Saturday Seminar

I had a great work day. The day started out with a few shares from Bailey. She showed us a website: screencast-o-matic, which we can use similar to Jing to record our voices and show how to do something. A tutorial of sorts. Dave says he finds it easier to use than Jing. I'm nut sure I'll have a use for this for second grade but I could see this as an application I could use to teach parents how to do something I'm using with their children or share with others teachers something new in technology. Another site that was shared was wallwisher. Here you can create a page full of sticky notes. If all of my students had laptops, this would be a great site to use to respond to literature, create a quick exit slip to showcase their learning, or do a quick math message. I am still thinking about how I can use this in a classroom with 3 computers. One idea is to have kids write on a sticky after their independent computer time. Perhaps they could write one thing they did at the computer, such as I practiced my spelling words and got them all right!
We had several guests that came to assist us with our work: Danielle and Seth. They were both very knowledgeable about technology and both have created a project that will be on the digitalis website when it's up and running. Danielle helped me a lot to think through my project and see what direction I could take it in. After today, I know I want to use more technology that's out there. She shared voicethread with me and I'm excited to try that with my students (if my computers work). I know that will continue to be an issue and I need to figure out what I will do if the problem persists. She also taught me how to capture my movies in imovie. I have been downloading movies and am not sure where they end up after the download.
I have also added to my original questions: How does the use of digital media foster students writing as they work to create a yearlong timeline of their learning? What evidence of deep learning will these projects reflect? Will students take ownership of the writing so that mid-year, templates with story starters will not be needed? Will the quality of paper-based reflections differ from digital writing?
Heather gave me an idea to have my kids reflect weekly about their learning, then choose one of those reflections to do their monthly reflection. I think this will be more manageable when they are ready to do their reflection because a month is a long time!
Dave showed us a tutorial about using imovie. I have been using it for a few years, but learned a few new things-I didn't know about the advanced tools (my version doesn't have the globe on it). I didn't know you could drag photos directly to imovie. I was saving them to desktop-this will make it quicker!
I'm thinking about changing the final project after talking to Danielle. What if I took the kids' writing and they record their voices on imovie along with adding their photos or scanned work? I think the final presentation will be more interesting than an Impress project would be. We'll see.
The day went fast. I think I accomplished a lot and did a lot of reflecting in my own mind about what it is I am actually doing with my students!