Animoto - Gr8Ness

Animoto is a web application that takes your images and a song of your choice and creates a short video with incredible image transitions that sync with the rise & fall of vocals, rhythm, etc in the song.  Before using Animoto in the classroom, you will have to register. Animoto offers several pricing options for the average consumer, but educators get an all access pass, worth $30 a year, for free. This will allow you to create an unlimited number of online slideshows that are not restricted in length. There are numerous ways that you can use Animoto in the classroom. It is a tool that has applications across the K-12 curriculum, and can even be a great free replacement for PowerPoint. Biographies, field trips, digital storytelling, science projects and more can all be captured with this quick and easy slideshow tool.

I decided to try out Animoto for the first time, and I love it already. Now I can make exciting slideshows that really capture everyones attention.

*BONUS* Animoto also has a free app where you can make videos using your phone. Here is one that I created straight from my iphone! 

http://goo.gl/zhxR

District Data Strategies

To find out more about the way that my district handles data, I talked to the CTA, campus technology assistant, at my school. We discussed many factors that play a role in the framework of maintaining the information for a district as large as mine and this is what I gathered:

The district has set up several difference drives that are backed up onto their servers. Each drive has a different purpose for the various levels of use within the district. Each teacher has a home drive where they can store all any of the important files that they would need for work on a daily basis. Then each campus has a faculty drive where teachers can upload files to collaborate and share. At my campus each grade level or department has an individual folder within the faculty drive for continuous collaboration. For example, my grade level places all of the powerpoint presentations, links to websites, and files needed for specific lessons into our 3rd grade folder for easy access should you need it. Also, our principal has instated a new rule that all lesson plans should be entered into the faculty share folder. This allows each grade to input plans on their own time and flexibility for the principal to access the plans at any given moment. Last, our district has a separate drive for students to maintain data. The entire drive is accessible from any computer on campus to allow student to continue to work on documents from the lab and classroom.

One new feature that my district has recently added is a portal that allows teachers to access their home drive and faculty drive through the internet at home. This is one of the best data strategies that has been implemented thus far! (In my opinion!!) I cannot tell you how many times I started working on a file at work and forgot to put it onto my flash drive so that I could continue to work on it from home. It has been a life saver.

One last thing that we talked about was the data storage and backing up procedures. The district backs up all drives on a daily basis in case something, like the unfortunate accident at my school where an anonymous teacher deleted our entire faculty share, happens to damage it.

Mouse Mischief is here!!!!

Microsoft has just released a new add-in for the PowerPoint program which allows student to play a more active role in learning. Think of it as a convenient, and much cheaper, way to have student response systems in your classroom. At my school we do not have student response systems available however, purchasing 25 wireless mice....no problem. We could even have a set to check out in the library so that more could use the resource!!!

Here is how it works. Once teachers download the free add-in they can create activities such as questions, polls, and drawing activities that all students will be engaged in through a wireless mouse. Students can even work in teams to answer questions!!! Think about the fun games you could play with that!

BONUS: They are currently having a contest to give away a free class set!!!

Check out their website here

The Beginning of my Twitter Addiction

I was always very skeptical of using Twitter. I always hear about Lindsay Lohans newest tweets and what Miley Cyrus said on twitter. So I always just assumed it was just another way for celebrities to talk about their lives to their fans. However, after I attended the TCEA conference in Austin this year, I gained a whole new perspective. At the conference they had live feeds of tweets about the conference continually streaming on television screens throughout the conference. Every presenter that I watched mentioned something about twittter. So, I began thinking maybe there is more to it than just celeb gossip and if Lindsay Lohan can figure it out then so can I!!! I started up a twitter account around February of this year and decided to follow a few of the edtech names I had been hearing so much. One being Will Richardson the author of our Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts book. Some of my other favorite tweeters are:

http://twitter.com/Brian_ThomasTCI

http://twitter.com/web20classroom

http://twitter.com/NMHS_Principal

http://twitter.com/mjgormans

http://twitter.com/ktenkely

http://twitter.com/tammyworcester

http://twitter.com/Jasna_A

As I followed these people I started to make connections to other edtech-ers with great ideas and pretty soon I was hooked. Now I look forward to reading through all of the tweets every night because inevitably I learn about some great new website or blog post every time!

Video Reflection

Whew!!!! I finally got it working. To solve my dilemma, I ended up using an online file converting website to convert the original .mov files to .avi. For some reason my computer attempted the .avi files just fine and kept the audio with it. One downfall of going this route is that by converting the files, I lost some of the quality of the actual videos. They seem more blurry from a distance than the originals. Once I had all of the video clips converted to the .avi file type it was very easy to work with Windows Movie Maker to create our poetry masterpiece. I actually downloaded the newest Live version of the program and was very pleased with the ease of using it.


I did learn a few things during the actual filming of the video clips. I had to film about 16 different shots/clips with different students. While filming it seemed like the sound levels were equal between the various students however once they were loaded onto the movie maker program the volume varies a bit. This could also have something to do with the conversion of the files. Another thing that I learned was that my camera has a tendency to auto-focus at random times. Not sure what makes it do this but I noticed that it only happens when I am actually holding the camera instead of placing it on a stable object. I coud e compensating for my shaky hands.