RILS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oODTZnwhe4s&feature=youtu.be

Check out this project on Educator Studio for the full story. It's the full follow - up from the previous three posts.
http://educatorstudio.com/lessons/rilsprezi
I hope you enjoy it and that you can use Prezi in your venue!

Regards

PE5_Prezi

And so here is the really cool part…

Students can work collaboratively on a Prezi from remote locations! By simply clicking on the “Edit Together” button at the bottom of the screen, creators can invite others to work with them.

This is a particularly valuable tool for students when assigned to work in groups. There are some tremendous learning benefits to this function. All they need to do is forward the link to their teammates. 

The first is that every group member is able to create part of the presentation. This is good because each student is able to utilize and learn the technology as well as present it in his own way. Additionally, no single group member becomes responsible for “putting the presentation together”. That seemed to happen quite often with the previous Social Reform Movement PowerPoint project I assigned.

The second major learning benefit is that this function allows students to work on their projects outside of class, presuming they have internet access at home. It eliminates the time constraint of class time and allows students to work at their own pace.

There is another function at the bottom of the Prezi screen that allows the creator to share or view the presentation together. This is beneficial for students who were absent the day of presentations, but it is also a valuable tool for the instructor to go back and revisit the presentation when grading.

I’m looking forward to using Prezi with the students – they’re going to like it and I’m sure I will too! Their creativity is burgeoning and I’m sure they’ll include music, videos and plenty of pictures to spice up their presentations a bit! Prezi allows the creator to do all of those things!

Regards

PE4_Prezi

Prezi is an online zooming presentation software that was first introduced to me a couple months ago. To be quite honest, I despised it. For some reason the crazy zooming and odd (not like PowerPoint) controls contributed to my distaste. Frankly, it made me dizzy.

About a month ago my students were assigned a project to create a PowerPoint presentation about one of the many social reforms in the 1800s. I came to realize a few things through this assignment:

1.  My students can read fairly well. I know this because I painstakingly sat there and watched them read every information packed slide to the class while I pretended to be paying attention. Wow was it boring.
2.  I can trust my students. They do complete their assignments, its just that the damaged flash drives and spam destined emailed documents don’t allow one to view a presentation.
3.  Microsoft Office from circa 1997 will not open new PowerPoint. I learned this because the little technology we do have at my school stinks.
4.    I cannot do this again. This was the type of assignment that makes me despise using technology in the classroom. I become a curmudgeon. Nobody likes a curmudgeon.

We’ve moved on from social reforms, and I think my students ended up learning a fair amount. I had to follow it up with creating a paper concept map that included all the information they should have learned from those o-so-riveting presentations.

So – the Civil War Causes Project loomed. I can’t do PowerPoint again, I simply don’t have the strength.  Students do need to practice their oral presentation skills though. As I was writhing in self reflection, I happened to recall Prezi and asked my students if they’d ever heard of it. Naturally, some had. This was perfect! An online presentation that students can create anywhere and present in class - Nailed it!

I just needed to learn to use it better…

The opening page is simple. In fact, the whole thing is fairly simple. I’m not sure why I had such a difficult time with it before. Sign up, sign in, choose a theme and get building!

The “paw”, as I like to now affectionately refer to it, is in the upper left hand corner of the screen and acts as the menu system. There are buttons to edit, insert media, change the frame, change colors and clearly show the path of the presentation.

When one works on editing a particular “stop on the path”, this small circular appears which allows the creator to change the size of the image/text, edit it or delete it entirely.

This is going to be great. More entertaining presentations, no computer hiccups, and a relatively easy to use program. We do have one computer lab in my academy, but the computers are only internet terminals (no saving documents or printing) so this is going to be a practical application for my students to use.

I’ve provided a link to my first Prezi presentation (which stunk and is incomplete because I got frustrated) and then another one I’ve recently completed (which doesn’t stink quite as much).

Stinky:

http://prezi.com/aekd5i904rri/brain-analogy/

Less Stinky:

http://prezi.com/yzhuezof4jlt/latin-american-independence-movements/

Regards

BP6_TracysBlog

Tracy did a great review of a useful product Vyew.
Thanks Tracy!
If anyone would like to check out Tracy's review and my useless comments afterwards, click the link below.
http://myerstracy.blogspot.com/2011/11/bp3vyew.html?showComment=1323030458906#c308139945745480481

BP5_AnthonysBlog

Check out Anthony's analysis of iMovie and my comments after his PE3 post.
http://anthuntsworld.blogspot.com/2011/12/pe3movie.html?showComment=1323030086353#c3406927614607507294

BP4_Wordle

BP4_Wordle

Wordle.net is a toy. It’s a fun toy that takes any lengthy text and turns it into a word cloud or semi-artistic representation of the text. It was mentioned during one of our classes and being the dorky history teacher I am, thought I would try it out! Here’s how it works:

The user simply goes to the web address, wordle.net and clicks on “create”. This brings up a box where text can either be typed in or pasted from an outside source. Once the text is in the dialogue box, the user simply has to click “Go” and wordle will make the cloud! It’s fun to play with. The program works under the basic premise that words written several times will appear larger in the word cloud. In this first example, one can easily see that the word “nation” appears more frequently than any other significant word (five times).  The second example shows that the words “United States” and “people” or “persons” occurred several times.

