Aboriginal Education and VoiceThread 2

I just had the best meeting! How often do you hear a teacher say that? I met with the head of Aboriginal Education for our district, and she thought that there is definitely potential for students in the Aboriginal program to "show what they know" using VoiceThread. I first thought about this idea in January. I think Voicethread would be a great tool for the students in this program for a number of reasons:

1.) According to the head of Aboriginal Ed. for the Coquitlam School district, approx. 25% of the students have some sort of special need designation, with many needing help with Literacy. With VoiceThread, students can create content with digital cameras, scans of their work, and a microphone. Individual accounts are free, so this does not create a financial burden on school programs.

2.) Students in the Aboriginal program can interact with other students in the Aboriginal program by inviting them. But, it doesn't have to stop there. What if a student could get feedback on their school projects from Elders from their nation? From other nations? From other educators? Culturally and educationally, this could be very valuable.

The next step is to work with the Aboriginal teacher assigned to my school and see if there are some ways we can use VoiceThread for some of the academic projects she has planned for her students.  I am very excited!

Can you say that again? And again?

    One of my students in my "Computers and Students with Learning Disabilities" (let's call him Mike) just had a bit of a breakthrough in tonight's course. It was the last night of the course, and it was the best night yet. Mike has CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder). This means that when he hears things, somehow the signal gets turned around in his brain so that he doesn't hear the sounds that enter his ear. He also has trouble with his vision, and sometimes what he see also gets turned around.   

    

     When I asked Mike if he preferred to read or listen to a story, he said listen - with his right ear.  When I asked him if he would rather speak an answer, write an answer, or type an answer, he said....type!  Mike displayed a good sense of how to navigate menus (file -> save, or edit -> copy), and type at a decent speed for a student about 13 years old.  So I thought of ways for him to do his work using a computer to help.

     

    Mike was showing some good skills with photo editing using a simple graphics program.  I wanted him to use a digital camera to tell a story, as he could use photographs to tell stories with less typing, than just writing out a story alone.  I also showed him how he could use royalty free pictures and VoiceThread.com or PowerPoint to create simple presentations with either voice narration or typed explanations.  Mike was pleased.

      Mike's mom reported that Mike had difficulties remembering step-by-step instructions, such as "resizing a photo" (about 4 steps).  As our lab has Audacity on each station, and many of our computer stations have headphones, I decided to use Mike's preference for audio instructions and skills with a computer to give him a way to remember step-by-step instructions.  I used Audacity to record the steps as an mp3 (sound) file.  Mike put on his headphones, but only on the right ear.  He played the steps using Windows Media Player, and pressed pause when he finished listening to a step.  Mike was able to resize a photo listening only to the recorded instructions; he listened, paused the instructions, did that one step, and went back to listen to the next step!  

     Mike's mom said she was pleased to see that he could do instructions step-by-step by listening to an MP3 file of instructions, but wondered how Mike could do this in class?  I suggested an iPod!  Some models of ipod have microphones to make a recording.  He could ask the teacher to make a recording of Mike's instructions, pausing after each step.  Then Mike could play it back, listening to just the right headphone in class, and pause the track at each step.  By using headphones on his iPod, he would not be disturbing others.  He could then save the file on his computer and his iPod to listen to it again in the future.  My hope is that someday Mike records his own instructions, and becomes able to teach himself.

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Marvellous Machine

This is the final result of the Marvellous Machine Project. We have had so many students participate, we have had to create a Marvellous Machine Project 2! This is because I don't have the "Pro" version, and therefore can only put 50 slides with narration per project. The "Pro" version costs around $60, and I might hit my school up for the money, if the administrator and/or staff find it is a valuable presentation tool. I believe that this is not the last voice thread my students and I will do, as students of all ages found they could be successful with it.

The Toolbox

I would like to thank the many other educational bloggers out there, like Vicki Davis and Jennifer Wagner. These are only two of the many people who have helped me to build "my toolbox."

