BP8

Hello friends, please follow this link to see my comment about Avairy and Podbean. My friend Bill did a great job teaching about these Web 2.0 tools.

BP7

Hey everyone! Follow this link to read my comment and learn about Posterous.

RILS_Publication

This is a new and exciting way for students to introduce themselves and to share who they are and what they are learning.

Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario

Cheryl Jones-Gage

Overview

This scenario is relevant and innovative for learners and gives them the opportunity to introduce themselves in a new and exciting way. Using Schoology, a new web 2.0 tool, in an online learning environment, the students will create a video using iMovie and share it with the church congregation.

Target Audience – My target audience is a group of 14-16 year old students in a church leadership program called Corps Cadets.

Materials

·      Computers

·      Internet access

·      Video Camera

·      Pictures

Objectives

Students will be able to create a group video after sharing ideas and collaborating on Schoology. The students will share the video online and in church.

Procedure

·      Join Schoology and set up a personal profile.

·      Start a group and send out invitations and access codes to students who are in the group.

·      Set up assignments, homework, or quizzes for the group.

·      Post video assignment that students must view and comment on.

·      After viewing the video, students must post ideas on creating a video of their own.

·      In next class, students use video camera to record group videos and take pictures.

·      Students will review pictures and video clips to decide what to use in creating movie. They will also choose background music.

·      Students with the help of the teacher will use iMovie to create a movie from their video clips and background music.

Web 2.0 Tools – Schoology, Wordle and Prezi

Schoology- is a free web-based Learning Management System and configurable social network. Schoology allows instructors and students to easily create, share, and manage academic material through a social networking interface.

www.schoology.com

Wordle- is a free web tool that helps you create exciting word clouds. Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friend.

Prezi- Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software that opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides. The zoomable canvas makes it fun to explore ideas and the connections between them. The result: visually captivating presentations that lead your audience down a path of discovery.

Social Participation

The students will work together in an online learning environment (Schoology) to share ideas and brainstorm.  Then students will meet together and take pictures, interview each other, take video and whatever other ideas the group wants to use to create the movie. Next, students will start putting pictures and clips together in iMovie.

Making Connections

a)     Previous knowledge – the students will watch a short video on the Schoology site that was created in iMovie. They will listen for music, sound effects, and other parts of the movie. They will brainstorm ideas to create their own movies using the viewed movie as a model.

b)    Something that is relevant for them – this group has changed a lot over the summer. Former members have moved away and new members have joined this leadership-training program called Corps Cadets. The students have a special Sunday when the group will be introduced to the church and share in the leadership of the program. They will use this opportunity to introduce themselves on video using iMovie.

c)     Local audience – the video will be shown to the local church congregation.

Create / Produce

The product that will be created is video using iMovie.

Assessment

Reflection

a.     The learner will reflect on this experience by posting comments on Schoology. They will debrief the experience and use the knowledge learned to brainstorm more ideas for another movie.

b.     The teacher will reflect by read all comments posted on Schoology and give feedback to the students on how the project went.

PE5_Schoology

Schoology is great! Several of the students have completed the first assignment. They signed up for Schoology and watched the video and posted comments. I did not get a lot of ideas from them on what they wanted to add to their movie. So in class, we watched the video together and started brainstorming ideas.

They were interested in learning about some other web 2.0 tools, so I introduced them to Prezi and Wordle.
They started to play around with these tools and created a Wordle with all of their names in it. The majority of their time was spent on Prezi. They also used all of their names and a short description of what a Corps Cadet is. They wanted this to be the major part of their video because they thought it was very unique and they had not seen it before. They also felt that their audience would respond positively to it as well.

Next, we started video taping the group while working on Prezi, and introducing themselves. In the next class we continued taping and began editing. We plan to post the finished product on Schoology and post comments.

