Friday, February 09, 2007

My First TCEA Session

These are my notes from 21st century Projects for 21st Century Learners session at TCEA 2007.

Amy Elliott, the presenter is a tech facilitator for Sherman ISD in Texas.

They initiated technology report cards to help raise the visibility of technology standards to parents and classroom teachers. They have implemented this in primary grades. The report cards are issued twice a year. They include a line for Texas technology standards (TEKS) for the grade and indicate the student’s mastery level for each standard. Presenter said they remind teachers to work on the standards and keep them in the forefront of teachers’ minds. They are stored electronically by each classroom teacher and printed for parents.

Claymation
She uses PowerPoint to create claymation projects with third and fourth graders. They use clay, a digital camera on a tripod, a desk, poster board taped to the wall for a backdrop and PowerPoint. Each PowerPoint slide has one digital picture on it and is displayed in a slideshow for 1 second or less. Students are told their project can portray one object doing one thing (i.e. a snowman melting). She coaches them on making very small changes for each “frame” of the animation.

Recording Audio Books

Older elementary students record narrations of picture books. They are stored electronically for younger students to listen to.

PowerPoint Book walk

Start with a visual image to introduce the book. Then take a picture walk – posing questions about images from the book. i.e. What does this character look like he is feeling?
[Personal note: Be careful copyright laws when using images from any published work.]

Can use this as an introduction to Powerpoint where students view the Powerpoint slide show on their own computer and type answers to questions on slides by moving to edit mode and typing in a text box.

More advanced students can create their own slide. Simplify the process by creating a media kit in a folder. The media kit would include a word document with instructions for the students, documents with key vocabulary words, clip art, video clips, etc.

PreK and Kindergarten Powerpoint

Have NAME typed in a slide, they type their name in place of the text.

To help the students be more independent, add voice instructions to each slide they are supposed to modify. They click on the speaker icon to hear the instructions.

Have them move clip art to show understanding of concepts. i.e. sort the pumpkins from the smallest to the largest. Students show understanding of math concept and also get to practice click and drag.

If you are in a lab setting, when they finish their work in Powerpoint have everyone stand up and rotate to a different computer to see what a classmate has done.

Print handout notes and turn them into a mini book.

Create a "How To" Video using PhotoStory

Students create a rough storyboard on paper or in Powerpoint. Then they take digital pictures on a topic of interest. They import the pictures into PhotoStory 3. They make notes for each image about key ideas they want to describe. Then they record a narration for each image.

Tips: Don’t let them type an entire script or they will read it verbatim and the narration will sound stilted. Remind them to pause for a split second after pressing the record button and for a split second before stopping to avoid truncating the voice track.

I will post a link to the on-line handout when it is available.


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