Scorsese Need Not Worry

I made my first iMovie! It will not win an Oscar, but when I sent a text to our tech specialist saying it was completed, she sent me a congratulatory note, including a burst of confetti. To choose my theme, I thought about all of the different photos on my laptop and most of them are my family, friends, and flowers. The number of photos of flowers was startling. So one morning before school, I spent two hours pouring through my photos, two at a time, trying to choose the best ones. Then, I had to cut the pictures down to fit into the 4 minute timeframe. Out went the marigolds, the petunias, the hydrangeas, literally on the cutting room floor. 

Less is more:

Then I still had to cut down the remaining photos from the original set time of four seconds to two or three seconds. Ones with people in them got to keep all four seconds. After seeing my fellow classmates’ videos, I really should have cut out even more photos and lingered on them longer. Next, I tried to figure out how to put it to music. I discovered that my iTunes account on my phone is a different account number than on my school laptop. I wanted soft piano music, and through Google, I found a pianist, Michael Silverman. I listened to several of his performances before settling on Pachelbel’s Canon in D. I put the music down. I even figured out how to repeat it for the last part of the video. Woo hoo! When I played it with the music, it actually looked like a video. 

Tell the Story, Morning Glory:

Then, I sat down and wrote the narration. I had to lengthen it, then shorten it, and then practice it. I also kept track of my sources for placement in the credits. After several rehearsals, I recorded it. Then, I deleted it and started again. I made one pause in the wrong place, but decided to leave it in, just like a weaver who intentionally leaves in a flaw to let you know that it is hand-made. I was so happy to complete it. I get a great deal of happiness from accomplishing goals. I really like the iMovie and I think my family and friends will like it as well. As far as being a student, the project was overwhelming at first. The basic directions on google were not that hard, but there were so many decisions to make, and things to figure out. Some parts of iMovie were intuitive and some were not. I was disappointed that the computer at Dominican could not play vimeos full-size. Here is a photo that I took from my movie. You can see the whole movie here. I hope you like it. 

What Next?:

I will be teaching my students how to make movie trailers for their fall book selections as a culminating project. I made one this afternoon about Pax, our global read aloud book as a sample. After making a movie, it was a lot easier!  

From my personal collection

Not Only Birds Tweet

If you had told me a couple of years ago that I would be writing a blogpost about tweeting, I would have said that you were nuts. My technical life was and is so full with three email accounts and Facebook, that I did not even open a twitter account until this fall. Now, however, I see the advantages of tweeting. I can follow anyone I please without the required friending. While I use Facebook to follow several educational sources, like Hoagies’ Gifted and Edutopia, there are many educational sites and people to follow. I plan to continue to only use Twitter professionally, which is good, because already it is filled to the brim with tweets. 

#Edtechchat
I participated in an #edtechchat twitter chat on Monday night. I could not believe how fast and furious the tweets appeared. I thought an hour might be a long time, but the time and tweets flew by. The topic was ebooks and how teachers and students use them. I participated and quickly learned that my post would not appear if I didn’t include the #edtechchat hashtag. This was an important lesson to learn because this week, our class participated in our first live twitter chat for the Global Read Aloud, Pax. We were originally scheduled to do it on Friday, Oct. 7, but school was canceled in Florida for a couple of the teachers because of Hurricane Matthew. On Tuesday, our class participated. In this case, there were a handful of third grade classes answering three questions posted by one teacher over the course of 30 minutes. Some of the kids in the other classrooms could tweet on their own. I just asked the kids what to type and they followed the screen on the smart board and I followed their lead. We had a lot of fun, and learned some new facts about foxes, and will live tweet again this Friday and the following Fridays while we read Pax. 

#genius hour
During the #edtechchat, I learned about #geniushour. I had read about something similar when I was researching Sal Khan for my presentation on Khan Academy. He got to go to a different teacher once a week to learn anything he wanted to learn as part of a gifted program. I think it is a good source, and am now following it, because kids need to have choice in their learning and follow their passions. Currently, I give my students 30 minutes a week to use for free choice. They typically create with Legos or create art projects. I am investigating how they might use that time to research topics of interest. One of our school administrators liked my tweet about #geniushour, so I have some local support. I will keep you posted, or you can reach me via twitter @MrsJMcCole1.