Thing 21 - podcasts and photo story

This was a tough one for me. I had to go out and buy a mic and figure out the settings to make it record properly, download audacity, download the lame encoder from audacity, think of what to say, learn how to use the software, and me without even an ipod to my name! Now comes the hard part, exporting it to this blog post. Here goes... This will be used for a Texas trivia contest over the course of the year for our fourth graders. Book trailers, audio reminders for directory paths, student storytelling, lots of cool things...

The next task is easier for me as I have already explored Photo Story this summer for my twin boys' high school graduation retrospective. I had lots of fun playing with the music and old photos. I didn't have a mic at the time, and it would have been fun to add my comments to some of the pictures. Unfortunately, it is very long and would not load so I tried a shortened version below. I may have to play with the file size some more (still 2M) to get it to load. It was the highlight of the day for my family members. I can see this in place of biography reports, author studies, history events, U.S. state reports, almost anything ....

Thing 20 - video

Youtube -- familiar territory at last! And I have also used Zamzar before to show a Youtube video at school. Blinkx is amazing, but I think Google Video has more search power which, as always, is both a blessing and a curse. The Portal to Texas History will be very helpful with fourth grade Texas history classes as well. I knew the website but the trailer is fun.

Teacher Tube is new to me and it probably is not blocked at my school. It has much less offensive material, but not nearly the choice in imho. I think it is fantastic for finding out what other schools are doing with video and I really think we'll be making a claymation video, or a storytelling video this coming school year. Here is one example I found.



I sure hope this works. I've always loved this Leo Lionni story.

Here is another video discovered via the Cool Cat Teacher blog on a new way to teach at Woodland Parks High School in Colorado - lectures at home and homework done at school, a flipped classroom.