Show&Tell: Befunky

I found befunky.com trying to find a place to cartoon-ify my photos. I played around with it and like it. So here's a brief tutorial on what it can do and how to do it.

It's also available as an iOS and Android app.

Tagxedo

I was trying out tagxedo. It is a word cloud site like wordle, but offers some extra features. The most notable being the ability to put your word clouds in shapes! In the premium version you can even use your own photos to shape your clouds. I really love this feature.

The text I uploaded for this tagxedo is one of the few text documents I could find on my computer. Any formatted text document won't work, so here's the Open Office readme!

I chose the bomb for Open Office because it blew my mind. A free productivity suite? Yes, please. Oh, and it is going to include a database program in addition to the regular fare? I'm sold.

Thank you OpenOffice.org!

Concept Mapping

Old and New NHL Alignment (made on  Inspiration)

Overview of the features of skype (made on Mindmeister)

These are two examples of mind/concept maps I made this term. Can you tell which program I had a limited-time, free try-out with and which is free to download? Although, I did spend more time exploring and working with Mindmeister, so perhaps I'm not giving Inspiration the credit it deserves.
Concept mapping (what I prefer to call it) is a visual way of arranging and organizing information. Thinking about it, family trees were the original concept maps. They are a great way to show connections with branches moving out from a base and themselves branching out into new information.
Working with them on multiple occasions throughout the year I have to say they aren't how I prefer to organize things.  I guess I'm more linear. I like to just write things out and use bullets when I can.
However, I realize that everyone has different learning styles and will introduce mind mapping to my future classes to given visually oriented students a valuable tool.

SketchUp

SketchUp is a downloadable application from Google for drawing 3D pictures easily. If you have Google Earth you have seen the buildings that have been included on the maps. They were made in SketchUp. 

In SketchUp you simply draw a closed, linear plane (a.k.a "a shape") and then tug on it up or down to make a three dimensional object or depression. It's that easy!

Spheres and cones are somewhat harder. Tutorials and videos explain it well.

 These are four different views of a park I made.

SketchUp is a lot of fun. I can see it being useful in an Art class or for Social Studies projects that involve ideal communities. Students can build them in 3D!

Movies

was very helpful in diversifying lessons and content in class. During Macbeth I frequently used short video summaries of each act, often made by students elsewhere in the world, as a reactivation before going on to the next act. (e.g. - ACT I Summary, Macbeth Rap) With this, I discovered the joy of play lists. I can group similar videos and not have to waste time finding the next one I want to show. I created Macbeth, Diversity, and Social Justice play lists as thought provoking activations for new units.
However, when in student hands I found YouTube could be distracting. When I arrived at my placement a few students were finishing up a music interpretation lesson in ELA. They had to analyse the lyrics of a chosen song and the music video as well. Often after watching their chosen video students would just start watching another and then another. A majority of my cooperating teacher's time was taken up with reminding students to stay on task.
On reflection, I don't think this would have been any different if these students had been analysing poetry in a collection. I think there will always be distractions and I won't let a useful tool like YouTube go to waste because of them.

The above is a demonstration video I made for tutorial lesson on Windows Movie Maker. This lesson was to ensure everyone was comfortable in editing video for the following project where groups would make videos celebrating diversity. I created this by hand drawing each frame and then taking a picture of it. I made use of Movie Maker's transition, panning and zoom effects to simulate movement.
When I presented it to the class they were amazed I was able to make something like this and even more so when I told them I had uploaded it to YouTube. I then had each student open Movie Maker on their netbooks. I had previously copied some of the pictures I used to make my movie onto each student's account. They followed along as I modelled how to import files, arrange them in the timeline, edit length, add transitions and effects, and make subtitles and credits.

Once the students had practised the skills, I had them apply them in making unique mini-stories from the pictures I had provided them. I was then free to offer individual assistance, circulate and observe.
This lesson enabled the students to approach their major video project with confidence, which in turn allowed them to let loose their creativity.
The one issue I had with Movie Maker is that it is very picky as to which formats it allows in the program. Mp3, one of the most well-known and widely used audio formats, is incompatible with Movie Maker! If you add it to a movie project it will appear to be there and you can edit it like you would any other audio, but it prevents a movie project from being exported to a movie file, which is the whole purpose of Movie Maker. I learned this the hard way, when every group was unable to save their projects as videos. It took me hours of  troubleshooting and poking around to discover the solution and luckily was able to quickly find an online audio format converter to change the mp3 files to wmv (I can't believe I said that...).

Movies, whether used to diversify lessons or as a medium for student expression, are a great tool for the classroom.

Personal Learning Network

Starting to map my PLN with FreeMind