Monday, March 23, 2009
Spring 2009 Service Project
Well this week we are entering into the realm of service projects. We are selecting and will be working with students from the Corpus Christi Montessori School and/or students from the Early Childhood Development Center. I am looking forward to this project as I will be working with a student whom is researching Native American Stories. I can't wait to begin this new project and to see the resulting projects from hardwork.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Spreadsheets and Googledocs??
I have to tell you all this has been one rip roarin' wild ride on the side of Spring Break to figure everything out in Excel. I think I have figured items out, however, Google Docs hates charts. Yeah, just can't stand them! Which for such a sophisticated program you would think is weird.
Now, I decided to do My Teacher Budget with this wild amount of $10,000.00 as my first year start up costs. Yes, many of you are out there saying your dreaming Becky. Since most teachers get only $200.00 to $150.00 from their schools. True, but in my dream world I live in the country in a log cabin with a nice wrap around porch to sit back on, all the kids in my classroom come ready to learn, and the President of the United States just consulted me on my secret meatloaf recipe......HA!
As for doing a teacher budget instead of a wedding budget, those of you who know me know the wedding budget is not in the cards. The teacher budget was something I really thought about. Graduation is just around the corner and starting out as a first year teacher can be kind of expensive. Especially in the Social Studies realm. So I decided to look at the categories of Apparel, transportation, videos, books, recordings, technology, professional development (not paid by the school district), Office supplies, Networking, Associations and clubs, and then miscellaneous. The spread sheet took me five hours to figure out, even with the tutoring videos. The charts about an hour. So I made two. I would recommend this be done in relation with the technology teacher training students. Once they have a basic idea of what their doing, then you can help to reinforce this skill by setting out a project with some basic items within the template.
Now Three Guiding Questions to help with the Template:
1) What do you want to measure? This could be the differences in what types of music in their CD collection to the number of women in the first wave, second wave and third wave that participated and what they participated in the women's rights movement for.
2) Is the thing you have chosen measureable? One must have a true handle on what they are measuring and whether it is a measureable concept. In measureable I can see things like How many women employed in 1880? 1890? 1900? Not only would this make a good chart, but it can show a direct relation to the cultural changes taking place across America during this time.
3) Have you made your data your inputting too complex for this simple project? The more information you place in your spreadsheet and want to calculate the more complicated the form becomes. Start off simple and slowly add elements in to projects.
Well, thats all I can think of now. Hope you all enjoy the Spreadsheet. If you have any ideas please email or comment for me.
Now, I decided to do My Teacher Budget with this wild amount of $10,000.00 as my first year start up costs. Yes, many of you are out there saying your dreaming Becky. Since most teachers get only $200.00 to $150.00 from their schools. True, but in my dream world I live in the country in a log cabin with a nice wrap around porch to sit back on, all the kids in my classroom come ready to learn, and the President of the United States just consulted me on my secret meatloaf recipe......HA!
As for doing a teacher budget instead of a wedding budget, those of you who know me know the wedding budget is not in the cards. The teacher budget was something I really thought about. Graduation is just around the corner and starting out as a first year teacher can be kind of expensive. Especially in the Social Studies realm. So I decided to look at the categories of Apparel, transportation, videos, books, recordings, technology, professional development (not paid by the school district), Office supplies, Networking, Associations and clubs, and then miscellaneous. The spread sheet took me five hours to figure out, even with the tutoring videos. The charts about an hour. So I made two. I would recommend this be done in relation with the technology teacher training students. Once they have a basic idea of what their doing, then you can help to reinforce this skill by setting out a project with some basic items within the template.
Now Three Guiding Questions to help with the Template:
1) What do you want to measure? This could be the differences in what types of music in their CD collection to the number of women in the first wave, second wave and third wave that participated and what they participated in the women's rights movement for.
2) Is the thing you have chosen measureable? One must have a true handle on what they are measuring and whether it is a measureable concept. In measureable I can see things like How many women employed in 1880? 1890? 1900? Not only would this make a good chart, but it can show a direct relation to the cultural changes taking place across America during this time.
3) Have you made your data your inputting too complex for this simple project? The more information you place in your spreadsheet and want to calculate the more complicated the form becomes. Start off simple and slowly add elements in to projects.
Well, thats all I can think of now. Hope you all enjoy the Spreadsheet. If you have any ideas please email or comment for me.
EMBEDDING!
Just a quick, short note here on embedding. When I went to embed this video on the website I found that blogspot would not let me. It had something to do with the script line. So I have placed the video here for you all to see, however, I am still attempting to figure out the embedding part. It is also on Teachertube for all the world to see.
