Video – Inanimate Alice BETT 2012 Presentation
Here’s the video of my Inanimate Alice presentation from Friday. This formed part of the TeachMeet Takeover event at the BETT Show 2012. For a copy of the presentation itself, check here.
Links from the Video:
- Inanimate Alice Trailer
- Inanimate Alice Flipchart and other files on Promethean Planet
- http://www.inanimatealice.com/education
- http://aliceandfriends.wikispaces.com/
- https://www.facebook.com/InanimateAlice
- http://bit.ly/alicetips
- Presentation as a downloadable slideshare file
Thanks to Emily at Promethean for filming the presentation, and thanks to Selda for letting me use the Promethean stand to give the presentation.
Read MoreNow Let’s Write It Up : A Teachmeet Presentation
Here’s a copy of a presentation I produced for TeachMeet Brighton and Teachmeet Moray House (TMMH11) as well as being shown at TeachMeet Dorset.
The theme was to demonstrate several alternatives to the Science write up (which are also applicable to other subjects too). Do we always have to go away and write it up in the usual manner – method, results, conclusion etc. Sometimes there’s a place for showing what you know in a different format – try telling the story digitally.
There are many ways to do this, in this presentation I show just a couple that you might find interesting.
The links to the sites/software demonstrated are :
Hope you liked the presentation – and if your students make any cool videos using these tools, please let me know!
Feel free to use at other TeachMeet events if you want to – just let me know if you do.
Photo Credit : Writing in the Journal by redcargurl
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Comix – Early Years Comic Creator
Comix is a simple comic creation tool aimed at Early Years, but suitable for Ks1 as well. There are only a few simple tools – shapes, speech bubbles and text boxes – plus animals, people, backgrounds and objects to choose from.
It’s not overly complicated, which makes it great for Reception or Year 1 pupils. They can tell a simple story in a couple of frames.
Finished comics can be saved or published on the site to share with others.
Thanks to Steph Westwood for the link via her Web2Wonders blog
Read MoreCreating Class E-Books
This post is inspired by a video presentation given by Ian Addison at last nights TeachMeet Bedford. In the video he demonstrate an excellent e-book created by Colin Hill (@Colport) and his class.
To create the e-book they used the website myebook.com. You can view their ebook here. Student work was scanned and uploaded to the website which then creates the on-screen version of the book. You can even embed audio.
As Ian says in the video this means you can still produce great looking ebooks from what might initially be a non-ICT task – pupils could draw and handwrite stories which then form part of the book. You could also then add typed work or digital photos to produce a finished product.
It’s a great way for collating and sharing pupil work with parents – create an end-of-term (or year) book to summarise the work done or create a special book for a class project.
To make your own book – go to http://www.myebook.com and sign up for a free account.
Thanks again to Colin and Ian for sharing the idea!
Read MoreYouTube Create: Easy Digital Storytelling
Now it is even easier to create content for YouTube without even needing a video camera or webcam. YouTube has just launched ‘YouTube Create‘ a new portal pulling together three great animation tools: GoAnimate, Stupeflix, an Xtranormal, each of which lets you ‘build’ custom videos featuring virtual avatars, custom speech, and more. All three would be excellent resources to support digital storytelling.
From the YouTube Create portal, choose a tool, and you’ll jump into their editing interface where you can put together a video for free. Each of them also offers paid-for options (more sound options, animations, etc.) which you can pay to access.
It’s a much more seamless way to access these tools, and to get the finished product up onto YouTube. You’ll need to sign up with a YouTube account before you can access the tools. For more about Xtranormal, read my blog post from last year.
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Puppet Pals and Toontastic – digital storytelling on the iPad
Puppet Pals and ToonTastic are two fantastic digital storytelling apps for the iPad which would be perfect for the classroom.
Both work in the same way. Press a record button and them moves the different characters around onscreen, telling your story through play. The apps will record and play back your animations and your voice as an animated cartoon which you can save and share.
