going into depth about the details she enjoyed most about certain fish. The whole time I wondered what she wanted to learn and what aspect of it throughout the whole process. Again I am a firm believer in choice of the student and that is why I wanted to know what she liked as opposed to something I would find interesting. Guiding without direct instruction.
Activity Plan

Spreadsheets In the Classroom

Today in class we went over spreadsheets and charts that can be created by using tools such as google doc or Microsoft excel. Personally I think that spreadsheets and charts are great ways of portraying statistical information or data found through research about any subject. I can see these tools being used for virtually any subject that students in any grade level can use. It is a great way to bring what you learn in class while integrating technology to provide a simple, clean, and direct way to show whatever it is you are creating a spreadsheet or chart about. The inquiry-based learning style can be used with these tools very easily. By providing a question for the students to research about and have them look into possible answers, the students can collect data to turn into a chart. Plus to go with the inquiry-based learning style the students will take the responsibility to gather the research, answers, and statistics to prove that their answers are correct. Gives them the ability to not depend on the teachers statistics and makes them appreciate the whole experience more. For my activity plan I incorporated the weather and looked up one weeks worth of temperatures. The students could find the high and low of temperatures per day, the average temperature, and the difference between the highs and lows. Globally these tools can be used by having the class put together a research project in which they can publish for anyone to see. It can also be used by finding another classroom somewhere else and having them compare one weeks worth of temperatures which then could further relate to others subjects like geography. The difference could prove that there is a difference in weather everywhere instead of students just thinking it is like there town only and could lessen the egocentric world that most students live in.

A Story About A Hurricane Named Katrina

Storyboards, digital story telling, movie maker and other pieces to the puzzle of creating a great story have been learned this week. Through the experience I have learned that there is more to a movie then just turning the camera on and pressing record. There are rules, shots, angles, storyboards, tools, editing, and finally the final product. Some of our shots included were the medium, long, and short shots. We also included images to break up shots that were longer in time to follow the rule of short segments. Some ways to break up the different segments are to transition by using different effects like fading between shots, adding images, and to use different types of audio for more emphasis to different parts of the movie. Also the rule of thirds was applied to many shots throughout the video.

Our movie was over Hurricane Katrina but was set as an interview between a talk show host and Katrina. The concept included many TEKS, included in our activity plan, and was a way to inform people about hurricanes. This specifically informed people about how Hurricane Katrina happened and was a way for "her" to "tell her side of the story" so people would not be mad at her anymore. Using everything we learned made our movie an effective presentation of what we studied, informed people about hurricanes, and related the information to an actual hurricane that occurred in New Orleans. A movie could be used in your classroom by allowing students to create a more advanced "slide show" over information they had learned. I think that between the students creating a movie, the parents helping the students with the movie, and finally the students and parents commenting on the movies would be a great way for everyone to interact with each other. The more involvement the better and a movie would be a fun way to incorporate everyone. Also an idea that could be used is to have a movie from the beginning/ end of the year with each student talking about their family, expectations of the class, and favorite subject would be very fun to show personal growth throughout the class. The parents could be involved by adding some commentary or pictures they had taken throughout the year of the class or their individual students over school related experiences. Movies or "digital story telling" is such an interactive and fun way to make any assignment more effective with a lot of information related to making a movie in which I plan on using.

Video Storytelling

Video storytelling is an effective tool used to tell a story of information through a narrative, informative, and/or historical point of wiew. This method like digital storytelling can also be used by incorporating may different shots and techniques to make the whole experience for the students and teacher more effective. For people who do not know much at all about the correct way or "play by the rules way" of taking pictures or filming a video, this assignment has been very informative. The video ideas that ran through my mind can encompass so many different types of subjects throughout education; including history, writing, science, and finally math. This activity plan applies to all students who focus on every subject which is great because not all students like history or math. The storyboard is good because it is historical and informative all in one. It follows until the end in many ways. The shots are meant to provide a great sense of background but yet not to distracting, quick in transition without making the whole story feel like a race, and the information spoken is meant to get the point across without being a lecture.

What Is The Sky?

