Oct. 22, 2009
Film Techies Class
Hi parents and students!
Today we talked about shot composition. I taught general principles about an establishing shot (wide view), medium shot, close-up, extreme close-up, angled or “Dutch” view, low-angle, and high angle. I also taught them the “rule of thirds.” Have them draw you a diagram and explain it to you. If they teach it, they will retain it much easier. If you are ok with them using a digital camera you own, have them take one or two pictures of each of these shots.
If you are comfortable letting them bring a digital still camera (and tri-pod) to school, I would like some of the students to bring it next week, Oct. 29th. When I asked who thought they could bring one, six students volunteered. If you will let them, have them bring it to my classroom before school starts and I will send it home with them. If you are NOT comfortable sending it, then please don’t. We do have 4 or 5 still digital cameras I am using here at school. They will just need to be taking turns more if we just use the school’s cameras only.
We will view their pictures they took today next week to critique shots, identify again the types of shots, and discuss the rule of thirds.
This is fun stuff!
If you haven’t gotten me the parental permission papers, please do so ASAP!
C C News Crew
Mr. Keeler’s class started their journey of writing the newscast this morning. We will film it tomorrow morning. Eventually, I will teach the students editing also. I will try to post it on School Tube. http://www.schooltube.com
It will be broadcast next Monday, Oct. 26th. We broadcast in the mornings at 9:05 and in the afternoons at 3:25. Next week, Mrs. Ashmore’s class will be up.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Filming "Very Hungry Caterpillar"
I love doing film in my classroom! I prepared for "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" Day by making a film with a 2nd grade class. I read the book, they did the lines holding pictures, and they acted out the story. It was a delightful experience. I edited it and the whole school viewed it on VHC Day. The rest of my drama classes in grades K, 1st and 2nd got to do the same activity in drama that week. They adored the whole thing.
I was lucky enough to be host to Beverley Taylor Sorenson who came with several other people to observe me teach this lesson to a 1st grade class. At our parent advocacy meeting that night she remarked how wonderful it was to hear all the children laughing delightedly at the actor portraying the "big, fat caterpillar." "They were laughing so hard, I'm sure you could hear them clear across the school," she remarked. It was a wonderful experience, and I am blessed to be able to teach theatre at my elementary school. Let's all advocate for the arts to stay in the schools! The legislature holds the key to our funding being continued for the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Program here in Utah.
I was lucky enough to be host to Beverley Taylor Sorenson who came with several other people to observe me teach this lesson to a 1st grade class. At our parent advocacy meeting that night she remarked how wonderful it was to hear all the children laughing delightedly at the actor portraying the "big, fat caterpillar." "They were laughing so hard, I'm sure you could hear them clear across the school," she remarked. It was a wonderful experience, and I am blessed to be able to teach theatre at my elementary school. Let's all advocate for the arts to stay in the schools! The legislature holds the key to our funding being continued for the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Program here in Utah.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Blog #7 Week 4-2nd Life
2nd Life
I enjoy exploring in 2nd Life, but I feel like it’s way too big of a world for me! It would be great to know a certain island well and utilize it for a specific purpose in education. Multiple intelligences are totally utilized when I can create something new and interesting on ISTE. I wasn’t even aware that I could create until I just started messing around, and encountered an object just sitting there on the grass. I was curious about it, touched it and picked the option build. Lo and behold, I could create something unique and colorful right there for others to see. That alone is incentive for me to go back, because I love being creative. I think in education, our students would be better served if they were directed to a place like ISTE to learn how to manipulate their avatar and try out their creative building ability.
I joined ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education. They have meetings announced on a big board. I would like to attend one to find out some creative ways to use 2nd Life.
Another fun site was KORU-New Zealand: great scenery and marine life. I loved going into the ocean and exploring the various sea creatures such as dolphins, whales, sea turtles, fish, Manta-Rays, etc. In looking for animal life, I explored Aeryglow Wildlife Island also. I think it’s great to be able to fly right next to a bald eagle’s nest. The Safari Zoo was fun because you can get up close and personal with a giant octopus and get and alligator as a pet. Etopia Eco Village was also fun to explore. I found a great music circle where I could play all sort of instruments. It would be fun to get a group there to play together.
That brings up the point of exploring as a group. I think this is the way to go! When we explored as a small group in the previous class we had, we were too much of a novice to be able to see much of anything worthwhile. I think you have to get into it and start at an instructional island, such as ISTE, to get comfortable using the program. Then, we as students, and our students would be able to see the possibilities much more fully. I fell like we would have been better served to have to attend a lecture there instead of on Wimba at least one time. Our professor said they didn’t get good feedback on that, but I feel like I would have enjoyed it more.
Iowa State University had a great model of Bloom’s taxonomy (the revised version) that you could actually walk up and read the different examples of each step as you went. The creating block of Bloom’s taxonomy is never so well explored as in 2nd Life.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Blog #6 Week 3 Communities of Practice
Blog #6 Week 3
Communities of Practice
In the article posted for this assignment, Communities of Practice, Learning as a Social System by Etienne Wenger, [Published in the "Systems Thinker," June 1998], Ms. Wenger defined this Communities of Practice being groups of people that gather together for something that matters to them. These are things that they think are important. The people do the “practice,” or action, because they are passionate about it. Ms. Wenger claims that they are “fundamentally self-organizing systems.”
The best example I can think of for a Community of Practice is a play in community theatre. The organization over this is usually a non-profit, who may pay their director and a few other key people, but the cast is comprised of all volunteers. We prepare, audition, get together, adhere to the director’s rehearsal schedule, memorize, learn, and practice, practice, practice. Then we finally perform. The resulting production is a living, breathing, work of art that can never be duplicated again. You create such a great community in that short time that we as drama nuts are always itching for more. It’s great fun! Thus, the next one that rolls around sees another big group willing to audition again.
