Best Practices
VoiceThread - Digital Story Telling in Web2.0 21st century learners need to be effective communicators. One skill that is emerging as a key for these learners is digital storytelling. Digital storytelling uses digital tools to help students use voice to tell their story in a compelling and engaging manner. Students are using programs like Movie Maker, PhotoStory, iMovie, and more to create these digital stories. However, Beth Malapanes, CDO librarian, shared that VoiceThread is a new online Web 2.0 tool that has made it easy for students to create digital stories on the web. VoiceThread also allows for users to comment on their work, thus making it a powerful collaborative tool. You can get to VoiceThread at http://voicethread.com/#home. VoiceThread is a free program and allows the user to add pictures, voice recordings, videos and use the “doodler” tool to draw on the graphics. It also has a wonderful feature called identities that is perfect for the elementary teacher. Teachers can create one account and within that account they can create different identities for each student in the classroom. VoiceThread is an easy to use program and they provide wonderful tutorials about the program at http://voicethread.com/#c28. At this link, you can learn everything from the basics of how to create a VoiceThread to setting up multiple identities. We are learning about VoiceThreads in the Writing in the 21st Century Academy in December and I have created a page in my blog about the educational possibilities of VoiceThread. You should check them out at http://21stwriting.wordpress.com/voice-thread/ and come up with ideas for using VoiceThread in your classroom. This is a perfect way to engage our 21st century learners and get them to be creative while practicing their effective communication skills. Please share any exciting VoiceThreads that you and your students create with me.
Zamzar – Free
File Conversion Program Have you ever received a file from someone that you can’t open because you don’t have the software they created the file with on your computer? Well Cindy Rolewski, from La Cima, has a solution for you: Zamzar. Zamzar is located at http://www.zamzar.com/. Zamzar is a site that converts a variety of document, video, music and image file types into other file types. For instance, if someone sends you a document in Microsoft Word 2007 and you don’t have Office 2007, you can have Zamzar convert it to a Microsoft Word version you can open. Or, if you have a pdf file that you want to edit in Word, you can convert a pdf file to Word. This site is useful for taking appropriate You Tube files at home and converting them to .avi files that you can use in your classroom. Always remember to follow copyright laws and obtain permission when changing format. You can see all of the file conversions Zamzar currently can make at http://www.zamzar.com/conversionTypes.php. The process is easy. You go to www.zamzar.com and in Step 1 click on Browse and select the file you want to convert from your computer or enter the URL from the Internet. In Step 2, you select the file type you want the file converted to and in Step 3 you put your email address. You click on Convert. The file will be converted and an email will be sent to you with the link and you can download the file. Then you save the file, open it and use it. So, in the future, if someone sends you a file you can’t open, try Zamzar. |
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