Week 14

Using Video for Teaching and Learning

As educators, our aim is to get students energized and engaged in the hands-on learning process, and video is clearly an instructional medium that is compelling and generates a much greater amount of interest and enjoyment than the more traditional printed material. Using sight and sound, video is the perfect medium for students who are auditory or visual learners. With the added use of subtitles each child then has the choice to watch, listen to, or read each presentation. Video stimulates and engages students creating interest and maintaining that interest for longer periods of time, and it provides an innovative and effective means for educators to address and deliver the required curriculum content.

 The more interested and engaged students are, and the more interactive each learning session is, the more students will enjoy, learn from and retain information from the lesson. Video provides a means of interactive instruction and is a very flexible medium. Having the ability to stop, start and rewind is absolutely invaluable. It provides the option to stop each video and challenge students to predict the outcome of a demonstration, and elaborate on, or debate a point of historical reference. You also have the option to rewind a section of the video to review a segment to ensure that children understand a key concept. You can ensure to add further interactivity by copying activities, conducting discussions or repeating demonstrations and experiments in the your classroom.

 Minimum Equipment that You Need to Produce a Video :

·         A recording device (webcam, camera, or screencasting software).

·         Access to editing software (iMovie, windows movie maker, or an online tool).

·         Computer, laptop, or tablet.

·         An online presence to post videos like YouTube, SchoolTube, or Vimeo.

There are many ways to apply video technology in the classroom. One very simple could be to make an "introduce yourself" video, and show it to our students the first day of class. We will  look more approachable when we use video instead of the standard introduction speech. We can incorporate our credentials, hobbies, and favorite music all in one video. I am pretty sure that most of our students are going to be surprised with this idea. After our self introduction video, it could be a good idea to have our students create a 30 second video about themselves so they can all get to know each other, and as the first class assignment for them. We can help our students with ideas for the content. What did they do over the summer? What are their hobbies?. Other idea could be to create a "moving flashcards" video. We can make the memorization fun again. We can have our students create an Animoto slideshow of vocabulary words, historical dates, the periodic table, etc. Students can integrate music and images which I am sure it will help students better absorb the information and it is a lot more fun than index cards. Animoto is an easy-to-use website where we and our students can create 30-second videos for free. As educators, we can sign up and get a free Animoto Plus account. The Plus account allows us to sign up 50 of our  students for six months with the ability to create videos of unlimited length. A final idea could be to create a "virtual field trip" video. It can be logistically and economically challenging to get the  entire class out on the open road to experience the world. We can have students pick a local attraction like a national park or monument and create a video about it. It will feel like you are actually there.

Week 14

TED-ED   Lesson

This is a TED-ED lesson I created about How the Electoral College works. This today's trend topic is going to be my final project about. I think this lesson is a good start to know a little more about what happen with our vote during the Presidential election day. I wrote some questions about the video in the "Think" section. In the "Dig Deeper" section I added some links and images that students can access to get some more information. Also I posted a discussion question about the video in the "Discuss" section and a text box for some  final thoughts.

Click here to acces the TED-ED lesson I created

Jorge Villarreal

Week 13

Using Google Photos for teaching and learning

Google Photos has many features that we can take advantage of in Education. It is a free photo management system. It is a cloud base application and offers us unlimited storage for high-resolution images. Using this application we can easily upload images and videos through auto-syncing and drag-and-drop interfaces. Once we have the images uploaded, we can manipulate the images, post them to Facebook and Twitter, share a link pointing to the images, create an Album, or tell Stories with them. Google Photos has a smart search that use keywords much like what we do while searching for images in Google search. In Google Photos, the keyword “food” , for example, will return the images of foods, a color keyword like “red”, “green”, or “black”  will come up with images with the respective shade or have the appointed color. Google Photos comes with a photo editor. The edit button will bring a toolbar which lets us do some basic image editing such as cropping the image, adjusting the shade, lights, and colors. Another feature is the image compression. As we are uploading photos to Google Photos, the image size is compressed. Once it has been uploaded, download the photos and we can find that the image sizes are much smaller, almost 80% compression rate.

In the classroom we can make a lot of projects using Google Photos. We can work with K-2 kids  in a photo album to introduce kids to numbers. Here you will assist kids taking the pictures. You give each child a number and ask them to find things that correspond with that number and take a picture of them. For example, if they are assigned the number 3, they may look around the classroom, school, or outside for things that are gathered in 3's. They may find three books together in the library, or three apples in the classroom. Then take a picture of the books or apples. You can then make a Numbers Album in Google Photos with each number being a different page. You would have the child word process the word for the number; the figure for the number, and then insert the pictures. In the same way we can generate other Google Photos o albums to introduce kids with the colors, shapes, etc.

A project for 6-8th graders could be an album-directory in Google Photos of the school's staff and faculty. The teacher will form 3 groups each day to work in 3 different assignments. The idea is to finish the project in five days. If the total number of person in the directory is 20, we are going to work with four person each day. Group 1 is going to take several pictures of each person, and select the best ones of each. Group 2 is going to interview the persons. They are going to compile name, position, main functions and a brief personal message, and Group 3 is going to upload the pictures in Google Photos, and type the info for each person. The next day other 3 different groups is going to work on the same assignments and so on each day until complete the project.

