Well what an exciting first week back, I have had some fantastic lessons – I m using my whiteboard more and showing lots of great clips from Youtube – which the students have loved.
This weekend I have been mostly filming! – I thought i would create a snipett of my weekend…. my garden, street and then the craziness of the marathon.
Initially it did take me ages to work out the editing, importing, audio and transitions, but i have got alot quicker (thankfully!) and am now quite excited about the possibilties! We are going on our geograpy field trip in a few weeks and I will film it and then make a film of it to promote our department and to help the students when we get back to school. I will also get the students to do a voiceover for it which will aid their revision.
We are also going on our first Duke of Edinburgh trip in 2 weeks and the filming possibilities for this are endless!
I am looking forward to dinner tomorrow night and getting to know the other teachers a little better and also to find out how their burgeoning film producing careers are coming on! watch out Syeven Spielberg eh?!!!
1 week after the transformation teaching twilight session and one camera later and here I am! I have to admit I am slightly ashamed that i have left my homework until the last session and that tomorrow I will no doubt be running around taking pictures of any old student!
I my defence, I did video some students earlier this week as they were deciding in groups how to improve a shanty town within their given budget. They were actually quite responsive to having a camera dangled around in front of them and came up with some good thoughts. One thing that I have found though is that the sound quality is not great, especially when you are in a classroom when they are all talking in their groups. Maybe I need to see if you can get an external microphone….. something to ask tomorrow.
It is quite exciting thinking about the possibilities that more technology could open, particularly in Geography. I could get students making videos of their own geography or making guides to local areas, frankly the possibilities are endless! And on that positive note I shall say tata!
So holidays are over and here we are – I have been thinking about how to use all this exciting technology in my classroom with little technology. I am trying not to get cynical and am remaining optimistic bout the possibilities. I have been downloading videos from youtube and then converting them with the use of a program called “Zamzar” there are some great ones for teaching and they are perfect as they are only 4 minutes long – even a 13year old can sit still for that long!
I have also been videoing places and hope to use them soon – so far i have some great footage of sand dune succession (ooh, spot the geographer!) and am on the look out for some other good stuff – my holiday in Sri Lanka this summet should provide some great stuff.
I would be interested to know if anyone has used blogs in their classrooms and the level of success….. and how they managed it.
Am going to go now and muster up some energy for tomorrow..
x
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