Lights, Camera, Play! Toontastic is a Creative Learning tool that empowers kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons through imaginative play. Making cartoons with Toontastic is as easy as putting on a puppet show – simply press the record button, move your characters onscreen, and tell your stories through play!
You can even create your own characters using the built in drawing tool.
Toontastic costs £1.79 on the UK App store, but contains all the characters and scenes at no extra charge.
Puppet Pals works in the same way only the characters are less animated when they move and you cannot create your own characters. Character packs include talk show hosts and US politicians.
The Puppet Pals App is free and comes with Wild West. For more scenes and characters you have to make in-app purchases of about 59p per pack, or you can buy a Directors Pass for £2.39 with all the character packs included.
Both are really exciting tools – and would make creating a story quite engaging for many learners. Well worth checking out if you have an iPad.
Read MoreXtranormal in Science lessons
Here’s a different idea for getting pupils twrite up science practicals that makes a change from the usual method/results/conclusion format using a website called Xtranormal.
Xtranormal is a website which makes it very easy to create a simple animated movie. You can choose between one or two people and then write the dialogue. The website uses text to speech technology to read your script out, so there’s no need to use microphones.
The obvious use would be for MFL or English teachers to write short pieces of dialogue. (See Jose Picardo’s blog to see how it’s being used in languages) But there’s no reason why it can’t be used for other subjects too.
So for Science, one character could be explaining what they have found out to a second character. Like this:
You could also just have one speaker. Maybe make it into a news report explaining their findings. It could also be used to explain scientific concepts or to model important points in a debate about a controversial issue in Science.
The voices are a little stilted, but for those pupils who are too embarrassed to record their voices using microphones, it’s the next best thing.
The finished videos are hosted on Xtranormal, and you can embed them into blogs/VLE etc. You can also upload your videos to YouTube too if you wish.
You can’t use Xtranormal if you are under 13, according to their terms of service, so this activity would have to be done with KS4 or Post-16 students. Also be aware that not everything on the site is free.
But if you are looking for something different to do with a class, then this might make a change from always presenting the results of an experiment the same way.
If you do use Xtranormal for something like this, I’d love to see what your pupils have produced!
Read MoreTwo new digital storytelling tools
Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been all over the place this last few weeks…
But here’s two digital storytelling tools that you might enjoy, thanks to my amazing Personal Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter.
First, thanks to @NikPeachey for the link to this great comic book creator based on the characters and scenes in Spore. It works similar to Comic Life, and lets you choose characters and vehicles etc and add speech bubbles. It’s great fun.
Thanks also to @web20classroom for this very cute Story Maker, perfect for a IWB. Aimed at younger students, it again lets you choose characters and scenes but will also update the text of the story depending on characters chosen and their actions. Go check it out!
Happy storytelling!
Read MoreYear 6 Literacy Ideas
I was emailed over the weekend by a year 6 teacher who wanted some ideas for using ICT with his class, and in particular for literacy.
I set up an Etherpad to collate ideas and threw the question out to my network of Twitter friends. I invited them to visit the Etherpad and add their thoughts.
You can see the Etherpad here, and if you wish you can add your ideas.
Thanks to @kvnmcl, @joysimpson, @LynnShellard, @AllanahK @pam_thompson, @psycho65 for their comments. If anyone else did add stuff please put your name on the Etherpad so I can thank you too!
Here is a summary of the ideas that were shared so far:
Flat Life
Its not a website however Flat life available via You Tube is a great 10 minute animation that can lead to a range of writing development and own animation am currently using with my year 6 class.
http://www.teachit.co.uk/custom_content/wordwhiz/titlewhiz_notes.doc , gives random book titles – this is a teachers guide! and children can then write about characters setting etc to go with title.
PicLits
http://www.piclits.com/compose_dragdrop.aspx writing to go with picture – lovely.
Wordle
Wordle is a great tool for developing comprehension skills in literacy. Wordle the first paragraph or two of a text and see if you can work out what you think the big ideas might be about in the text. You can also see if you can group words together and then give them a heading. Both activities will help tune children into a text. http://www.wordle.net/
Can also use photos from Flickr to create a wordle
Mind Mapping
I am just in the middle of blogging about myWebspirations at http://www.mywebspiration.com . It is a fantastic tool for collaborating on mind-maps and creating a plan for a piece of writing.