PE4_Schoology

For my RILS I have chosen to use a program called Schoology. It was very easy to find videos on YouTube and on the Schoology site to see how the program works. I think it is a wonderful tool, but I am having a lot of difficulty using it so far. I plan to keep working on it until I figure it out because there have been so many rave reviews of this program. I will consider my problems to be growing pains with the anticipation of great joy at the end!
So far, I have set up my profile and started a group. I have sent out emails inviting others to join this group, and I have also created one assignments.

I am now waiting for the students to join. The first assignment is to watch a video that I have posted and them comment on it. Next, the students have to share ideas on what they can do to create their own video to show on Corps Cadet Sunday. Tomorrow in class we will start video taping members of the group introducing themselves and capturing pictures of the group to add to the video.

BP6

Hey everyone, my friend Bill is a real tech expert! Follow this link to find out about a great web2.0 tool that Bill shared called DivShare.

BP5

Hi, check out my comment on Donna's blog about Scribblar.

PB4_Wordle

This week I reviewed a Web2.0 tool called Wordle. I had heard of some of the uses of Wordle and decided that I needed to try it for myself. I went to 100 Essential Web Tools for Teachers. I liked how the site had all of the tools laid out with a brief description of what the tool's main use is. It made it very easy for me to browse the list and make a few choices. 

Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text provided by the user. You type your words into a source text box and then hit 'go'. Greater prominence is given to words that appear more frequently in the source text.  You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Once you've created your Wordle it's yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. You can also publish it to the web. You have to be careful with publishing to the web because once it's published you can't get it back or delete it.

What I liked about this tool was learning that you can choose the actual size of each word if you want to. I have found several great uses for this tool. I created a "name" cloud with all the members of my Corps Cadet group. I will use this to have then work together to brainstorm reasons why all the names used are in the cloud. I also want to see what reasons they may come up with for the different sizes in the names and find out what they think about the ordering of the names in different Wordle clouds.

This is a very user-friendly tool and it has a vast number of potential uses. The 'cloud' is the limit with Wordle, and the best part? It's free!

PE3_iMovie

The last part of creating the movie is the most exciting part! This is where you add all the extra effects and audio to your movie. There are many different that can be added. You can add transitions. Transitions are dragged and dropped between clips to help make the transition from one clip to the other more interesting. There are many transitions to choose from that can add flare to your movie. Here are a few.

After choosing your transitions, you can add titles to your movie. Titles can help you to highlight or point out important parts of your video. You can add titles with every transitions, before each clip, or just one title at the beginning. At the end of your movie you can add a text that scrolls up the screen to give the credits. With titles you can also change the color, font, and size. Backgrounds can also be added to the titles. There are many different colors and styles of backgrounds. Some are still pictures while others are animated.
Adding audio to the video is where you need the most skill. This is because of the vast number of audio things that can be added to your movie. Audio, if used correctly, will add a new dimension to your movie. Used incorrectly, audio will take away from all of the hard work putting the movie together.
You can add sound effects, music, animal sounds and on and on. You can also layer the sound adding many combinations of sounds.
When you are happy with your clips, transitions, titles, audios and editing, it is time to share your movie. You can export or publish your movie to iTunes, iDVD, YouTube, Facebook, QuickTime, Vimeo, MobileMe, and many more! You can also save it to your computer.
After completing the iMovie 11 Essentials training on Lynda.com you receive your completion certificate. This was a great experience!

PE2_iMovie

Creating movies after viewing the Lynda.com training is a step by step process. First you have to learn about importing videos. You can import from memory-based or a digital still camera. You can import from camera attached to your computer or from files on your computer. Next, you need to know what type of interface works with your computer. After you have covered this you can start importing and organizing your clips. You can rate your clips by putting them in categories, favorites, unusable, or usable.
Next, you want to start your project and add clips. This is a major part of creating the movie. Once you have added your clips you can edit, trim, split and fine-tune your clips to create the video you want.

PE1_iMovie

iMovie is a wonderful program! I am excited about the many areas of movie making that are covered in this program like capturing video, editing clips, adding transitions, audio, still images, I could go on and on. I have made a few iMovies before, but I have never been through the in-depth training, so I am really looking forward to this training program.

