Well we are now in the month of August and beginning our study on China and the Olympic Games. But this week we have had students presenting their work on sumo wrestling that they have researched throughout this term. Most decided to present using a powerpoint even after being reminded that this meant:
- the powerpoint was just used in the background as a reminder
- you don’t have lots of words on a slide
- you will have to give a talk in front of your classmates relating to the powerpoint
Students took out extra words, found more diagrams, wrote their notes on cue cards and for their first efforts, did a great job. Presentation afternoon and out came the video camera - the battery was not fully charged.
“Can we use our phones?” Go for it. So we had about four budding camerapersons videoing the events.
I was so proud of students who got up to present in front of the class for the first time this year; a student with a teacher aide organizing an interview as part of the presentation and another student whose powerpoint was run completely from the Smartboard without any help from me.
But this is now where I have no idea what to do next.
“Do you know how to download from your phones?” Cords were brought to school and hopefully tomorrow the talks will be downloaded.
But readers, what do you suggest we do next? How can we get these videos or powerpoints on the students’ own blogs? Firstly, we will need parent permission, then do we use slideshare for the actual powerpoint? But what about the videos?
I have just visited the blog of another teacher at our school and she has created a quiz about the Olympics just to get her class into the swing of finding out information. I’d like you to also visit her blog and write your answers to her quiz as a post in your blog, in a Word document or in your SOSE book. The quiz is a page on her blog not a post so be careful where you find the quiz.
While you are on her class blog, you might like to make some comments to some of her students who have started to write their own posts ready to earn their own blogs. Remember what it was like when you first began blogging.
Are you enjoying blogging? Do you write fantastic comments on other students’ blogs? Would you be interested in taking part in a blogging competition just for students? It would involve 10 weeks worth of activities, one challenge each week with some bonuses for those who want to go overboard.
Please fill in this form to register and watch out for a page called the Student blogging competition 2008 in this blog during the month of September. Each challenge will be added ready for you to do.
I’m at a seminar at the moment and just learnt about a quick, easy way to give attribution to images. Visit this website which allows you to search for creative commons images. It also gives you the attribution which you need to include with the image on your blog. You may include it with the photo or add it under the photo.
Original image: ‘Tassie devil’
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30805622@N00/351640307
by: Adam Tibballs
Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License
Steps to follow:
- Search for photo by putting in a tag eg sumo or Tasmania or fishing
- Click on photo you want to use
- Click on “edit image in-house”
- Click on “Add attribution” if you want it included with the photo - see my picture on the right
- Right click and “save picture as”
- Follow normal instructions to add images to your blog
Be careful, though, when adding the attribution to the photo. What has gone wrong with mine?
Students were asked to mention why they enjoy blogging, how it helps them and to give some hints for teachers new to blogging about to start with their own students. I did this after a post by Sue Waters in The Edublogger asking for teachers to share their experience in blogging and tips for using with students.
I didn’t moderate student comments until today, so no-one could read the previous comments and get some clues about what to write. I felt it was very interesting to see the words like fun, savvy and people appearing fairly large in the wordle.
Please also read the students’ comments here at http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/2008/06/18/students-what-does-blogging-mean-to-you/
Photo source
