Gleanings for March 16/10

I have tried DocsPal and love it.  The big advantage I see is that it converts the file and pops a link right onto the page, no need to use your email address unless you want to.  It was extremely fast as well.
Other gems today include:

• TEDxASB - Scott McLeod presenter -  This would be a good discussion starter for those looking to move their staffs forward in the ways they instruct students to meet the demands of today's workplace. (Video 16:25 min.)
• Teaching History with Technology - A wealth of resources from lesson plans to podcasts.
• A Vision of 21st Century Teachers - showcases what some teachers are doing to integrate technology into their classrooms. (Video 4:34 min.)
• Sur La Lune Introduction to Fairytales and Folklore - "Here is an assortment of questions, essays, guides, links, and even a short story that will hopefully enlighten and inspire, or at least help you along the way."  This comprehensive site is one I've used for years.  In addition to the clickable links, entering the title of a fairytale directs you to picture books, novels, short stories, non-fiction, poetry, music and more related that that title.
• For English teachers: To Kill a Mockingbird Meets the 21st Century.  Teacher Megan Palevich shows how to you take a classic book and make it relevant to kids today by including facebook, twitter, and im into the project.  Note: students do not have to have accounts to do these activities.
• The Avalon Project -  Good resource for primary source documents throughout history.

And lastly, two gadgets I would love to add to my kitbag.

• ThumbTacks (TM) - a mini microphone for the iPod.
• Point 2 View USB Camera - use instead of a screen-mounted web cam or make small things appear much larger, like family photos.  Cool!

The Animoto English Project

Image used under Creative Commons License by:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kjaergaard_92/1162750887/sizes/s/
Uploaded on August 18, 2007 by Nicolai Kjærgaard

I started working with one of the Gr. 11 English teachers on an Animoto project this week. It will be a few days before we actually get to Animoto as there is much prep work to do.

Ms. L. is just finishing up a unit of study on horror in literature and wants her students to express what they have learned about horror and the human psyche. I suggested they use Animoto and then link to their projects from the class wiki.

We talked about how their project will be similar to a 60-second commercial: great images, evocative music and a few choice words. We viewed Scary Mary, the Mary Poppins trailer remake, to give them some ideas.

We talked to them about only using images with a creative commons license and showed them flickr, compfight and behold. We talked about downloading images and how to cite them correctly. For this project they will create PowerPoint slides with their citations and save them as .jpg files so they can be added to the Animoto presentation. I didn’t know about this trick before and have @shannonwa in my Twitter network to thank for the idea.

The hardest part for many of the students seems to be in organizing their work: saving images to a file on the server and citing their sources. We have asked them to storyboard the project and given them the option of using pen/paper, Inspiration or Word. It surprises me how many have chosen the pen/paper option. The storyboarding is essential to get them to focus on their theme and to have a very clear idea about what they want to say. It's been a good exercise in brevity and capturing the essence of what they want to convey.