Today seemed to be one disaster after the next as Keira, Caroline and I discovered, alas, that we were not the Spielbergs we thought we could be. Our task was to plan and film a short movie, based on a subject of our choice, therefore, we chose to continue with our 'People Who Help Us' theme. As Keira had to leave early, we decided to come in an hour early, in order to plan our movie and ensure we had the same amount of filming time as everyone else. We spent the first hour planning and discussing each scene of our movie on a story board. This was very beneficial to us as it ensured each member of the group was working toward the same idea about how our movie was going to run. This initial task went well as were able to gain a full understanding of the different aspects we were to include in our movie, so that the actual filming would run as smoothly as possible. Little did we know, no matter how intricate our plans, there would be no end result without a working camera!!
To film our movies, we were using Flip Video Cameras which I had previously used on placement. During my upper stages placement, my class were practising and performing a dance taught to them by a visting professional. I was in charge of filming their final performance at their school show. After a quick run through from the class teacher, I discovered that these cameras were really quite straight forward to work so using this technology did not worry me. However, even though we tested the camera before leaving the classroom(a must before using any technology, in my opinion!), when we set up the first scene ready to begin filming, the camera would not switch on. After pressing various buttons, trying every battery in Keira's flat and muttering a few expletives, three frustrated students traipsed back to the class, feeling a bit disheartened.
Our initial enthusiasim for the project - where we had spent days gathering outfits and props in anticipation - had quickly worn off after this set back, and we now knew we would be racing against the clock to get our movie finished in time for editing with Sharon on Thursday. Luckily, after much hanging around until new cameras could be found, we were able to film all of our footage within the last hour and are now set to edit it. This experience has taught me to never fully rely on ICT in the classroom as it can also go against you if it doesn't feel like working that day!
Monday 31 January 2011
Sunday 30 January 2011
Voices of the World
Today Sharon allowed us to become involved in her 'Voices of the World' project, by contributing an activity for the members to complete, on one of the forthcoming months. Voices of the World' is a Wikispace in which teachers and their classes from around the world, can joing in one online community. We had a brain storm during our first input as to what we associate by the word 'community'. Sharon listened to each of our views and allowed us to anonymously write down our thoughts, then took each of our phrases and developed our thinking of them. For example, I thought of a community as a place where people work together in harmony, however, as Sharon explained, just because people are working together in a community, does not mean they are all getting along. She also further developed our thinking by explaining that a community does not just have to be a physical place, a project such as 'Voices of the World' joins its contributors in an online community, in which they can share their ideas.
Working alongside Keira (http://reflectiveblog-ict.blogspot.com/) and Caroline (http://ict-elective-blog.blogspot.com/) once again -I'll be sick of these two by the end! (Just kidding girls...) - we looked into the activities undertaken on 'Voices of the World', and began to think up ideas of our own. As this will be used by others throughout the world, where the participant's first language may not be English, we decided to keep our task pretty simple.
'Voices of the World' May Task
Working alongside Keira (http://reflectiveblog-ict.blogspot.com/) and Caroline (http://ict-elective-blog.blogspot.com/) once again -I'll be sick of these two by the end! (Just kidding girls...) - we looked into the activities undertaken on 'Voices of the World', and began to think up ideas of our own. As this will be used by others throughout the world, where the participant's first language may not be English, we decided to keep our task pretty simple.
'Voices of the World' May Task
- Children in the class will draw/create pictures to go alongside the sports mentioned.
- Note: No children are to be in the pictures.
- These pictures should then be placed on a Powerpoint.
- Using a sound recording program, such as Audacity, the class can then record themselves saying each of the words aloud, in their first langauge.
- The teacher can then merge these using a simple program such as 'myplick'.
This is our group's task for May's Voices of the World task.
We thought this task would be a great learning tool for children to hear other children talking in their own languages, and could learn the words for these sports ourselves in class.
P.S. I also made a rather good cake for this input...
Saturday 29 January 2011
Animation -Take 2!
"Almost anything is, in principle, possible through collaboration because you are not limited by your own resources and expertise" (Huxham and Vangen, 2005, page 3)
The focus of this week's inputs is collaboration - a vital tool to enable teaching professionals to better their practice by learning from, and with, others. Our collaborative skills were tested on Monday whilst filming our animations. There was a lot of confusion surrounding the task as various people had different ideas about exactly what we were supposed to be doing. In the end, we worked in groups to make an animation, similar to those made in first year (see my previous post to witness the joy of my masterpiece!) Keira, Caroline and I were joined by Gillian to work on an animation, based on our topic 'People Who Help Us'. We had a clear idea of exactly what we wanted our movie to consist of, but struggled when it came to putting it into practise.
