global2
collaborate, communicate, create
Children’s Music Compositions 2
Jul 21st
Over the term Andrew and I (at North Fitzroy Primary School) have been working with the level four kids devising their own compositions for mixed percussion groups
The key concepts that we taught were:
1. The need for a bassline and its role – to hold the piece down harmonically and rhythmically.
2. A Melody line and what it does – adds character and individual taste to a composition – it’s the thing on top that gives spice.
3. An accompanying part either using a counter melody or chords and what it does – it enhances the melody and provides some substance.
4. An A section and a B section for interest sake – to provide variety for the listeners ear.
5. A Rhythm part.
The kids all worked in small groups of 5 and co-composed all the parts and then each person performed one part. Finally we filmed all the performances and did some quick editing using Final Cut Express
The kids love this and are all very confident in their ideas and with the idea of being able to compose. Marimbas and basic metalaphones are great to use when composing with kids because they are generally diatonic (all in the same key center) so allow kid to instantly play and sound quite good.
I often just encourage them to hit a couple of notes and decide if they like the combination of sounds and then they are off and running. Below is a video link to show the results.
FUSE
Jul 21st
Victoria’s Department of Education and Early Childhood Development has released stage one of their new website. FUSE; Find, Use and Share quality Education resources is set to be revolutionary for teachers by the time it is complete by early 2010. Even now, it has many features both for Victorian DEECD employed teachers and others outside of this system. Teachers can log in using their Edumail details to access extra content and features.
FUSE homepageFUSE is the one place to get everything you need for teaching and learning. It also provides the ability to save, bookmark and package items for later access. So if you are looking for items such as URLs, documents and videos for teaching a unit of work, they can be found, saved and packaged for easy access at a later date. Teachers can also rate and comment on resources.
FUSE has been developed in conjunction with organisations such as the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the State Library of Victoria, Scienceworks and Museum Victoria.Â
Innovation and Next Practice Branch Assistant General Manager Katrina Reynen at the release of FUSETeachers are ecouraged to upload to FUSE. Documents, URLs, videos and more are accepted in all types of formats.
FUSE is the total online planning tool that will be the virtual library inside the Ultranet, once the Ultranet is released. Teachers can begin using this fabulous tool now with the confidence that it will be a major part of the Ultranet.
Bright Ideas has already uploaded a document, a URL and a video to FUSE to share with other teachers.
Student Avatars
Jul 17th
 
 
 
If you need student avatars for blogs, Voice Thread or other Internet applications and don’t want to upload photos of your students, there are a few options for creating avatars. I had my students draw a self portrait which I then photographed and uploaded (as above).
 Alternatively, there are a number of sites you can use to build avatars and save them to your computer as an image file. The problem that I have found is that many avatar creator sites have innapropriate content for younger students (ads and images). Here are three avatar creator sites that seem to be suitable for children…
Be Funky – upload a photo from your computer, webcam, URL or photo sharing site and give it special effects. Photos can be saved as jpegs.
Build Your Wild Self - add all sorts of animal features to your character. The best way to create an image is probably to screen capture it. Alternatively you can email the image (you can then save it as a gif) or chose to print your avatar and right click to save the picture. All options would need cropping.
Mini-Mizer - create a lego avatar of yourself. Unfortunately you would need to do a screen capture of this too to save your image as you can only post your image to sites like Flickr.
Literacy Fun
Jul 17th
Penguin have developed a website where children can write, illustrate (and add sounds)Â and publish their own stories.
We Make Stories enables young writers to select a number of different story platforms and even re-write a small section of classics such as Alice in Wonderland, Black Beauty and The Jungle Book. Lots of fun for everyone!
Source: Bright Ideas
BuildYour Wild Self has boundless uses in a classroom from basic mouse control and making selections to using the created characters in stories. It’s made by the New York Zoo so there’s animal information there too – each animal part you add is described. You can email your work to yourself, print it or make wallpaper and then save it.
