Educating the Dragon

Today was the day for two training sessions.

Firstly, I ran ‘Digital Storytelling" workshop, sharing the online platforms of Voicethread, Teachertube, and Slideshare.

I always enjoy running these session because I find teachers bring just as much to a session as I do. We began a voicethread… My first really proper one and it is oh so basic but I am hoping that others whole attended the session will be adding there thoughts about it. The cough at the beginning of my talk is not me but an attendee who shall remain nameless.

Cliotech was good enough to allow me to share some of the input from her slideshare .

Second up was Stop motion animation. Some folk from this morning stayed into the afternoon. We played around with webcams for a while and discussed the usefulness of animation creation to support not only the literacy programme but also it solidfy learning in other areas, for example creating an animation to illustrate life-cycles in science. We even had one uploaded to www.teachertube.com by the end of the session. It’s entitled "Mr Mouse" Enjoy!

ps. It was also great to know about a couple of sound wikispaces today. One of the attendees has been struggling with establishing her class wiki on wikispaces. I would have loved to sit down with her and assist in creating her class wiki, but that would be another 3 hour session so I pointed her in the direction on Wonderfulworldof.wikispaces.com and encouraged her to look through the material there before she gave up. Often I find its better to have the pointers than to be able to ‘Fix it’ then and there. Thanks Chrissy

pps. Thanks Derek for sharing this . What a powerful illustration of Storytelling in the 21st Century

Umajin is an innovative, easy, engaging application that has been introduced at the conference. It has been specifically designed to support digital storytelling and oral language. If you want to trial it you can find it here and I have to say I love it. Breathe Technology has negociated the exclusive training rights for it too. So if you down load it and you want some training just leave me a comment

I have been really finding the teaching of oral Language skills difficult over this term, particularly in the ‘using technology to enhance…’ sort of way.

But today I was teaching in an Intermediate (Y8) class today in Hastings, New Zealand who were working on ‘projects’ on oral language-

One group was practicing and a play, another looking a Shakespeare’s Macbeth. But the group I was most interested in were considering Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech. They have to go on Youtube and listen to the footage then they accessed the ‘script’ via the web.

They had to identify the techniques MLK used in his speech to connect with the audience and then answer some questions independently.

They needed to find out about:

Ku Klux Clan

‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’

Rosa Parks

Segregation

Civil Rights

Slavery

All through the web and then present their findings.

If I were doing this with my class I’d have them use photo Story or Voicethread to make the final presentation.

What a fantastic use of technology in the classroom context.

I must confess this session was not my creation but the teacher of the class. Well done.