Trying Not to Hurt Your Eyes

Okay, here's the first one: http://www.belladesoto.us/

Wow. Just...wow. If you try to look at it, be warned that it will take forever to load because there is so much going on. How does someone even do that? How is there absolutely no sense of "Maybe I should try to organize this a little better." In fact, I'm almost inclined to believe that someone set this up so they could make every "worst website" list that ever comes out. I mean, you gotta be kidding me.

Here's the next one: http://noeband.gr/

This website is really simple, but cool looking and easy to use. When you click on most of the links, it doesn't take you off the page, the info just appears to the side. I love that. There's very little getting in the way of anything.

So I guess I would tell my students that they need to keep their presentations or any digital work simple because you want the viewer to get it. I have been failing for three days now at coming up with an activity or something for my kids to do and I've got nothing. I feel like I've been doing well so far on the topics in this class, but I'm struggling with this one. I'm not even coming up with a good topic for my own presentation. Ugh. I'll keep thinking.

(thinking)

(thinking)

Okay, it's been multiple hours but I came up with an idea. It's not much, but it makes an important point I think. There was one slide that didn't come through on Slideshare, I don't know why, but here it is:

A Simple Brain Exercise

View more presentations from JRNelson9.

Comics-ing it up

I had a lot of fun making this comic. I downloaded comic life, and was really surprised at 1) How complicated the things you make can be and 2) how easy it is to use. Drag and drop, intuition on how to move things around, etc. I didn't put in too many of the extra things, but I poked around and looked at the tools and stuff, and I was blown away by how much the program can do, and anyone can pick it right up! It was really easy and I think students would pick up on it really quickly and have a lot of fun doing it. Adapting "normal" texts into comic format would be a great way to get kids visualizing and creating, but also get them to pick out important points (you would have to cut a lot of stuff from the text), think about how emotions come through, and challenge them to think in a way they probably haven't before.

One of the things I really liked was realizing that I had to figure out how to get the pictures and text boxes to work together. I would put in a picture, then realize I had no place for text, so putting it off center actually helped, which is counter-intuitive when arranging pictures. The other thing I had to think about, which I already mentioned, is deciding what to put in and what to leave out. That's a hard decision, but I think students would really benefit from that decision-making process.

The comic I created is about my son, Joshua. Really, I chose it because I had a huge library of pictures to work from and I had already done our Honeymoon for Voicethread. Apparently Blogger does not accept PDF files, and I can't get it to convert to any other type of file, so I had to upload it to my softball team's website. Here's the link:

www.si-softball.org/ComicJoshuaSmall.pdf

Podcast-Schmodcast

I really like the idea of podcasting in class because students really get into it and have fun while doing things that are, I think at least, worthwhile.

First my 9th graders did a practice podcast where they had to perform the script for a five-minute radio show I provided. This was a perfect practice run because it's a little more complicated than the other podcasts they'll do, so they got very comfortable with how to work the equipment, and they also had to put in some sound effects, music, and character voices, which they had a lot of fun with. Again, it was just a practice, so I wasn't expecting greatness, but in the future I may use something else as a practice and make this an assignment. They could find a radio show script online and perform it, or write their own. OR BOTH!

The main thing they'll be doing is responding to literature. In small groups they will read short stories and then record their discussion about the story. They'll also do a podcast responding to a play we're going to see at the end of the month. One main thing I like about this is that it gets everyone involved in the discussion. They are only in groups of three, so pretty much everyone has to talk for it to be successful. Nobody can sit in the back corner and skate by.

The other thing I really like about it is time. In the spring we'll do Lit. circles and I was thinking I would have to take four class days and just sit and listen to a group discussion each day. This way, they can record it all at once and I can just listen to them at my leisure.

I am putting the podcasts on iTunes as "Mr. Nelson's English World," though it isn't letting me submit anything on iTunes right now because they're "experiencing technical difficulties." After a quick internet search, I discovered people having this problem every few months for the last four years or so. You'd think they'd be able to fix it, but I digress. I think putting them on iTunes as an "actual" podcast lends a little weight to the project. It's not just me listening, it's anyone. I told my 9th grade boys, "If you sound like a doofus, anyone in the world could hear you sounding like a doofus." They have also told their parents about it, and then reported to me that their parents were excited to be able to hear them online.

This whole process is also my final project for this class, so we'll see how it goes!

My Podcast

This is my podcast about how I can use podcasting in my classroom. I just put the file right in here, but I did go through the process with media mill and iTunes.