The final idea could be a Google Photos album of a field trip for 3 - 5th grade students. The idea is to create some kind of a field trip digital memory. The teacher take lots of pictures when the class is on a field trip. Back in the classroom, each student can choose 1 picture to work with on Google Photos. The students write a short description of what was happening or why this moment was important.

Jorge Villarreal.

Week 13

Google Photos Assignment.

This is the link to access the Google Photo Album that I create. This album tells the story of the great American mountain lion of San Andres. This story is a reflection on the extermination of some species of animals in some regions of the world caused by human unconsciousness.

https://goo.gl/photos/xNzQygUfHZRRAM9P8

Jorge Villarreal.

Week 12

Self-directed Learning using Feedly

Animatron: Animation Creation for Teachers and Students

I read an article in "The Ed Tech Round UP" site about a free and simple to use animation creator application called "Animatron". This app allows teachers and students create short videos for presentations, and I think it would work well for 6-12 teachers and students. Users will need to register with the website. When you run the app, Animatron will load a blank canvas, and users can add content, in form of images, pictures, text, shapes, lines, and more. As users add content, they will see the content represented as “layers”. Users can adjust the order and length in which the content appears in their video. Once content has been added, users can toggle between the “Design” and “Animation” settings. Users can add multiple canvases to their video. Also they can set transitions between their canvases, and if they wish, they can add a voiceover to their video.

Animatron is cloud based app, so no installations and no plugins are needed. It is built on HTML5 technology which allows to work on both, desktop computers and mobile devices. The software is intuitive, so it makes it very easy to learn. It features a free Marketplace with hundreds of pre-animated characters, props and backgrounds that allow creating animations in minutes. The app also offers importing options. It is possible to import fonts, images, video and audio in various formats to be used when creating a video or animation. Animatron allows two or more people to work simultaneously on one project in real time which makes it an important feature for us in Education.

http://www.edtechroundup.org/home/reviews-animatron-animation-creation-for-teachers-and-students

QuizPedia: Free Online Quizzes for Teachers and Students

I read other an article also in "The Ed Tech Round UP" site about an online quiz creation resource similar to Kahoot! and Quizizz, but with the difference that this app was designed primarily for students to create quizzes. QuizPedia is a quiz tool that turns the tables and let the students make quizzes instead of the teacher. This makes them co-creators of knowledge and strengthens their skills.

In order to create their own multi-modal quizzes students must be able to research, evaluate and validate information and they must distil their knowledge down to a few key questions. This forces them to reflect about the subject from different angles. What do I know about this? What is most important? How do I best present my knowledge to my peers?

And not only do the students obtain knowledge while researching and creating the quiz, the quiz can also help them retain that knowledge if they take the quiz again at a later time, perhaps studying for an exam on the subject.

http://www.edtechroundup.org/home/reviews-quizpedia-free-online-quizzes-for-teachers-and-students

 

Week 12

Using LiveBinders for teaching and learning

LiveBinder is a Web 2.0 tool that we can use as a digital binder to store any kind of online information. There are no design or layout issues to contend with when we use LiveBinders because everything uploaded to the binder is organized in tabs and sub-tabs. The tabs and sub-tabs, are similar to pages in a book, organize information and resources for ease of students viewing. The features of these binders allow us as educators to upload resources in the form of PDFs, images, presentations, videos, podcasts, documents, and more. If a teacher or instructor desires to include links to online resources, all they need to do is create a special tab for these links.

As educators we know that we are always so busy in our classrooms creating, organizing, and storing lesson plans. LiveBinders allows us to create, organize, and share information. As users we  can put almost anything into the binder. Students and teachers can link web pages and YouTube videos or just put documents, images, and videos inside their LiveBinders. All LiveBinber users  have the option of create different tabs and sub-tabs just as we would do in a tangible 3-ring binder.

One idea for using LiveBinders for teaching and learning could be for a reading class. A reading teacher 1st-5th grade can collect all the reading material of the year using one digital binder. She or he can include tabs and sub-tabs that links to different types of readings as well as tabs and sub-tabs that links to libraries and reading tools with techniques to improve reading depending on the grade teaching. When the teacher feels that his reading digital binder is strong enough for the grade teaching, he can share it by making it public to other reading teacher. Other idea could be for a 5th grade History class. The teacher can create a digital binder to learn History by creating a travel binder. Students team up with partners and plan a trip to a particular country. The idea is to get them to create a scenario where they have to travel to this country and then document what they visited. The teacher need to provided guidelines, handouts and resources that help the students with their projects. The digital binder can include for example one tab as an introduction of the country to be visited. Also one tab for each day spend in that country with sub-tabs that links to the places to be visited as well as relevant information of each place. Finally other idea could be a digital binder for a teacher conference presentation. This project can be use as a way to present conference material in an organized format in the binder. The teacher addresses all the important issues about the presentation  with examples of tools that other teachers can use for their work, depending on the grade and the subject to be teach.  Teacher can also provides guidelines on how to use some of the web 2.0 tools that he or she is using. 

Jorge Villarreal.

Week 12

LiveBinders  Assignment


Click here to go to My LiveBinder

I create a binder to organize my ESL classes as a student at El Paso Community College.
This is going to help me find the right notes needed to complete all the assignments as well as to prepare me for the quizzes and final exams.


Jorge Villarreal