Month: November 2006

This week and next week we are going to produce multimedia versions of our Poppy Poems that were written last week, coinciding with our World War 2 work in history and Remembrance day.

For the last fortnight or so I have been exploring the different web 2.0 multimedia presentation tools, see the list below, and have decided in the end to use Photostory from windows.

This is a list of the various multimedia presentation tools I considered for the job (all web based) :

• RockYou
• SlideStory
• SlideShare
• BubbleShare
• ThumbStacks
• Zoho Show

I eventually decided upon Photostory 3 from Microsoft because I wanted the option to add not only audio to each photograph but an overall soundtrack as well. The fact that it is individual software and not web based was not really an issue, but the actual scope within the software, what you could actually achieve with the tool itself was important.

I like Photostory for a few basic reasons:

• It is really simple and doesn’t over complicate the process.
• Users are taken step by step through the creation. It almost acts like a “wizard” rather than an application.
• The process is linear so you know when you have finished. You can retrace your steps easily too.
• Images can be altered in the application – so you can change all of the images to a sepia tone for example.

I think the children will enjoy the various elements of the application – they begin their work on Tuesday, the first of 2 planned sessions on creating a multimedia Poppy Poem.

Lots going on recently so I thought I would just write a quick roundup…

Parents Evening

Last Thursday we had our first parents evening which was really positive and for the first time I discussed our class blog with some of the children’s parents. The response, from the people I spoke to, was very positive and I was pleased about their reaction to it. We talked about a task that I had set on our History topic using the blog. I posted an image of a mystery object which I wanted the children to investigate and find out what it was. I set a simple reward for correct answers posted to the blog. Kids and parents loved it. I will be definitely doing more in that vein.

Macbeth Timelines

For our literacy work over the last 2 weeks we have   been studying Shakespeare’s Macbeth – the children have accessed the text through drama, character studies and abridged versions. On Monday and Tuesday this week we produced Macbeth timelines. I asked the children to look at 8 key events and pick and choose the appropriate characters and settings for them. I made a simple SMART Notebook file that demonstrated what they would do. It utilised the infinite cloner tool, so I had created a palette of characters and settings that the children had to draw from.

Poppy poems

Today the children were learning about remembrance as it is linked closely with last weekend. They looked at footage from the Pathe Film site and a short cartoon from the War Game film to add the first world war context. They then wrote poppy poems on red templates of the flowers. Next week I am planning on teaching them how to create a multimedia version of their poems using PhotoStory, should be fun.

More Bubblr

In Tuesday’s ICT lesson we used Bubblr as a tool to recount our evacuee drama experience we had with our secondary school. It was a great afternoon as it was an idea I had over a year ago and with the help of some colleagues and students from the secondary school we basically evacuated our Year 6 children for the afternoon! They had no idea where we were going and all of the teachers and students were in role when we got to the local town hall, which was also a great setting for it. Bubblr is proving a really great tool and is ideal as there is no real learning curve it is so easy to use.

Google Earth training next week which I am really looking forward to. 🙂