A summer of presentations... now what?

Greetings!

It seems like it was forever ago when I got the iPoem idea from Karl Fisch (the guy who wrote "Did you know" and "Shift Happens").  Since then, the project has gone from a small class lesson, to a school-wide contest and us giving out 5 iPods to children!  I hope this year to see v.2 be much larger and have more participation.

This summer I have had the opportunity to present the program to three different groups of professionals and further tweak my ideas while teaching technology at a summer camp of 2nd-8th grade students at the local community college.

Some people have asked for some DIGITAL STORY TELLING resources.  I first teach the children how to use Photo Story 3.  Teach the program, then apply the project to the program--this takes an extra day, but it relieves the stress of doing both at the same time.

Photostory 3 is a free download from Microsoft that can be used in digital storytelling projects with excellent results. Photostory requires Microsoft XP and Windows Media Player 10. 

1. Photostory3 Download | Microsoft 
2. Windows Media Player 10 | Microsoft

An excellent PDF/print resource for teaching Photo Story 3, can be found here.  Thanks to Jakesonline.org!  On that Web site there are also screencasts that are great help, too!

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I also create Pod casts.  In my class, its called the "B-Cast" and they are hosted with the HCSB FirstClass Web Publishing folder, and then I submit them to iTunes for easy downloading.

1. www.theknowledgesekers.com | My Class site 
2. www.theknowledgeseekers.com/b-cast | Site for my Pod casting tutorials, vocabulary,etc. 
3. audacity.sourceforge.net | Free audio recording/multi-tracking software!

Winners!!

Thank you to everyone that made digital projects and wrote poems for poetry for POETRY MONTH. There were about 60 people who created MP3's; pod casts and video photo stories to go along with their poem! Way to go.

The following students will receive a iPOD shuffle next week as thier prize:

1st Grade:
Devante E.


2nd Grade:
Elizabeth G


3rd Grade:
Natalie M


4th Grade:
Eli H

Reflection from a parent

I received SEVERAL comments and emails from parents over the past week, and I thought one was particularly special. I will share, of course leaving names out.




Dear [teachers],

The competition is great, but I've been telling a lot of people how much we enjoyed this experience no matter what the final results. It was very fun to watch [student] participate! The simple words and theme she had in her head for her poem reflect who she is right now, a smart 3rd grader who really loves her puppy, and it's a wonderful snapshot (spoken in her own voice!) that we'll definitely preserve.

What was fascinating to me was what happened when she turned that simple little poem into a computer project. The two subtests where she tested really high in gifted were in her ear for language and her visual-spatial abilities, and both really came out in this project. Once she realized that the first part of her poem had a specific rhythm she spent a lot of time clapping out potential words and phrases and added that same rhythm to the rest of the poem, which she was very pleased with when she finished.

The best part of the process to watch, though, was when her visual presentation together after we took lots of photos of the two dogs playing together at the beach. I went upstairs with her to help her import some photos from the camera, and she took control of the whole process. I've got no visual-spatial ability myself (that definitely came directly from my husband!) and working with [student] felt almost uncomfortable to me because she had such a clear vision of what she wanted and I couldn't "see" what she envisioned. She was very impatient when the pictures she picked weren't just right, and kept insisting that I quickly delete them when she saw a different one that she knew would look better. I was so surprised when the 5 pictures came together and looked as good as they did since I definitely didn't "see" what she was coming up with (she even insisted on making the last photo stay on the screen for more lines than the others, which made my methodical mind twitch when she did it, but once it was put together made it so much stronger a little sideshow!)

Once the music and fade-in for the slide show was added we were amazed at how well it came out. Thank you so much for the creative exercise - it helped us to see where [student] really shines (she's very different from [brother]) so we can help guide her along the way. She did the same thing with the Rosa Parks speech -she insisted on studying many photos of her, learning about who she was, how she lived, etc., and then she searched til she found just the right costume and really seemed to became the character. It's so fun to watch her because she's got such different abilities than my son and I do... Didn't mean to go on and on, but wanted you to know how fun this project was for us, competition or no competition!

Thanks,
[parent]

More project ideas...

There are so many FREE resources out there that make publishing so easy.

• www.weebly.com - You can create free, ad-free, Web sites. The possibilities of this site I think are endless. This is one of the easiest sites I have seen in a long time. Also, the site allows you to pick a sub-domain that is friendly and easy to remember, like: http://ianbelanger.weebly.com/

• www.blogger.com - Another free site that is now owned by Google. This is likely the most popular blogging site away from MySpace. It is not as customizable as Weebly, but is very stable!

Finally, all of these sites make it very easy to embed video. Most digital cameras take quite good video, and you could upload it and include it as part of the written requirement! :)

Have a great week. Did you carry a poem in your pocket last Thursday? I did.

Digital Poetry Mashups!

Hey-

There are so many examples of digital poetry mashups online. I am trying to create a list of *some* of them here. Did you know how much spoken word is available online, for free? So I guess not only is a resource for the contest, for modeling oral fluency, too!!

• http://www.k12handhelds.com/mashups/?p=49 - a nine minue audio sample of at least 5 poems and info on digital copyright!
• http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19703 - Afternoon Memory, by Gary Soto
• http://www.poetry4kids.com/podcast - Petry 4 Kids is an awesome site! There are several poems here, and you can subscribe to the podcast with iTunes or RSS feed reader.
• www.youtube.com or www.teachertube.com - each of these filesharing sites have several videos that may be worth your time. I used key-words like "poetry" "elementary poetry" and "elementary poetry slam" all yielded some fine results!

Digital projects 101

I will create a series of tutorials, but first I wanted to make a short screen cast regarding the different options to make the digital project. It is a short tutorial on where the software is on-line!

http://highmail.highlands.k12.fl.us/~belangei/ipoem.html

School-wide iPoem Contest

In celebration of National Poetry Month, CTE and the PTO (Parent Teacher Association) are holding an iPoem contest. To participate, you must compose an original poem and create a digital project that – at a minimum – includes audio of your poetry (more on that below). You will need to submit your project by 3:00 pm on Monday, April 28th (details below). Entries will be judged anonymously, by grade-level, by a semi‐distinguished panel of teachers. The winner for each grade (K-1, 2, 3, 4, 5) will receive an iPod Shuffle!

The winners and all finalist’s projects will also be featured online (so please don’t submit anything you don’t want the world to see).