Teaching with Moviemaker
I have to admit this was one of the most challenging assignments I have ever done. It was not because of the difficulty. It was because of the time allotment for the assignment to be finished in a week. One of the major problems I had was finding time to get the movie done in a busy schedule. Also pulling together all the outside sources, ie.. actors and setting, was difficult. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience though. I had to make a comic window sketch of each scene to better be able to see what I was doing. I then had the area set up with assistance. Once the actors knew their lines, which was more difficult than I imagined due to personal liberties and just plain tom foolery, we were set. (Pardon the pun Thomas) I used CSPAN on the TV for some of footage and I used 5 to 7 second pieces of video from the IRAQ war 2003, Hillary Clintons confirmation hearings, Speaker Pelosi's overriding of the MEdicare video and the National Archives for a picture of the United States Constitution. We also used normal props around the house like money, and tied up paper in ribbon for symbolizing different parts of the video. I believe that yes, I can teach this to students to use as a presentation factor. However, I believe that it would have to be done with a longer timeline to allow for better production and not too much hyperventilating on the students part at first. I can see serious problems in time, lack of technical skill, lack of avaiablity of technical machines like computers and such or current computers with enough RAM and such for doing this product. As a teacher I am looking forward to using this technology more and introducing it to my students. I believe my students will probably have a better handle on it than I in most cases. I will tell everyone that the last 8 seconds of the film were the most difficult to complete, due to the film being done at almost midnight, a bad fit of giggles on all actors and producers parts and the purse. Enough said. What are the powers of the Legislature:
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The 7 Elments of Digital Storytelling
I think one of the most challenging parts of Digital Storytelling is putting together the script. In my Unit plan I have chose the Legislative question to present.
There are seven steps to doing a great storyboard script:
1. Point of View – what is the perspective of the author?
My perspective is a fact based presentation of the powers of the Legislature
2. A Dramatic Question – a question that will be answered by the end of the story.
By the end of the story the students will know and understand the powers of the Legislature.
3. Emotional Content – serious issues that speak to us in a personal and powerful way.
How the Legislature uses those powers is shown throughout the story.
4. The Gift of your Voice – a way to personalize the story to help the audience
understand the context.
Using characters, this story gives a personal view.
5. The Power of the Soundtrack – music or other sounds that support the storyline.
Supportive sound from different events the Legislature has participated in give the video real life "I am there" attitude.
6. Economy – simply put, using just enough content to tell the story without overloading the viewer with too much information.
Each clips is 3-5 seconds long, a few are a few seconds more. This allows the student to view the presentation quickly and absorb the information.
7. Pacing – related to Economy, but specifically deals with how slowly or quickly the
Story progresses.
The story progresses quickly, but not too fast so the story cannot be absorbed.
After learning the seven elements and thinking about how to input them you can create a storyboard. I normally create a comic window board before I move to the Digital storyboard for details. The comic window board allows me to rough sketch out my ideas and then allows me to figure time a little better. My comic board is just a normal sheet of typing paper where I quickly sketch out nine 2" x 2" windows and begin making notes. The more clips I need the more windows I add.
Just give it a try and you'll find it's easier than you think.
There are seven steps to doing a great storyboard script:
1. Point of View – what is the perspective of the author?
My perspective is a fact based presentation of the powers of the Legislature
2. A Dramatic Question – a question that will be answered by the end of the story.
By the end of the story the students will know and understand the powers of the Legislature.
3. Emotional Content – serious issues that speak to us in a personal and powerful way.
How the Legislature uses those powers is shown throughout the story.
4. The Gift of your Voice – a way to personalize the story to help the audience
understand the context.
Using characters, this story gives a personal view.
5. The Power of the Soundtrack – music or other sounds that support the storyline.
Supportive sound from different events the Legislature has participated in give the video real life "I am there" attitude.
6. Economy – simply put, using just enough content to tell the story without overloading the viewer with too much information.
Each clips is 3-5 seconds long, a few are a few seconds more. This allows the student to view the presentation quickly and absorb the information.
7. Pacing – related to Economy, but specifically deals with how slowly or quickly the
Story progresses.
The story progresses quickly, but not too fast so the story cannot be absorbed.
After learning the seven elements and thinking about how to input them you can create a storyboard. I normally create a comic window board before I move to the Digital storyboard for details. The comic window board allows me to rough sketch out my ideas and then allows me to figure time a little better. My comic board is just a normal sheet of typing paper where I quickly sketch out nine 2" x 2" windows and begin making notes. The more clips I need the more windows I add.
Just give it a try and you'll find it's easier than you think.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)