I found out about a new music editing program that may rival Garageband but — thankfull for me, the PC user — is located all online and is free. The site is called Myna and it is part of the Aviary suite of applications.
This morning, I wrote a poem in my head about walking my dog out in the darkness of morning and then came back, launched Myna, and had this podcast poem in no time at all. Like Garageband, you can pull loops from a large database, and you can add effects to your voice.
But, unlike Garageband, Myna also gives you the embed code for your mixed down audio tracks.
I wonder how we might use this with our students because if it is easy enough to use, then I would replace this application with Audacity. I love Audacity and have used it for years, but this Myna brings ease of recording and podcasting to a new level.
I found out about this site called Storybird via my Twitter network and decided to give it a try. Songbird is a collaborative story builder in which you are given some illustrations and you can build a flash-style book. You can also add collaborators, which I did not do (this time). Instead, I tried to fashion a story about the start of school and the magical power of books and reading.
I found the experience interesting and I loved the illustrations. I did have some trouble finding the illustrations that I wanted, as they kept getting buried underneath the pile. It’s hard to explain, but I felt as if I spent as much time finding a pictured I wanted to reuse as I did writing the story. That might cause some frustration for young writers.
See what you think. Storybird has some great possibilities. (I do wish I could embed the book right here at my blog, but I did not see a way to do that from the site).
Educause puts out a series of papers called Seven Things About … that are must-reads for anyone dipping their toes or minds into technology and learning. The two-sided white PDF papers explore the use of a technological tool in an educational setting in language that is easy to understand and simple to grasp. I’ve often used the Seven Things papers as supplemental handouts at workshops and find it gives just enough of an overview to spark a good opening discussions.
At the Educause site, you can find information about:
This is a great video in which Henry Jenkins, of the New Media Literacy Project, talks about technology and the classroom. It’s worth a few minutes of your time. This is from the Edutopia collection.
This week, I posted a review of the new Comic Application ComiXology for the iPhone/iTouch over at The Graphic Classroom. (See the review yourself — mostly positive).
Last week, I was quite interested in an article in The New Yorker about the Kindle eReader. The Kindle has been on my radar screen but I could never get up the nerve to spend that much money on a device that works only with Amazon and for Amazon eBooks. It didn’t make sense to me. The article by Nicholas Baker (read it yourself, if you want) is an interesting take on reading with an eReader and it calls into question a lot about the design of the Kindle and what is lacking. (What he doesn’t mention is that Apple is about to get into the eReader business, so Amazon better watch out).
Baker notes that you can get a pretty good reading experience from an application right on your iPhone or iTouch, so I of course had to give it a try with Stanza. This application is pretty good, I have to say, and I spent a long morning waiting for some car work to get done reading a free collection of short stories called Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (a local author, it turns out).
I was immediately lost in the book, and not in the device or application, and that says a lot, doesn’t it? We want our technology to be seamless and invisible.
Stanza has access to a variety of book depositories — some have free books for download, some provide books that are for purchase — and the application turns the page when you touch the side of the screen. The resolution is pretty decent and you can even change the background and text colors, and fonts, so there is plenty you can do to make it fit yourown needs. The screen, of course, is small, but I didn’t feel as if that hindered my reading of a story about a 24-hour convenience store on the edge of chasm visited by Zombies (you read that right!).
I also downloaded a bunch of books for my upcoming week in Maine, including some children’s books, although whether the battery in my iTouch will hold out for long periods of reading, I don’t know. But, no matter, my primary reading material will still be paper books. The technology is making progress, but it still doesn’t beat the feeling of hanging out in a chair, book draped open to a page, lost in literary thought.
I had two experiences with Skype this week that reinforced in my mind just how powerful the connective tools of Web 2.0 really are. It’s not a new revelation, yet both were so interesting and both, as it turns out, used Skype as the connector tool.
First, I spent the weekend with some good friends of mine from the college days. We have known each other for more than 20 years now (wow) and although we are scattered geographically, we still find room in our calendar to come together once a year at one of our homes (wives and children often scatter). Two of our friends are in the military and it is sometimes the case that one of them is overseas. Three years ago, one of my buddies was stationed in the Middle East as a patrol guard, searching beneath vehicles for bombs. This year, my other friend who flies helicopters is on a year-long tour just outside of Baghdad. So, obviously, he could not attend the weekend here. So, what did we do? We skyped him and had a long conversation using webcams and laptops and wireless connections to see how he is doing over there (so far, so good). The ability to talk to a friend in Iraq during the war …. that is pretty amazing.