Source: Jen Dynan
Podcasting With Grade 4
Jul 16th
This was a task set as part of our integrated topic that linked in with our English planner. Our Integrated topic titled ‘Testing The Waters’ Level 3 (grade 3&4) Term 2 2009 Integrated Planner, English Planner Term 2 2009. A Science topic that looked at living and non-living things in a particular ocean habitat. Having six classes in grades 3 and 4 worked to our advantage because we were able to allocate a particular ocean habitat to each class. The main written task was for students to research and produce an information report on an animal that lives in a particular habitat. After an amazing excursion to Ricketts Point (see student blog posts by Jaso and Cemie Girl and Kirubiru), the students couldn’t wait to ‘sink their teeth’ into some solid research on their sea animals and habitats. Their enthusiasm paid off and some amazing information reports and posters were produced.
The next phase of the Rich Task was for the students to create a Podcast in the style of a short (1 to 2 minutes) news report using the information from their report. First we had to tune in, literally. The best examples of podcast news reports was on the ABC website. I chose the ABC’s news program ‘AM’ and ‘PM’ because they had all the elements that I wanted to model. For example: Intro and Outro music, Main Headlines, Sub headlines, Tone of voice to suit the nature of a news report, back ground music to create and maintain interest and a conclusion or closing remarks.
Garageband was going to be our main tool. The wonderful thing about using this piece of software is that with only a few clicks the students have access to a podcast template. See images below
This makes life so much easier when trying to model for students. The Main Tracks are already in place and rather than having to create complete sound tracks to and back ground together, Garageband has complete jingles ready to click, drag and dump into the work space. 
Using one of the finished student information reports we put together a quick whole class news report. We worked on timing and tone of voice. The students were really motivated by how easy it was to choose the music and then record the voice over the top. When in Podcast mode Garageband automatically fades the Jingle track so that it doesn’t over power the voice. Brilliant! You may need to clip some of the over hang of the recorded voice to get the true effect of the music fading in and out with the news reader.
The next step was for the students to plan their news report. Each pair were given a template (Podcast Template Main Points)Â to use as a guide for their plan. This proved to be very useful because once they had written all their information on it they were then able to go and begin to put their draft podcast together. Some students had scripted exactly what they were going to say. Yet some students clearly desired a little freedom to improvise and used dot points or short statements. Either way both proved to be effective.
I was fascinated by the level of engagement as the students were working. Some students had independently moved to another space and were rehearsing their lines, others were just going for it and recording each rehearsal straight into Garageband. I over heard discussions about timing, volume, muting sound, deleting, splicing, looping, tone and saving into the correct folder. There was evidence of interpersonal development as the students had to negotiate what role each was going to play, which loop, who was going to press record. I was witnessing the awe and wonderment of these students using technology and they were clearly impressed with what they had achieved.
I set up a little recording studio in the back store room for the final cut recording. It’s amazing what a couple pairs of head phones hooked up to a laptop hanging on a music stand can do to create a little authenticity. I chose not to use a mic because I didn’t want to complicate matters with a sound box. I really wanted to students to be independent and do all the recording themselves. All that was needed was the mic on the mac. We were now really pushed for time and as each group went in I gave them strict instructions that if they couldn’t nail it in a couple of takes that they were to leave the studio to return later after further rehearsal. The other pairs continued to rehearse their parts and tweak their drafts as each pair took their turn.
The plenary at the end of the day was awesome! They loved listening to each others podcast. Using an IWB to display their Garageband projects as they were listening was really useful so that they could see how others had constructed their podcast. Each podcast was received with a round of applause and loads of positive affirmations.
I hope you enjoy listening to some of them as I have facilitating their production. Some have already begun to post them up on their class blog at 4A’s Bloggerama. Below are some examples.
1, Garibaldi News 2, Diving With Tigers 3, Sea Urchin News
4,S.I.J On CRN News 5,The Coral Podcast 6,Nat and Neve’s Tropical News
Online quiz generating sites
Jul 13th
An email from MargM Â (our literacy coordinator) circled our staff requesting potential sites that might be used for generating online quizzes. Here are the responses that she got:-
-  Class tools  - is a great site for creating free games and quizes. It also gives an embed code for use in blogs, wikis etc (from librarian, Faye) Get the students to make up their own quizzes at the end of a unit of work.
- Quiz zone   Â
- The Millionaire game from this site is highly recommended powerpointgames Tips from Rebecca “ If you go to this site you will find some great templates. I saved ‘Millionaire’ to my network folder so we are using that rather than the internet to access it all the time.”
