Week 4 - The Spy Glass

Week 4 – The Spy Glass (6/25/2010 – 7/1/2010)Week 4 is all about what you see and that means photos and videos. Most digital cameras will take both types of media, still images and videos. The videos you take will not be very long, but they would still be useful to use in your classroom. Imagine having students create How to movies to explain key concepts.........

There are several sites that will allow you to use photos and videos and are easy to turn into a great presentation.

Animoto
Animoto will turn your photos & videos into beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. The great thing is that it is FREE! You will need to sign up for a user name to utilize Animoto.

PhotostoryAccording to Atomic Learning , "Microsoft^® Photo Story 3 is a free tool you can use to create media presentations from your digital photos, complete with transitions, music, narration, and special effects. It's available free from Microsoft for Windows^® XP users. Atomic Learning has a tutorial to explain how to use Photostory. Download Photostory3 to use on your PC.

• Photo Story 3
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  • A. Importing and Editing Your Pictures
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    • Importing and arranging pictures
    • Removing black borders
    • Editing your pictures
    • Cropping your pictures
    • Adding titles to your pictures
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  • B. Adding Narration and Music
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    • Configuring your microphone
    • Narrating your pictures
    • Customizing motion
    • Selecting transitions
    • Adding background music to your story
    • Creating customized music for your story
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  • C. Completing Your Story
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    • Saving your story
    • Completing your story
    • Viewing your story
    • Editing your story
    • Sending your story in an e-mail message

Discovery StreamingDiscovery Education streaming™ is a digital video-on-demand service brought to you by Discovery Education. If you already have access to the great resources of Discovery Education streaming, our movies will help you make better use of them. If your school is not a subscriber to united streaming and you'd like to know more about what's available, our set of free tutorials will give you a good understanding of what you're missing. Learn more about Discovery Education streaming here. Many of us use Discovery Streaming already. Atomic Learning has tutorials to help you use it better. Check out some of these......

• Discovery Education streaming
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  • D. Teacher Center Tools
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    • Using the Calendar tool
    • Using the Thematic Focus tool
    • Using the Writing Prompt tool
    • Using the Quiz Builder
    • Using the Assignment Builder
    • Using the Lesson Plan Library
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  • E. Extending Your Use
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    • Using video clips in other applications
    • Finding additional support materials
    • Accessing resources for professional development
    • Using My Home Page
    • Setting Preferences

For those of you who are not familiar with how to use Discovery Streaming, Atomic Learning can help with that as well.

Teacher Tube
Another important video hosting source for educationally-based videos is TeacherTube. All of the videos included there are resources for classroom settings or educator-based training. This should be available in BISD. Do a search for your subject matter. How many videos were available? What types were not available? What about the quality?
Activities:1. Check out each of these video sites. Use either Animoto or Photostory to create a video. Embed the video into this blog. Check out the help menu in Edublog or Blogger to get help embedding the videos. The one you create for this blog can be of anything. Blog about how you can use in your classroom/library. What types of lessons come to mind?
2. Use Discovery Streaming and Teacher Tube to find videos to embed in your blog to use in your classroom/library. Blog about what you found. How useful was it?
3. Think about the 21st Century Skills concepts and the Web 2.0 tools you have learned about so far. Use either Teacher Tube or You Tube, find a video that best represents your views on 21st Century Skills and/or Web 2.0 tools to add to your blog.

Your blog and this video becomes a wonderful tool to inspire others to get on board with integrating technology into our classrooms.