VoiceThread
Using Voice Tread http://www.voicethread.com is particulary good for gathering opinions about a book, illustrations etc and for generating ideas to write about. For instance if writing a persusavie text as series of related images can be uploaded and then children can then add their opinions, information etc about each one. This then provides a resource for ideas when writing.
Podcasting is a great way of enabling children to share what they are learning. Podomatic is great but if it doesn’t get through the school filter then create in audacity and upload to gcast.
Blogging
For some ideas about what you could blog about see this post http://literacyresourcesandideas.edublogs.org/2009/05/12/what-might-you-write-about/
If you want to generate lists of resources and communicate with children through microblogging then try www.Edmodo.com. This is great for setting challenges for the children, reminding them about homework, creating lists of useful websites for a project and generally communicating with each other whether in school or at home.
For another way to do online discussion – try http://www.think.com – or look at what your VLE already provides in-school.
Digital Storytelling
Digital storytelling is a great project and any number of tools could be used for this: http://literacyresourcesandideas.edublogs.org/tag/digital-storytelling/
You can’t go wrong with collaborative writing and nothing beats a wiki for this purpose. I use pbworks at http://pbworks.com but there are several wikis that are good for school use. The world is your oyster here. Create a collaborative document about anything.
@joysimpson
Animoto
Animoto http://animoto.com/education is great for year 6 and you can apply for an ‘education account’. All you then need is a google mail account and you can create accounts for each child.
with animoto you can make mini music videos… my class are making videos for leavers assembly.
Story Starters
another site worth looking at is http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/storystarters/storystarter1.htm , according to their blurb “Scholastic Story Starters are a quick, fun way to inspire students to write.” I have a class of reluctant writers and they enjoy this so I guess thats a good recommendation… anything to get EBD kids to write works for me.
PhotoStory 3
PhotoStory3 is fab, free and easy to use combining photos, text and music http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/PhotoStory/default.mspx
Animation
If you’ve got time animation using freeware such as monkey jam is very effective – 2D with cut paper is quicker than 3D models! http://www.giantscreamingrobotmonkeys.com/monkeyjam/download.html
Be Funky
I’ve just been using http://www.befunky.com/ with my class (year 5) this morning to upload some photos from a school trip yesterday. You can apply various effects to these including adding text and speech bubbles. The class enjoyed doing this and want to continue.
You could then use www.animoto.com to create a ‘movie’ slide show of the images and http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ could be used to record the voice over.
You could use http://www.stupeflix.com/ for slide show presentation combining voice overs and music, http://www.glogster.com/ for creating a poster wall of information including movies and recordings.
Writing Fix – Story Ideas
http://writingfix.com/traits_primary.htm#forkids
Scroll down for the interactive random writing ideas. My Year 6/7 students loved using these and were very amused by some of the combinations they were presented with. (Pam Thompson)
Telescopic Text
http://writingfix.com/traits_primary.htm#forkids
We had great fun using this very simple site. It really made students think about the value of words. We then used it as a collaborative writing task with another school using Etherpad. (Pam Thompson)
Persuasion Map
http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/persuasion_map/
This tool from ReadWriteThink is a great way for students to organise their thinking as they plan a piece of persuasive text, whether oral or written. (Pam Thompson)
Web Links
I have Year 4/5 so these websites will generally be close to what you might wa nt. http://delicious.com/AllanahK/Literacy
Also http://www.delicious.com/dannynic/digitalstorytelling
Also check out:
http://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/curriculum/literacyresources/index.php
http://www.sgfl.org.uk/englishandliteracy/primary/y6network
http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/english/contents.htm
http://www.twomilehill-jun.bristol.sch.uk/literacy.php
http://thedowns.wikispaces.com/
And that’s it for now. If you have any other ideas that you wish to share, please add them to the Etherpad here, or put them in the comments to this blog post.
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About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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