Then, last night, I Skyped my way into a graduate level education class at Columbia University, where the future teachers had been using our book — Teaching the New Writing — as a class text, generated questions for myself and another editor (Charlie Moran) using Web 2.0 tools, and then peppered us with outstanding questions about writing, technology and more for about an hour. Just think how cool that is: to be able to converse with and ask questions of the writers and editors of a text that you are using in the college classroom. It was a great conversation for both us — the producers of the content — and them — the readers of the content — and it really shows how technology is changing the relationship of how we interact with text, don’t you think?
Andy over at http://iteach20.blogspot.com/ is launching a great concept for commenting on other people’s blogs. He wants to keep the concept simple and manageable, so his idea is for folks to make one comment per day on a blog you don’t often come across.
Here is what he says:
Here is the process.
1. Read a blog
2. Post a comment that is insightful and constructive.
3. Tweet a link to the blog and your comment. Use the hash tag #OneComment
EXAMPLE: I just read a great piece on iTeach blog, check it out! #OneComment
4. Bookmark the blog and return to it another time.
It is just that easy! This Project will help create a positive forum for all who blog and comment. There are so many good educational blogs out there and I look forward to hearing your feedback and engaging in your comments!
The second phase of this project will be a featured blog a week project. This forum will review and promote one educational blog per week. It will also try and introduce new edu-blogs into the learning community. I will be setting up a Ning for this venture. The sole purpose of both ventures is to promote learning and create an engaging dialogue between so many great academic minds. The twitter hash tag for this will be #1Newblog
Please send me your thoughts, suggestions and feedback on both new ventures!I would also like to put together a small team to help with this venture due to the time consuming nature of the project. If you would like to help your fellow bloggers and be an integral part of this venture, please contact me at onecommentproject@gmail.com
I have also set up a separate twitter account for this second phase. It will be @1commentproject. Please follow it for blog updates and blog promotions. When we spread the word about great blogs, we all shine!
This is the Ustream video from a session at EdubloggerCon 2009 in which folks quickly gave an overview of some new and interesting Web 2.0 tools. (not sure I like the Smackdown label, but it is catchy).
Thanks to Wesley Fryar for sharing out his notes and some resources at his blog, The Speed of Creativity.
It’s worth a view:
The school year finally came to an end yesterday (Kids left on Thursday) and I am left in a bit of a reflective mode, even though the end of the year rush has not yet settled in for me. (Plus, I have two summer camps to get ready for — Claymation and Webcomics). But, I am thinking about my increased use of technology in the classroom these days and so, here, I present a brainstormed list of some of the projects we did that integrated technology into my curriculum:
First two days of school: Dream Scenes digital stories
Writing Prompts that became Podcasts
Using Wordle to demonstrate power of words of collective student writing
Using Google Forms to collectively brainstorm social action projects and then vote on ideas
Using Webcomic platform (Make Beliefs Comics) to pose questions for presidential candidates
Stop-Motion Animation movies at Longfellow Ten site with literary themes (authentic publishing and collaboration with other schools)
Origins of English Language: collaborative, across-years wiki/podcasting with Wikispaces — The Crazy Dictionary
The Heroic Journey– using Google Maps and Picasa to tell a story of a heroic journey (after reading The Lightning Thief novel and The Odyssey graphic novel)
Podcasting letters to the new president (in collaboration with social studies teacher)
Podcasting Expository Writing (how to do something)
Narrative Paragraph Writing — as digital storytelling
Blogging with high school students as part of our transition process (moving from our elementary school to a regional high school next year)
Digital Picture Books: cellular mitosis as frame for fictional story (in collaboration with science teacher)
Podcasting Poems for Multiple Voices
Creating Webcomic poems with ToonDoo networking space
Claymation Movie Projects — on the theme of tolerance
Hyperlinked Digital Poetry Books
Wow. That seems daunting even to me. But it all did seem to come pretty natural and the students were very engaged in all of this work. Technology was a huge hit with my students and I saw many benefits to their learning process.
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