First, I must say a little about Lynda.com. If you don't have a Lynda account you need to get one! This a wonderful place where you can actually complete training videos that have practice exercises to help you understand how to use just about any program. The step by step videos are very easy to follow and comprehend. You can pause at anytime, rewind or repeat a video lessons. Each lesson is short so that you can stay focused, and they are easy to understand.

OK, back to iMovie, there are eight sections in the training. (listed below)

Each section is divided into many small sections to make it easy to work on a few or many at the same time. You can watch a few a day, or the entire thing at one time. It's up to you. I plan to do a little each day until I'm done. So, it's time to get started.

BP3_Ututti

Ututti

Uttuti is a wonderful web 2.0 tool! I went to Go2Web20 to search for tools that I could use in my current position as a music administrator. I was amazed at the thousands of tools available. Fortunately, I was able to narrow the search by using the search engine and typing in education and music. I reviewed several tools and found Ututti to be the most useful for me. I feel that this tool can help me to organize all of my classes, inventory, students, tuition, grades, fees, calendar, emails and reports.

There is a 60 day free trial and if you decide to purchase the program it cost $175.00.

Dashboard

•  See your finances, upcoming events, and recent student activity all in one place including charts and graphs.

As you update information in your Ututti account, the dashboard automatically changes so there is no need for a treasurer or bookkeeper to constantly make new calculations

Student Management

•  Keep full records of student and parent personal info

•  View a student's contact info, assigned inventory and financial account all in one place

•  Organize your students by group to quickly add assignments, fees, and more.

Each student can login to their own personal account. They (or their parents) can view/update their information, see grades and checked out inventory, check their financial account, and more

Inventory

•  Ututti comes pre-configured with several common inventory categories, however, you can easily add your own categories and even tell Ututti what data you'd like to save

•  Use powerful search tools to find inventory items quickly.

Finances and Fundraisers

•  Manage all your finances with one application: fees, fundraisers, budgets, funding, and student accounts!

•  Ututti does the calculations for you, no more calculators

Assignments and Grades

•  Set up your school year by adding grading periods, grading scales, and weight categories

Grade information will be instantly viewable to students and parents from their personal account

Calendar

•  Add events to your public calendar with descriptions/instructions

If you'd like to use Google Calendar instead, you can embed it into your public website simply by pasting the code

E-mail

•  You can send mail to your program's community directly from Ututti without using additional email software

Reports

•  Create customizable reports based on data you've entered into Ututti's databases

•  Easily view student lists, unpaid fees, checked out inventory, fundraiser participation, and more

Retrieved from https://www.ututti.com/features/dashboard

BP2 iGoogle PLE

Well, I don't think that I can hide the fact that I am not a blogger. This is all new to me.  I like the idea of writing down my thoughts and sharing them, I'm not sure I like sharing with the whole world! I do however like doing new things and having new experiences and I love technology. So the idea of a digital diary is very appealing.

I have just set up my iGoogle PLE and it is a wonderful tool. It's great having all my favorite and essential sites listed in one place where I can access them in as little as two clicks. 

Along the way I encountered a major problem (at least it feels like a major problem). I have two gmail accounts! My iGoogle stuff is on one Gmail account and my Blog is on a different one! Does anyone know how I can combine my two accounts into one? If you can help out an island girl I would really appreciate it.

cjg

BP1_Welcome to my blog

Hi, my name is Cheryl Jones-Gage and I'm an Island girl at heart!
I live in Alexandria, VA, but my heart is still in St. Thomas. I grew up in the Caribbean on an island surrounded with beautiful beaches and warm sunny days. My favorite thing to do there is to sit on the beach and listen to the sound of the ocean (Caribbean sea actually).
I love the music of the caribbean! I didn't know how much I loved it until I left.
I miss fried fish and johnny cakes and Christmas on the beach. I think it's time for a trip home!