A Second Grade Teacher’s Blog

I love using video with my second graders and they love to watch themselves. Videos are always a hit with parents and an easy way to help students reflect on and remember content/concepts.
I want to highlight two of my favorite FREE webtools for video. You probably can see examples of both of these on my blog already.
The first is Animoto. It is free for educators, although you do have to reapply for an account every 6 or 12 months. You can also set up accounts for your students.
Animoto is so easy to use. You simply upload your pictures or video clips. Arrange them in the order you want them to appear. Choose or upload music. I love that the music is already available on the site. This way I know it is legal to use and I won’t be breaking any copyright laws. You can also upload your own music. This was nice when I had the children sing and used this as the music for the video. They also added some background themes for the Holidays. Animoto will provide a link or embed code to share your movie, or videos can be downloaded to your computer. Here is a Holiday Animoto created using pictures of my students sharing a Christmas art project.

The second video tool I want to share is Smilebox. Smilebox creates slideshows with your pictures or video clips. They have many design choices with a variety of themes. They also have music on the site or you can upload your own. Smilebox is easy to use and is another fun way to share classroom activities or concepts. Smilebox will provide you with a link, embed code or allow you to burn your video to a DVD. Here is a simple Smilebox sharing the Gingerbread Houses the second graders created using an Excel Template and inserting Clip art. (This project was taken from the Winter Wonderland Wiki.)



Make a Smilebox slideshow

Earlier in the fall my second graders took the I.O.W.A. test. It is not the most exciting week for me as I do not get much opportunity to teach. As the children were taking the test and I was walking around reading the questions (a good portion of the 2nd graders test is teacher dictated) I decided to take some pictures. I set a digital camera near me and just kept clicking. I would move it as I moved around the room. The kids are very used to cameras in the room and didn’t pay any attention to it.

In the past I have used FRAMES from tech4learning to create stop motion movies, but I don’t have FRAMES on my Mac. I decided to see what I could do with iMovie. I did an internet search to see if I could find some info and I found exactly the tips I needed to get it to work.

Step One – Import your photos into iPhoto (this automatically makes them available to iMovie)
Step Two – Open iMovie, Start a New project, No theme, Highlight and add all of your pictures. It helps if they are already in the correct order. If not put them in the correct order in your Project.
Step Three – set the Clip Adjustments time to 0.2 or 0.3 seconds. Check the Applies to all stills.
Step Four – You need to get rid of the picture transition. Click on the Ken Burns editing on the first picture. You will see a green and red square. Line these up so they are on top of each other. This stops the picture from transitioning.
Step Five – Highlight the picture you just edited. (Yellow circle will be around it) Go to the top toolbar menu – Edit, Copy
Step – Six Highlight all of the other pictures in your movie. You can highlight one, and hold the shift key to highlight the rest. Go to Edit – then Paste Adjustments. This will remove the transition effect from all pictures.
Now play your video and it should be stop motion animation.

Here is my Stop Motion Testing Video made in iMovie.

This entry is cross posted on www.maculspace.ning.com and www.harju.edublogs.org

The second graders entered the Interwrite Classroom Makeover Contest.
The prize is a $30,000 classroom makeover AND a CAKE big enough for the
entire school!

You can view our entry by following this link. You can rate it (5 stars
please) and leave a comment. Voting will occur only for the top 5 in
each grade level after November 17. Enjoy!

http://eimakeover09.shycast.com/submission/show/276/

I love talking tech! I was lucky enough to share my love of tech at the M-A-N-S Conference in Detroit, Michigan last week. (Michigan Association of Non-Pubic Schools) I shared my favorite Web 2.0 applications and how I use Wikis and Blogs with my second graders. It was great to see teachers get that look in their eye when they realize the power that technology has to transform their teaching and the students’ learning. Here is a copy of the Power Point I used for the presentation.

We just finished learning about Landforms so I thought before assessing the kids, we would film a video for our review. I had great success with this last spring when we made our Michigan Video. The kids choose which landform or body of water they wanted to talk about. The kids were much more camera shy than I thought they would be. I kept their lines short and simple. It is always fun to watch them goof their lines due to nerves.
Following the Video is my first Smilebox slideshow showing the children presenting their reports on Landforms and Bodies of Water. Most children created posters, a few created theirs on their wiki page, and one did a power point presentation. They enjoyed standing in front of the class either at the SMART Board or at the Document Camera to present it. Enjoy.
These videos are also cross posted on my classroom blog, www.harju.edublogs.org.




Make a Smilebox slideshow

Geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache in the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache’s existence and location online. Anyone with a GPS device can then try to locate the geocache. from www.geocaching.com.
I joined www.geocaching.com earlier this summer. I also borrowed a handheld GPS from a friend (thanks Ron!) On a few family car trips we played with it, learning how it worked. I then went on www.geocaching.com and found some local caches and programmed them into the GPS. Today my daughter and I decided to try to find our first cache.

I started with the Reed’s Lake II Cache. Since I programmed it in awhile ago, we just hopped in the car and set off. Reed’s Lake is less than a mile away, so we figured it would be pretty easy. We were able to get within 0.1 of a mile of it using the GPS, but were met with a woody area and we were wearing the wrong shoes, shorts and did not have any bug spray. We decided to go back home, change our clothes, get a map of the area and look online for more information. When we looked online we found out that we will need a boat (kayak or small canoe) to reach this cache. We still want to find it, but a getting a boat takes a bit more planning. We did enjoy our time in the woody area – My daughter was thrilled to see a snake and a frog. The frog was fine, I will not say I was thrilled about the snake.

We choose to look for another local cache – Snow Leopard. It is also close to home and I was familiar with the area – and no boats needed. The coordinates were programmed into the GPS, we read the online hint, and then set off. My daughter (11) was in charge of reading the GPS and led us successfully to the area. We did need to drive around the block until we found the public access point, but find it we did. We needed to walk a bit, but again my daughter was great at following the GPS and led us right to the cache. It was as they say a traditional cache – contained in a lock box. We opened the box, looked at the stuff and wrote our names in the log. We didn’t take anything or leave anything in the box. We will think about this for future caches and bring or make something to leave.

We were feeling lucky and decided to follow a set of coordinates that were programmed into the GPS for another nearby cache, Leopard’s Spots. We drove in practically a straight line from our location. We ended up at a corner wooded lot, a bit overgrown. We got out and walked around. We knew we were close, the GPS said we were within 6 feet at one point, but we didn’t see it. The terrain was woodsy and very steep. It was littered with bottles, and other trash and we almost tripped a couple times. I didn’t want to just sift through the area without a bit more information, no telling what we might find. When we got back home we looked at the hint and were ready to try again. After reading the hint we had a better idea where to look, and it only took us about 10 minutes to locate it. Again it was a traditional cache box. We signed the log and looked at the things that others have left in the box.