Voices of the World February Task

February’s task – create five animated characters using www.voki.com and record the following text based on a Valentine’s poem.

Voki 1 – Roses are red

Voki 2 – Violets are blue

Voki 3 – Sugar is sweet

Voki 4 – And so are you

Voki 5 – I Love you

Listen to the vokis below to hear the poem in different languages. 

Make a short PowerPoint about Valentine's Day.

I Love You

Valentines day ppt

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ICT Input 3 - Animation :(

As our groups, and therefore topic for our wiki, changed during the last input we decided to use the theme of healthy eating.
Because of this, our animation was based on health.
In my first blog I spoke about animation and how much I despise it! I don't have the patience for the constant clicking and I'm not really great at the art involved in making the models!
Me and Kirsten were the only people in the group and we worked well together, however we were both getting frustrated with the clicking and moving of the animation. The background was constantly moving and when we watched it back our hands were still in the shot! We re-shot a lot of the video and when we were finally finished, I didn't feel much achievement as there was only around 20 seconds of video!!
I think this could be used with a class but over a longer period of time and with more pupils in a group. I think if this was spread out into a project for pupils they would enjoy it as they would invest time and have a strong sense of ownership on the final product.
I took Sharon's advice to keep it simple but with my lack of patience for this activity I spent the three hours frustrated!!

ICT Input 2

In the second ICT input Sharon introduced us to a range of tools to enhance learning in ICT.
The groups I had previously spoken about in my first blog had now been changed so none of the absent members were no longer in my group. This was positive as we could engage in a whole group discussion and work well together. However it had a negative effect due to the fact we were starting from scratch and had to think of new ideas for a topic for the wiki and movie and had less time to think about our bear character. Because of this we had to meet up in outside the workshop to organise our resources for this aspect of our group work. I already feel that this group works better because we were all present and active in the communication. Since the input we have e-mailed to organise our bear story and met up to take pictures.

We were told about communities of practice and explored our own understanding of this by word association. I was interested in what Sharon had told us about Belbin's theory of roles.

We each had to decide and discuss with a partner which role we feel we take. I feel that I fall under the people/feelings category especially the team worker and resource/investigator roles. I think I have parts of each role as different situations may bring on different reactions and a good teacher must take on board each aspect to teach different children.
In our group I feel there must be somebody who falls under the Doing/Acting role as there needs to be an active facilitator to motivate the group properly. Sharon commented that when directing ICT in schools and making links with others she needed to take this role as she wanted to keep the connections working.

It is apparent Sharon has done this in the organisation of the module as well as in schools as she has set up links with student teachers in other countries to share our bears with.

We were introduced to voices of the world which is a useful tool to connect children from different countries and cultures. We looked at the song 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' sung in different languages. This links to our modern languages collaboration and is a good way of teaching language without being rigid. On the wiki page for voices of the world there is a mention of eTwinning. As I had never heard of this concept before, I explored the link and found that it is a way of making connections with teacher throughout Europe! This is an excellent idea as it is an easy way of finding like minded professionals. Also I had no idea where Sharon found schools/universities to connect with before now!

We were shown the SlideShare program to enable us to show PowerPoints over the internet. To test the program out I made a tester slideshow;

Slideshare ppt

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Another tool we were shown was One True Media for making montages using pictures and music. I tested this out with a picture of me and the introduction to my favourite song!!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We also learned about Mixbook for making virtual books. I think this would be very helpful in a nursery and throughout the school and it's very interactive during story time as pupils could turn the pages. I intended to test out the program like I did with SlideShare and One True Media but the website would not respond!

We used a voting website called Poll4.com to decide as a class whether we would use one bear per class or per group. I liked this website as it let you answer any question using a code. This could be used for homework as well as voting as long as pupils remembered to put their name alongside the answer!

Taking into account the comments on my previous blogs from Collette and Sharon, I labelled my blogs and checked the spellings before publishing. I wrote instructions for adding Vokis to a blog which was very difficult because of the aspect of adding pictures but I figured out through trial and error how to crop save and upload into a post.

How to add a Voki to your blog

After a previous blog about trying to add a Voki to my blog, Sharon suggested I write instructions about this for others.

First go to http://www.voki.com/ 

 

Next, create an account by filling in the box in the top right corner.

  

After you have set up an account, log in and you will be taken to the home page. 

Along the top of the page there is a button which says 'Create'.

  

A Voki will appear on the page with 'Customize your character' buttons next to it. 

Change your character's appearance and give it a voice by using these buttons.

  

When you have finished creating the Voki, click 'Publish'.

  Name your Voki in the box provided and press 'Save'.

Once the Voki is saved, there will be a box containing a HTML code under the title 'For Most Sites Use This Code'. 

Highlight and copy this code. Go to your blog homepage. In the top right corner next to the 'New Post' button, there is a 'Design' button. 

Click the 'Design' button and you will be taken to a page with a layout of your blog.

At the right hand side of the page above the boxes 'Followers', 'Blog Archive' and, 'About Me' there is a button which says 'Add Gadget' Click this button.

A box will then pop up with options, scroll down until you find the button for 'HTML/Javascript'.

When you click this another box will appear.  In this box, name your Voki and paste the HTML code into the 'content' box.

  

Press save and view blog!

Building on my learning

Today Sharon showed us how to upload a video onto my blog rather than just uploading the link.
I'm testing this skill by uploading the YouTube video I posted the link to yesterday.

My Voki

Whilst being shown examples of post-grad blogs in our first workshop, I saw one of them had uploaded a Voki onto their page. Taking Collette's advice to protect my identity I decided I wanted a Voki version of myself for my own blog.
During the time setting up my blog I made a Voki and tried pasting the HTML code into various areas on the blog. Each time it failed to upload so I used the internet to find instructions.
There I found a link to a YouTube viedo posted by school children about how to add my Voki! This was a great help and proof that ICT in schools can work very well!
Here is the link;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssGHaNX3O4g

Introduction to ICT (2CM8)

I chose ICT as my elective as I enjoyed the previous inputs, especially the games based learning and movie making. I'm looking forward to trying out these aspects of the module.
In the first workshop of the ICT elective, our class was given an overview of the activities we will be participating in this semester.
We made wikis and began our blogs. I have experience of wikis from the modern languages input last year and will hopefully further my knowledge of them as the module goes on.
Blogging is something I've never done before so I'm interested in the new experience and predict that from this experience I will learn the benefits blogging can have within the classroom.
We teamed up with the modern languages elective class and formed our working groups in which we will be movie making. Our group has 2 modern language students and 3 students from ICT. I'm glad that the numbers turned out this way as I'm keen to edit the movies we'll be making but feel that I don't have a full enough understanding to take on the ICT aspect on my own.
During the workshop Collette spoke about the negative relationships of some of the groups from other years. This has made me wary of the fact that I don't know two of the members of my group and haven't met them yet as they were both absent. I hope our group can work together well, it seems to be working so far as we started thinking of ideas for our movie together.
Combining modern languages and ICT has complicated the task as our group has French and German students so the topic must include both. Thinking of a topic which can include all five of us and cultural aspects of France and Germany was hard. We came up with 'Paris to Berlin' and had rough ideas of what to include in the video but will need a lot more input for perfection!
I'm looking forward to the Strictly Come Movies as it's an example of active learning and also sounds fun. I think that the Smartboard and Promethean training will help me use these resources to their full ability in a classroom and the bear journey is a great activity!
I think over the module I will struggle with the animation as last year I lost patience with the endless clicking!