Like any good history teacher experimenting with new technology, I used something old! The first example is a word cloud constructed from the Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The second is the Emancipation Proclamation. It wasn’t until I considered the word clouds more carefully that I realized the potential, not only for wordle.net, but also for my students.

Students struggle with the analysis of primary source documents. Especially written sources, as our vernacular has changed, pose significant challenges to students. In putting the two word clouds side by side, it would be easy for any casual observer to deduce that Lincoln was in favor of the United States as a nation and seemed to be concerned for its people. Nice! I could provide wordles or show students the value of wordle.net to aid in their primary source analysis.

Of course, not all the details of a historical source are revealed by such a program, but it could certainly help different types of learners. Additionally, wordle.net provided a trick that should have been obvious. For students who struggle finding the meaning in primary sources, they could simply count the occurrences of words and deduce the meaning of the document.

This is a nice, user friendly, fun web 2.0 tool that could find its way into a classroom. Whether its true classroom value is for document analysis or simply interesting posters, it is worth a look. Oh, and by the way, there's a print button at the bottom after you've created the word cloud. Of course its easy to use!

Regards

Here's the wordle of this post! As if you didn't get the idea already! Haha!

PE3_iMovie

Some Great Features

Green screen is another feature that makes a beginner look like a professional! iMovie can lay one clip over another so that one image can be superimposed over another. It only really requires that one of the clips is recorded in either green or blue. iMovie can then delete the background color and lay the remaining images over the second clip.

Adding movie trailers is another exciting feature. It seems like it sort of like adding a theme, but on steroids. The storyboard organization format in the project pane is quite helpful. The trailers come complete with transition, music and even the length of video clip required for each segment.

Audio adjustments allow the user to cut down on background noise, create fade in/out effects and also includes a graphic equalizer to make several adjustments. Because most projects will have multiple clips, iMovie offers a feature to equalize volume so that one clip is not louder than the other.  If adjustments in clip volumes doesn’t create the effect the user wants, they can add many audio clips from iTunes by simply clicking on the musical note icon in the middle tool bar.

There’s no doubt that iMovie is a fantastic product that is allowing more and more people to become the creators of media, rather than just the consumers. The interface and general operations of the software are simple enough for a beginner to create at least a rough video. The tutorial presenter, Garrick Chow, gave an excellent overview of iMovie and its functions. One thing I must note is that he repeated the phrase “you’ll have to play with it” over and over again. He’s absolutely right! It seems to this casual observer that in order to present a quality video that appears polished and semi-professional, iMovie could require a large amount of time. I’d like to offer this short iMovie video below as an example of one completed by a beginner over several hours.

Yes…it’s rough. It is a testament that iMovie and creativity takes time. Advice: if you’re just learning to use iMovie, don’t rush. Allow yourself time to enjoy creating something new. It really is a rewarding feeling – even if it’s as bad as the one I did!

Regards

Certificate...for the record.

PE2_iMovie

Effects and Still Images

One of the reasons iMovie is an exceptional product is that it can make a beginner look like he knows what he’s doing! An important feature of any film is adding effects to either open the video or smooth transitions between clips. iMovie makes this simple.

iMovie offers several different ways to do this. The most user friendly way it so select a “theme”. A theme offers various formats for the video to take, including “scrapbook”, “photo album”, etc. These themes embed certain transitions as well as give the movie a flow that can be quite appealing. Some of the themes are a little cheesy, so there is also an option to select “no theme” and simply add transitions between clips manually.

Other features that allow and amateur to look professional are the visual effect edits and the incorporation of sill frame images. Clips that have poor color or appear “washed out” can be edited by simply double clicking on the clip. The small inspector window that appears offers several options for edits including a light level meter, exposure and saturation sliders and a white point radial. By adjusting any or all of these, the presenter can really adjust the quality of the clip right in the project itself.

Adding still frames to a video presentation gives a truly professional feel. This is easily accomplished by clicking on the camera icon on the middle tool bar. It provides access to one’s entire iPhoto library. The default setting is the Ken Burns effect, which is a slow zoom, but there are other options as well. This could be particularly useful in a classroom if a still image of a historical scene needed to be included in a presentation. Perhaps that is just this dorky history teacher thinking out loud, but it offers a professional documentary style effect to a video.