On the topic of irresponsible Internet use by elementary and especially middle school children. We must not be so afraid of it, any more than we will be afraid of children not completing their homework on time, or calling each other names. Of course it will happen from time to time. It happens in elementary schools, and it happens in middle schools. There are ways to right the wrongs in other behaviour situations, and we as teachers must be aware of the nuts and bolts of Web 2.0 to know wrongs can be made right on the Internet.


What needs to happen is that we have good policies in place, make kids aware of them, teach them the difference between right and wrong, teach them the value of making the right choice over the wrong choice, and offer them really interesting lessons. The more interesting the lesson I created this year, the more sustained effort I saw from all students. Including very defiant students. Students with Individual Behaviour Plans. It is also in how you "pitch" your ideas. If you are passionate about an idea, if you believe the idea, if you can communicate its power, then they will believe. Powerful ideas and really interesting lessons taught with passion are the three greatest ingredients that go into one classroom management plan.

Children want to collaborate. Many kids need to be taught how to collaborate. Learning this lesson is more important than any computer program, or any computer skill. Many will do it right if started with the right foundation - they think they are learning a computer program to do a task. What they are learning is how to create something bigger than themselves, by working with someone else. And, in my computer class, I can offer more choice of topics than can be offered in any other course. Here are some important collaborative web 2.0 tools.


Kerpoof.com - an incredible collaborative drawing program. You don't have to collaborate to use kerpoof, but why wouldn't you?!? You can paint online, experiment with different classical styles of art. It comes with lesson plans with teachers. It is free!

VoiceThread.com - collaborative presentation making. You can as a teacher sign up an account, and have students create art and narrate stories about their art online. It is free to make the first 3 voice threads. I love free!

YouthTwitter.com - like twitter, but angled towards providing a safe place for teachers and students to interact, ask questions, share projects, etc.

While we as "digital immigrants" see these projects as students learning computer skills, the big idea, the Learning Intention is developing a value system within our class and our society that instills in each child the desire to be socially responsible "digital natives."



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VoiceThread in the Works - Robots!

I was watching a great video called the "little yellow drum machine" at:

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/112

You can see this little wonder below:

It was a huge hit with the students. This has great entertainment value, and can be used to teach about music, math, science and technology. I used it to start a writing activity. The students are going to create a picture using ms paint. It will be a picture of a robot, accomplishing a task that they themselves don't want to do. They have to be specific, and show how the structure of the robot relates to it's function. Relating structure and function is also an important idea in high school biology. Here is an example of what the start of one picture might look like:

Granted, this is only a start, and my students are labelling the parts, but I think it will be a big hit. The students were working on task for 15 minutes, quiet as church mice. This is always a good sign. I will follow up with a post of the voice thread when I finish.



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Voice Thread and Aboriginal Education

I was just talking to our Aboriginal Education teacher. He and I go way back, and he has taught me a lot about the First Nations' culture in British Columbia. One of the things we have talked about is how much of the First Nations' culture is based on their oral history. Also, how many of his students have difficulties with writing and literacy based activities. I think we will be doing a Voice Thread project in the future, so that he can use this to help his students show what they are learning; whether it is for their regular program, or something they have learned through their studies in the Aboriginal Pull-Out program.





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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Voice Thread

This is one powerful educational tool. Jennifer Wagner (hope I got your name right) a teacher from California introduced me to it. It allows people from all over the world to gather around a photo and make either a voice recording of what they wish to tell about the photo, or to type a comment in the event they don't have a microphone. Here is an example:



I hope to get a lot of students gathered around a series of pictures discussing what they mean to them.

Lesson idea: What about showing pictures of events that happened around the world, and have people from different cultures share their perspective, i.e. the fall of the berlin wall, or Vancouver winning the 2010 olympic bid? What about different symbols or icons from around the world, and how they mean different things to different people depending on your language or culture?

A lesson for my elementary students- how about constructing the history of your school, or sharing a science report from photos taken from a field trip. I think I will tackle this one on February's field trip to science world. Let's see what a bunch of 2nd and 3rd Graders learn and report from Science World based on comments on a Voice Thread project.