If we could get our teaching jobs that fun, with great communities of practice all working together, we would be able to make great strides in education. I think we tend to just stay in our own little world at our own school, perhaps with our grade level team. Is this because our DNA is wired to function in the past century? What do you other teachers think?
I see so many different ways I can join with other educators online it is staggering. I joined Tapped in (http://tappedin.org) and quickly found a couple of great sites that I added to my Delicious page. I explored film lessons for my action research project, and found a great resource that lists different cool tools for schools. (http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com) This is great, however, I can’t see a website bringing the personal, sense of belonging to me, that I embrace each time I am in a play.
I read Will Richardson’s blog today on Weblogg-ed, “Don’t, Don’t, Don’t’ vs. Do, Do, Do.” He talked about reading a lengthy acceptable use policy that listed all the things you couldn’t do and thought of what would happen in our schools if the students got thi
s list of “Do’s” on the first day of school.
“Do use our network to connect to other students and adults who share your passions with whom you can learn.”
“Do use our network to help your teachers find experts and other teachers from around the world.”
“Do use our network to publish your best work in text and multimedia for a global audience.”
“Do use our network to explore your own creativity and passions, to ask questions and seek answers from other teachers online.”
“Do use our network to download resources that you can use to remix and republish your own learning online.”
“Do use our network to collaborate with others to change the world in meaningful, positive ways.”
Etc. (Add your own below.)
Now, obviously, that would mean that the curriculum would be preparing students to do that all along, But I’m thinking that if I was a student and I read those “dos” on the first day of school, I’d be itching to get to class.
Retrieved Sept. 20, 2009 at http://weblogg-ed.com/2009/dont-dont-dont-vs-do-do-do/
Blog #5 Week 3 Social Media
Emergent Technologies in a Collaborative Culture
As digital immigrants, we are wired differently! I enjoyed the following author’s take on this. Greg Whitby claims that we as teachers have to change our DNA. In order to keep up with the digital natives and help prepare them for their uncertain future, we have to take great leaps into the unknown.
Changing teacher’s DNA for 21st century learning.
This video is well done and shows the different components that make up a 21st Century Learner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Up1f0lmOA&feature=related
My #4 blog covered social networking quite a bit, so I’m not going to delve into it again, but I did want to post this video from Current.com. My nephew had it on Face Book, and I got quite a kick out of it. Warning, Twitterpated people will not be pleased! Twouble with Twitters:
I want to address the use of Google Docs, and RSS feeds. What a great collaborative tool! Right now, the fourth grade teachers and I are working on a script for a fourth grade play. One of the teachers put down her thoughts in a rough draft and read it to the team. They said, “That’s great!” but it is far from a polished script. I went into her room to read the document on her computer. We talked about some different ideas, and I said, “We need to put this on a Google document!” I helped her step through it, and it’s up there for the whole team to work on and refine! As it happens many times with technology, we couldn’t get it to work right to get me editing privileges yet, but we’ll figure it out! Then the teachers can help us figure out the dialogue for their part, etc. What a wonderful tool!
The other great thing that we need to embrace is the use of RSS feeds. There is so much information out there on the web that it is mind-boggling. We search and search and sometimes give up in frustration because there is too much out there. What I love about RSS feeds is the fact that I can find a great site, and it is always at my beck and call when it exists as a feed. I open the Internet and those places that I have found are already there, just waiting for me. We can constantly change these at our will. If we are working on a certain project, we can make a whole new tab on Net Vibes just for that.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Blog post #4 Week 2-21st Century Skills and Lifelong Learning
The adults laughed out loud! I have been inundated with those terms since I have been in this Masters Program, and they make so much sense to me, that it made me smile that they got such a kick out of it. I realized that as a general rule, most adults haven’t heard these terms before. I was grateful to read the original article from 2001. That is eight years ago! How do we spread the word to the general public? I am going to post the article on my Facebook page; I would encourage others to do the same. One page at a time!
Retrieved Sept 12, 2009 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky - Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants - Part1.pdf
One of the most important skills that I think we as teachers need to teach is how to use the internet safely, responsibly, and wisely. I particularly enjoyed the chapter in our text, Web 2.0, that went through the things that we need to teach for online safety and security. We need to address pornography and online predators to keep children safe. We need to address copyright issues, being redirected to commercial sites or useless or irrelevant info when searching the Internet. We need to teach ethical behavior online, and get parents involved in knowing how to help their students be smart online.
An online site made for kids is Net Smartz Kids. Org. Retrieved Sept 13, 2009 from http://www.netsmartzkids.org/indexFL.html. Kids cannot be redirected to any other sites. There are games where they learn how to be safe online such as hunting for Potty Mouth Pete. They learn to defeat him, they should ignore him, turn off the monitor, and tell an adult. There are tunes they can watch such as “Be Safer Online Rap” which tells them to never give out their information online such as their name, age, or location. There are also many other fun songs. They have videos such as “Beat the Tricks,” about people looking to harm kids can be tricky, online and in real life. They have games such as “Don’t Open That File,” a computer virus game. There are many other things available on this site, a great way to help kids learn safety.
A nice video made with Animoto about Technological savvy teachers is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2j9qw-A0NM&feature=related retrieved Sept.15, 2009. It’s a short commentary about how teachers can change the culture of education in the 21st century through the use of technology and web 2.0 tools. It’s very important for us as teachers to be learning right along side of our students. In these fast moving times, we cannot afford to stand still. How do you keep up on the newest advances teachers? Let us know, so we can share the knowledge and stay lifelong learners.
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