'Templates'
Recently, our boy DJ Cash Money began experimenting with Animoto—a neat free program that allows users to easily create short and engaging videos. As Cash Money mentioned in his review, Animoto “formats the pictures into a high energy, eye catching display. A great thing about it is that it only takes about five minutes to make and it is free.”
If you’re interested in creating your own Animoto presentation, here’s a template that will help you with your planning:
Animoto Planning Template
Remember to select a topic that is interesting and connected to something that you’re doing in class. Also remember that if you decide to include your own audio—-rather than audio that you select from the Animoto library—you must use Royalty Free music. There are a collection of Royalty Free tracks in our NASA video project post that you can use.
Rock on,
Bam Bam Bigelow
November 18th, 2007
One of our favorite final products has to be the interesting—and simple—tutorials being created by the Commoncraft folks called Papercraft tutorials. Done with nothing more than a whiteboard and paper, these tutorials are just plain interesting to watch!
While papercraft tutorials would be appropriate for a wide range of topics, they may be particularly interesting as a final product for the NASA Project that we’re beginning to tackle. They certainly would be different from anything else submitted for the competition.
Either way, here’s a template that you can use to draft a papercraft tutorial.
Papercraft Tutorial Template
Remember that half of the challenge of a papercraft tutorial is creating the paper figures to go with your presentation. The other half of the challenge is coming up with a script that’s interesting!
Rock on,
Bam Bam Bigelow
November 18th, 2007
Alright, Plug Me In-ers, here’s a project that’s right up our alley:
SCIENCE: MULTIMEDIA COMPETITION
http://www.explorationpodcast.com/
Middle grades students who enter the 21st Century Explorer Podcast
Competition will produce a 60-second audio or video podcast that
answers the question: “What do you think is NASA’s greatest
exploration achievement in the past 50 years and why?” There will be
prizes — and we’re pretty sure, based on the promotional material at
this website, that PIZZAZZ counts! Click on “About the Competition”
to get the complete details. The content, sponsored by the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, hopes to “encourage
today’s students to become tomorrow’s explorers.” Deadline for
submission is January 4, 2008.
Let’s see if we can win this thing! After all, we’ve got podcasting and digital movie making down pat and we’ve got more than a passing interest in the lunacy that NASA is involved in!
Here’s a template that you can use to plan a vodcast—or video podcast—that we’ll eventually post here in Plug Me In and on The Blurb:
NASA Project Template
You’ll need to use Moviemaker or Garage Band to do your actual recording. If you’re not sure how to use Moviemaker, be sure to get the templates that Bam Bam has in class. They’re step-by-step directions, so you’re sure to be able to follow them.
You’ll also need some royalty free music to include in your presentation. Music always makes presentations more interesting. Here are a bunch of royalty free songs that we can use. The tracks are all one minute long—which is the length that videos for the competition are allowed to be:
Royalty Free Jazz Loop
Royalty Free Funk Loop
Royalty Free Fiddle Loop
Royalty Free Classical Loop
Royalty Free Bass Loop
Just remember to include the credit tagline at the end of your production, though. While these tracks are royalty free, you do need to give credit to the creators.
Rock on,
Bam Bam Bigelow
November 18th, 2007
One of my favorite blog posts recently was an interview about technology with a 14-year old boy who goes by the pseudonym Arthus. The way I see it, it’s about time that we started asking kids about technology in schools. After all, they’re our customers!
Unfortunately, Arthus isn’t impressed. The way he sees it, we’re cutting off our kids’ tentacles every time they come to school.
So what do you think? Are your teachers doing anything exciting with technology? What would you like to see them doing? Why do you think that technology is almost always absent from school? How would you change things if you were in charge?
Let’s see if we can get some interesting posts about technology right here on our blog. Here are a list of questions that might prompt your thinking:
Handout_Blog_Topics (download from Screencast.com)
And here’s a list of directions about how to make a post in Edublogs:
Handout_Blog_Posting (download from Screencast.com)
Signed,
Bam Bam Bigelow
November 4th, 2007
One of the most challenging struggles that digital junkies face in today’s world is keeping up with the massive amount of content being generated online. Thousands of new posts are made on thousands of new (and old!) websites every day. Even if you spent thousands of hours sitting in front of your computer, you’d probably lose track of what was happening on your favorite sites.
The solution? Get yourself a really good RSS feed reader!
What’s an RSS feed reader? Check out this Commoncraft tutorial to learn more:
http://www.blip.tv/file/205570/
Plug Me In members are going to be experimenting a bit with a feed reader known as Pageflakes. Pageflakes is actually a pretty neat feed reader that I’m sure you’re going to like. It will become the first website that you visit each day, and it is bound to save you tons of time. Instead of having to go to nineteen different websites, you’ll head to Pageflakes to see what’s new.
Here’s a set of directions about how to create and manage your Pageflakes page:
Handout_Pageflakes
Specifically, you’ll be following websites that teach you something new about the region of the world that you are studying in Social Studies. Here are a bunch of web feeds that you may want to start with:
Pageflakes_Seeds
Rock on, Bam Bam Bigelow
November 4th, 2007
One of the neatest–and easiest—tools to use online is Trailfire, which allows users to create annotated collections of websites that viewers can navigate through in order from beginning to end. By creating trails, you can introduce others to the information that you are studying and the ideas that are shaping your thinking.
Trailfire is a great way to begin organizing the thousands of websites that you stumble across every day while exploring your world. It can be used by teachers to guide students through research projects or by students as products for projects. Check out this sample trail, which introduces users to the key elements of staying safe while online:
http://www.trailfire.com/plugmein/trails/47114
Once you’re ready to create your own trail, this template might be helpful as you’re planning:
Trailfire Planning Template
If you create any trails, be sure to leave us a comment with the address! We’d love to check out what it is that you find interesting online.
Rock on,
Bam Bam Bigelow
October 29th, 2007