We filmed our animation using the Digital Blue Animation cameras, although very user friendly and easy to work, the process for filming can be quite frustrating, especially as the finished clips ake a very short film. To make your animation 'flow', the camera must be clicked around five times and the models moved very slightly, in order for each scene to be continuous. We found this to be a problem as our unsteady hands made this intricate process very slow (especially when it came to a certain life guard and her rather large bust, which made her very hard to keep balanced!). Communication is also key whilst collaborating on a shared project such as this. We realised the importance of this whilst filming our scenes as poor communication between the person moving the model and the person taking the shots, resulted in hands sneaking into some of the scenes! We recognised this as a problem and overcame it by devising a solution where the camera said 'NOW' before taking each click, so that the person moving the models knew to keep their hands out of the shot. This resulted in the rest of our clips being filmed with a lot more success! Due to a shortage of time, we were only able to produce two short scenes with our models, rather than a scene for each as we had planned.
Here is our animation in all its glory! (An Oscar for '127 Hours' or 'The King's Speech'? Clearly the judges haven't seen this little gem...)
I think this activity would be really engaging if used in the classroom, however, I think a class would need very careful demonstrations and the task to be broken up into much smaller steps, throughout a longer period of time. I would be keen to use this as a round up activity at the end of a topic, in order to assess the children's knowledge gained over the course of the topic. I would make the process of planning, creating and filming the animation into a mini topic, ideal to keep the class motivated and engaged in the lead up to a school holiday, perhaps! These would then be a fantastic addition to a whole school assembly, in order for the children to show off their final work and feel a sense of achievement!
I will continue with the rest of the week's activities in tomorrow's blog.
Nicole
xxx
Huxham, C. and Vangen, S. (2005) Managing to Collaborate: The Theory and Practice of Collaborative Advantage. London: Taylor and Francis Routledge.
The focus of this week's inputs is collaboration - a vital tool to enable teaching professionals to better their practice by learning from, and with, others. Our collaborative skills were tested on Monday whilst filming our animations. There was a lot of confusion surrounding the task as various people had different ideas about exactly what we were supposed to be doing. In the end, we worked in groups to make an animation, similar to those made in first year (see my previous post to witness the joy of my masterpiece!) Keira, Caroline and I were joined by Gillian to work on an animation, based on our topic 'People Who Help Us'. We had a clear idea of exactly what we wanted our movie to consist of, but struggled when it came to putting it into practise.
We filmed our animation using the Digital Blue Animation cameras, although very user friendly and easy to work, the process for filming can be quite frustrating, especially as the finished clips ake a very short film. To make your animation 'flow', the camera must be clicked around five times and the models moved very slightly, in order for each scene to be continuous. We found this to be a problem as our unsteady hands made this intricate process very slow (especially when it came to a certain life guard and her rather large bust, which made her very hard to keep balanced!). Communication is also key whilst collaborating on a shared project such as this. We realised the importance of this whilst filming our scenes as poor communication between the person moving the model and the person taking the shots, resulted in hands sneaking into some of the scenes! We recognised this as a problem and overcame it by devising a solution where the camera said 'NOW' before taking each click, so that the person moving the models knew to keep their hands out of the shot. This resulted in the rest of our clips being filmed with a lot more success! Due to a shortage of time, we were only able to produce two short scenes with our models, rather than a scene for each as we had planned.
Here is our animation in all its glory! (An Oscar for '127 Hours' or 'The King's Speech'? Clearly the judges haven't seen this little gem...)
I think this activity would be really engaging if used in the classroom, however, I think a class would need very careful demonstrations and the task to be broken up into much smaller steps, throughout a longer period of time. I would be keen to use this as a round up activity at the end of a topic, in order to assess the children's knowledge gained over the course of the topic. I would make the process of planning, creating and filming the animation into a mini topic, ideal to keep the class motivated and engaged in the lead up to a school holiday, perhaps! These would then be a fantastic addition to a whole school assembly, in order for the children to show off their final work and feel a sense of achievement!
I will continue with the rest of the week's activities in tomorrow's blog.
Nicole
xxx
Huxham, C. and Vangen, S. (2005) Managing to Collaborate: The Theory and Practice of Collaborative Advantage. London: Taylor and Francis Routledge.
Sunday 23 January 2011
Right. Third time lucky...
Firstly - Sorry about the blog change! I'm not too sure what went wrong with my first one but it wouldn't let me post anything - it was more like I was viewing it as a viewer, if that makes sense?