- Try Languages Online “You can make all sorts of simple games and then download them as zip files do you don’t need to have internet access. Don’t think they are drag and drop activities, but some good ones nonetheless. It says it’s for languages, but it wouldn’t matter what words you put in.”
And finally also from our librarian is:- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/- a huge directory with links to all manner of web2.0 tools
Ideas for using these applications in blogging
The teacher –
- embed a quiz into a post for students to complete,
- list class instructions for using one or more of the above sites for class use.
- Get students to add a comment back on the post at the end of the day with their evaluation and use of the quiz maker. (reflective higher order thinking skills)
The student
- get the students to make up their own quiz at the end of the topic. Emed the code in their blog post. They tag, by using a comment ,on the blogs of two or more students in their class to answer their quiz. Those students then comment back when they have completed the quiz with reflective comments.
- Write a tutorial explaining how to use one of the quiz makers for other potential readers to follow.
- Write a review on one of the quizz makers
Jul 12th
Global Teacher Columnists are indispensible to this site. They help to ensure that Global Teacher offers professional support for teachers who are using ITC to engage their students.
Lois Smethurst, who has worked as a primary school teacher for over twenty years, uses her blog to document her journey as a life long learner while Judith Way, the librarian at Preston Girls, fills the SLAV Bright Ideas blog with wonderful material that will inspire readers.
As a member of the Global Teacher Community you can join the growing number of columnists who are helping to make this a vibrant resource.
Web 2.0/Blog Tools for Video Libraries
Jul 12th
Well now that term 3 has arrived I’m feeling rejuvenated, it’s time to ‘dress-up’ the ol’ blog. I’m sure quite a number of you have a similar purpose in life 
.
So… here’s my thoughts: I have an account with Teacher Tube (TT) which I use for uploading video files mainly for streaming.
I convert each file into flv or .mov or mpeg4 then log onto TT and commence uploading. Once uploaded, I copy the url path and paste it directly into my post/pages using the html view option (most of you that have done this should have a good idea of what I’m saying so far). The question for me now is that I have seen some video players in a number of blogs that show several videos from a single player-window… this I like very much. I currently only show video as individual clips through individual players. I’d love to know how or if TT has an option to put all videos into a single player window.
Yes, this is a ‘how to’ question but hopefully any shared ideas will be useful for anyone interested. If you got something to add please post a reply.
You can view my attempts at http://altan.edublogs.org
Regards,
Altan 
Mathematics is a language: Write full sentences, please!
Jul 10th
One of the advantages of being a globalteacher columnist, is that you can occasionally vent pet peeves! So here is one of mine, blogged and ready for comments by other teachers:
Suppose you wrote this sentence on the board: “The big black dog ran over the road and and caught the yellow ball.” Next, you ask the students to copy this sentence down, and as you roam around the classroom, you notice the kids are writing some funny things in their books, ranging from: “The dog road the ball,”  to “dog caught ball” , “black ball”, “dog ball”, “black yellow” or even just “the the”. Of course, none of the sentences the kids wrote, makes any sense. As a teacher, would you be telling the kids to stop taking shortcuts and write down the full sentence so as to convey the true meaning of the sentence? I would imagine so.Â
But what happens in Mathematics? Do we expect the same “full sentences” from the kids? And if we don’t, what impact does it have on the understanding of the Mathematical concepts? Here is an example: The teacher put the following example of Pythagoras’ Theory, on the board: 
In following “all the same steps” (as per instruction from the teacher), see below what the student wrote in his book. Please note that the student did not write ‘full sentences’, as he wrote that ‘eighty five is equal to nine point two’, which is not true. He also did not put the full steps in to ‘find the perimeter’, which means that if he made a simple calculation mistake in finding the perimeter by adding the three values, he would loose all the marks for this question: 
My question is: Why do teachers allow students to get away with not writing ‘full sentences’ in Mathematics? Referring back to the example of “The big black dog….” given at the start of this post, it is clear that, if we don’t write the full sentence, it makes a huge difference in the meaning. Mathematics is a language, like English. It conveys meaning. Students are being made aware of the implications of not writing full sentences in English…and the same should apply to Mathematics.