Digital storytelling is form of teaching or presenting that really makes the experience more deep rather than bullets and reading from a screen. There are many ways that you can make your story more appealing by using voice threads, different effects, audacity, and other tools to help with your slideshow. Using audacity you can mix more than one audio to help with multiple clips. It does what it is titled and that is giving students information but more like a story then a lecture. It also can tell a story about a class in regards to what they do for work and shows each individual student as opposed to a few at a time.

What Is The Sky? What are different seasons the sky produces, what are the characteristics, and how do they affect us? This is my overall activity plan for one part of the unit plan and the three unit questions that go along with it. Throughout the slide show made for it shows a general overview over weather, the seasons, and how all of these characteristics affect our everyday lives. Since online resources can easily be used to check the weather and it is done everyday by most people, there were many possible sites to go to for information. The slide show was very effective in the first part of my unit plan because it was an easy way to show many parts of weather in a quick and clean way. Other ideas I can think about future ones could be incorporating a voice thread with me or a future student giving an up date of the weather as if it were on the television done by a meteorologist. I feel that the slide show and the voice thread, even though it was not used in this particular assignment, could be used for any subject and could make the learning experience even more beneficial.

What Is The Sky?

View more OpenOffice presentations from Stephanie .

Internet Resources

Most of my experience with Internet resources have come strictly from google or the school library, however now I have learned that there are many other search engines out there to be used for this assignment and for my future classroom. For my future students I would love to incorporate chat as much as possible by making it an easy way to communicate with each other while they are at home or while they are in class and can't communicate because the classroom needs to be quite. The main reason why is because I think that while the students are doing group projects chat is an easy way to communicate without having to talk and the students can receive quick responses. Same with emails however you cant get a responses nearly as quickly. With the emails we learned about some links like ePals that would be useful when trying to connect with other classes, schools, or students across the country. This is great and should be used to make a broader more diverse type of technological conversation that students can get. Then by having the students reflect on the experience while following along with the overall assignment, I feel it would be a great use of a great resource. There are some other resources I have learned about but more along the lines of search engines like Awesome Library that give really good results appropriate for young students. These search engines, image, video, and blog resources can all be used for projects or research for information on topics learned throughout the year. My unit plan is very science oriented so the resources online would be beneficial in supplying some good information. Finally, the internet resources I found that can be found and be used as visuals throughout the lesson or student presentations.
Website citations are the internet resources.

Technology In the Classroom

When I think about how important technology is to students in today's society it is common sense that blogs and other types of technology resources should be used in the lessons as much as possible. I can think of two ways that I would like to incorporate blogs into my classroom which are my own personal class blog and then student blogs. For my own personal class blog I would like to have it set up so that I can talk about what the class will be doing for the week, any up coming events or news that the parents should be aware of, and a way for the parents to comment in regards to the classroom. I think it would be a good way to send major news out to the parents and keep them informed as much as possible creating a united classroom. Of course if parents don't have Internet I will always send home letters but most of the time those documents get lost and one on one conversations will still be an option. The second way would be for the students to use as a type of journal. Having one journal for the students to go online and blog about what they found out in science that day for the entire year would be great. Also for the subject they choose to blog about for the journal they could insert links to support what they found or links they found in the process of research. Not all journals have to be in a notebook. Also for group projects students could set up a blog if they choose to.
After watching some links for blogs I found that they are a more advanced way to journal information for more people to see. They can insert more links that go directly to them and give the students more options. Also, they seem to allow the students more freedom, creativity, and possible group collaboration that normal journals don't offer. One link in specific was simple and just listed many reasons for blogs to be used. Also another link link had 6 & 7 years old's opinion on blogs which was very informative. Showed how they actually feel as opposed to our ideal theory of blogs.

Inquiry and Project Based Learning

In the first week of this class we learned about inquiry and project based learning. From what I have learned about these learning styles I believe that they are great and would like to use them in my own future classroom. For the essential question and unit plan I have made, I tried to incorporate what I had learned into the questions and TEKS used so the students could get the most out of the entire unit. The learning styles try to use as much real life experience as possible while allowing the students to lead thier learning through group collaboration, questions, and reflection without to much teacher control. With these learning styles teachers are mentors who help guide and not people who just give out the answers. In my unit plan investigation and many resources will be used so that the students really absorb the information while learning what other resources, besides the book, are out thier.
Collaborative
Individual