Screencasting and Avatars! Oh my! (Ms. Pastore)

     Today was a great day of experimenting and learning with the iPads in Room 1! In an effort to create screencasts to define and explain our new Geometry vocabulary we were working with another app that was new to us, educreations. This involved creating slides and then recording our own animations and voice to accompany them. The original plan was for students to work together in groups to create one video together with an explanation and definition of all our new geometry vocabulary. The groups quickly divided up the words and assigned each group member the task of completing those slides..

     I really enjoyed this program because it has an extremely easy-to-use interface and allows a variety of different features, such as video, voice, pictures and animation. It was exciting to have a mobile device that allows you to snap a picture of whatever is in front of you and add it to your project. For today's assignment, the students needed to insert a digital photo of something from the school that could be an example of their vocabulary word. 

     From a math learning perspective today's lesson was EXTREMELY successful! Students were able to appropriately define their words, pull in a real life example, and create a product that proved to me that they understood the content. They were also able to express their creativity and continue to think about schoolwork with a much wider lens. As expected, some problems did arise. It turns out that educreations does not allow their videos to be exported to another problem. Therefore, I could not take each groups videos and string them together into one cohesive final product as I had originally intended. My plan B was to embed them within my webpage in the order each group would like so they can be viewed as the groups intended. However, I do not have access to the embed codes unless the students are logged in. SO hopefully tomorrow we could have time to sort all this out. :) The inevitable speed bumps we hit with this entire process is all part of the learning curve for both teachers and students. Although tasks and projects may not turn out the way we had intended, the educational value is still completely apparent.

     After lunch we began experimenting with Tellagami, a recording program where students create an avatar who speaks their recorded vocalization. Our class really loved being able to create our own avatars and their environments. I am hoping to use this program in the future as a way to present information to one another. Today we just used them individually to do some draft writing "in the air." One glitch we ran into was having the recording cut us off after 30 seconds. I will need to research this further to see if this is a setting or if this is always the case!

     I am consistently noticing how much the students enjoy exploring new programs on their own. More often than not they are learning new things about these apps and teaching them to me, which is great! They are exhibiting excellent problem solving techniques, patience, and critical thinking through just working together and implementing these devices into our school lives. Although there are inevitable glitches along the way, the positives are undeniable!