Secondly - It's a minor miracle I still have a laptop to type this on, as the more frustrated I got with it, the closer and closer it was getting to ending up on the road outside my window!
So, where to start... aside from the small hiccup at the first hurdle (I'll be paying a visit to the library for a few books on blogging it seems!), I'm really looking forward to the rest of the ICT module. I feel like I have a good grasp of the basic aspects of ICT but I am looking forward to taking an in-depth look at the various 'fun' educational concepts that can be incorporated into the primary classroom.
During our first year of ICT inputs, I enjoyed the movie making activities so I am looking forward to developing my skills in this area. Keira, Caroline and I are working in a group of three ICT people, without the language input. Although our group is smaller than the others, I am glad taht we won't need to worry about the addition of a foreign language to our movie, as languages are not my strong point! Our movie will be aimed at pre school age childre, as we have chosen the topic 'People Who Help Us'. Our plan is to dress up our furry animals and re-inact a scene with various helpful people from society, in order to showcase these roles to the children. For example, a police man, doctor, lolly-pop lady etc. Watch this space to see if this ends up any better than our last attempt....
(Although we - rather imaginatively - managed to incorporate it into the story, the captain wasn't actually supposed to fall - whoops...)
Our other collaborative project is a 'bear exchange', (hopefully) with other trainee teachers, from across Europe. Working in the same group, we have chosen to send a toy Nessie (Keira Baird: "Eh, but it looks more like a dinosaur?") along with various postcards from Scotland. As Carrie pointed out, whilst abroad, the first thing asked of Scottish people is usually: "Does Nessie exist?!" Therefore, we believed this to be a fun theme which will give our peers an insight to life in Scotland, with a focus around Dundee. Our 'Loch Ness Monster' will be more of a 'River Tay Monster' as Tessie (as we have now proudly named her!) will have lived in Dundee, underneath the Discovery. I am really looking forward to this project as it gives us a chance to be active, as we will be going out and about in Dundee to take pictures of Tessie's home, in order to give her recipients a taste of life in Dundee. We may even learn some new things ourselves!
I hope to make my blog more exciting over the coming weeks but this is just a wee start and I'll look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions.
See you next week!
Nicole
xxx
P.S. I take no responsibility for any health related issues that may emerge, due to the comsumption of my cake on Thursday - you have been warned...
Secondly - It's a minor miracle I still have a laptop to type this on, as the more frustrated I got with it, the closer and closer it was getting to ending up on the road outside my window!
So, where to start... aside from the small hiccup at the first hurdle (I'll be paying a visit to the library for a few books on blogging it seems!), I'm really looking forward to the rest of the ICT module. I feel like I have a good grasp of the basic aspects of ICT but I am looking forward to taking an in-depth look at the various 'fun' educational concepts that can be incorporated into the primary classroom.
During our first year of ICT inputs, I enjoyed the movie making activities so I am looking forward to developing my skills in this area. Keira, Caroline and I are working in a group of three ICT people, without the language input. Although our group is smaller than the others, I am glad taht we won't need to worry about the addition of a foreign language to our movie, as languages are not my strong point! Our movie will be aimed at pre school age childre, as we have chosen the topic 'People Who Help Us'. Our plan is to dress up our furry animals and re-inact a scene with various helpful people from society, in order to showcase these roles to the children. For example, a police man, doctor, lolly-pop lady etc. Watch this space to see if this ends up any better than our last attempt....
(Although we - rather imaginatively - managed to incorporate it into the story, the captain wasn't actually supposed to fall - whoops...)
Our other collaborative project is a 'bear exchange', (hopefully) with other trainee teachers, from across Europe. Working in the same group, we have chosen to send a toy Nessie (Keira Baird: "Eh, but it looks more like a dinosaur?") along with various postcards from Scotland. As Carrie pointed out, whilst abroad, the first thing asked of Scottish people is usually: "Does Nessie exist?!" Therefore, we believed this to be a fun theme which will give our peers an insight to life in Scotland, with a focus around Dundee. Our 'Loch Ness Monster' will be more of a 'River Tay Monster' as Tessie (as we have now proudly named her!) will have lived in Dundee, underneath the Discovery. I am really looking forward to this project as it gives us a chance to be active, as we will be going out and about in Dundee to take pictures of Tessie's home, in order to give her recipients a taste of life in Dundee. We may even learn some new things ourselves!
I hope to make my blog more exciting over the coming weeks but this is just a wee start and I'll look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions.
See you next week!
Nicole
xxx
P.S. I take no responsibility for any health related issues that may emerge, due to the comsumption of my cake on Thursday - you have been warned...
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