Mrs LindaYollis, is a classroom teacher from California, USA. I've always enjoyed her class site for not only the variety of resources and work that she's posted but also the interactive nature of her students work and site. I've spoken about this before but a recent exchange between our classrooms has reinforced to me about how vital it is to involve your students in a rich collaborative task.
Having been online now for three years its fair to say there are a significant number of classrooms online. I try and get out and about as much as possible, leaving comments on students work, and having the members of my classroom do the same but generally I only persist if there's comments and communication coming back the other way. One of the things that initially caused me to connect to Will Chamberlain, Joe McClung and Jarrod Lamshed from At the Teachers Desk was the fact that amongst these educators there was feedback and feedforward for the students in our classroom from the point of first contact.
Mrs Yollis has take time and care to respond to comments that we've left on her site and highlight the contribution that individual students have made. I have seen the affect this has had on our students and how well they have responded to it. Early this year Mrs Yollis and her class produced a video entitled 'Lets Learn Spanish'. While we could have responded, and we did respond by commenting, I felt that it would be an excellent opportunity to film our students in an interactive example. We did so and the students were really enthused and engaged by the task. Mrs Yollis also mentioned the fact that they would do something similar with one of our tutorials. Lo and behold on Thursday we found a video that was produced in response to work that we have posted online.
As far as I am concerned this ticks all the boxes in terms of being a higher order activity for our students. Its empowering, the students have had a meaningful experience, its involved our students as global citizens and they've made a meaningful contribution (in forms of teaching) to students in another part of the world. I would implore everyone reading this to think about this in terms of commenting and interacting with other classroom sites. While the commenting is a vital part of the learning process just as important is interacting with students in a collaborative sense, if you haven't tried something like this think about it, I cannot recommend it enough! On an educational level I would also like to thanks Mrs Yollis and her class for their help with this work.
Showing posts with label interaction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interaction. Show all posts
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
I've never been to Italy...
MusicAtAmbrit has left a new comment on your post "Tamaki Int. - Cultural Festival Montage":
Hi, Tamaki! Thanks for teaching us the Sasa! We are performing it this Thursday at our annual Dance Festival in Rome, Italy. Our students love it! Warm regards from us all at Ambrit Rome International School
This message is a post from material that my old class completed last year, as we did a series of lessons about 'How to Sasa' to perform a Samoan Sasa (slap dance). I'm not a Samoan - I'm a palangi (European) teacher. The site isn't active any more. I've never had any contact with the school who left the comment. As I stated when I started writing this, I've never been to Italy. None of last years class would really have known anything about Italy, but they have taught them something - and students learning from their work, who have never met them have taken part of their culture (in this case Samoan) and are performing it on the other site of the world.
That's a huge head trip.
I just think to me this email underlines the power of the internet of Web 2.0 technologies that students from 2008 can have such an affect. The work they created last year is still a resource for people around the world to use. That students who have found it online have learnt from it and are using it at a festival in Italy.
I know the students would be very proud. I know I am, and this email is probably one of the most positive things that I will receive this year.
Myles Webb/NZ Waikato (formerly tamakitoday from tamakitoday.blogspot.com)
melvilleroom8.blogspot.com
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Adding Video to Your Blog
There's people out there that do this very successfully, certainly a lot better than I do. One of the reasons that I have so much profession respect for Jarrod Lamshed, Will Chamberlain and Joe McClung is there all teachers with blogs that promote the use of video for sharing. Nothing comes close to being able to get a 'feel' for a classroom than being able to view it.
Not so long ago I was asked by another teacher how to create a video for a blog. Now this in itself isn't a major, although I would say that I've taken it for granted somewhat. What really surprised me is that the IT person said that he'd have to tutor him about it for a week or so and didn't have the time. That led to me thinking that I really should explain how I do it as to me its straightforward, and ask Jarrod, Will and Joe to explain how they all go about it.
For my educational site I try and post once a day. Although that's a little difficult at times once you have the students 'humming' its relatively straight forward and video is a huge part of it. I take the opportunity to video as many school events as possible, or things from an educational perspective that I think the (online) audience would find interesting. Its that old cliche but some of the most viewed material that I've produced has been complete accidents. Our most popular language series in 2008 'Learn to Speak Samoan' came about as an accident because I had a charged camera, some free time and a student who didn't speak English. Our Girls Rugby videos which became firm favourites were a result of having footage that we were using for training and drills turned over to a wider audience.
I use a standard video camera without additional microphone (currently its a Canon MV800i) and a tripod. I then use a firewire capable to port the material across to movie maker. I use Photostory to create a five second link to the blog for before and at the end for the credits. I keep the videos no longer than three minutes. When publishing for uploading to blogger I generally don't upload anything bigger than 30 megs. I believe that the limit for files is 55 meg.
That's it.
I probably should have an individual sound mic, I know that I should use a program a bit more advanced that movie maker. I have used Moviemaker simply because I'm comfortable with it and its straightforward. I know there's better programs out there, but its always been adequate. Now that in New Zealand were into Term Two I have spent last term training a team of students to do all the filming and the editing. This term I look forward to viewing the finished product online and (hopeful) approving it for publication.
What I would encourage to anyone whose running a blog to think about publishing video footage, students really respond well to it (so much more so than written text or static photographs I believe) and it gives your auidence a greater understanding of others. Now there's also the whole idea of broadcasting/streaming live from your classroom, and I lookforward to reading from our experts on how that's done as that's something that's probably straightforward but I know nothing about the logistics of.
Not so long ago I was asked by another teacher how to create a video for a blog. Now this in itself isn't a major, although I would say that I've taken it for granted somewhat. What really surprised me is that the IT person said that he'd have to tutor him about it for a week or so and didn't have the time. That led to me thinking that I really should explain how I do it as to me its straightforward, and ask Jarrod, Will and Joe to explain how they all go about it.
For my educational site I try and post once a day. Although that's a little difficult at times once you have the students 'humming' its relatively straight forward and video is a huge part of it. I take the opportunity to video as many school events as possible, or things from an educational perspective that I think the (online) audience would find interesting. Its that old cliche but some of the most viewed material that I've produced has been complete accidents. Our most popular language series in 2008 'Learn to Speak Samoan' came about as an accident because I had a charged camera, some free time and a student who didn't speak English. Our Girls Rugby videos which became firm favourites were a result of having footage that we were using for training and drills turned over to a wider audience.
I use a standard video camera without additional microphone (currently its a Canon MV800i) and a tripod. I then use a firewire capable to port the material across to movie maker. I use Photostory to create a five second link to the blog for before and at the end for the credits. I keep the videos no longer than three minutes. When publishing for uploading to blogger I generally don't upload anything bigger than 30 megs. I believe that the limit for files is 55 meg.
That's it.
I probably should have an individual sound mic, I know that I should use a program a bit more advanced that movie maker. I have used Moviemaker simply because I'm comfortable with it and its straightforward. I know there's better programs out there, but its always been adequate. Now that in New Zealand were into Term Two I have spent last term training a team of students to do all the filming and the editing. This term I look forward to viewing the finished product online and (hopeful) approving it for publication.
What I would encourage to anyone whose running a blog to think about publishing video footage, students really respond well to it (so much more so than written text or static photographs I believe) and it gives your auidence a greater understanding of others. Now there's also the whole idea of broadcasting/streaming live from your classroom, and I lookforward to reading from our experts on how that's done as that's something that's probably straightforward but I know nothing about the logistics of.
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