Movie Project Update

With the days rapidly dwindling before the Movie Project is done crunch time is upon us.  It is evident that this years students are different than last years students.... go figure.  Some reinventing of the Movie Project has evolved over the year. 

More work needed to be done during school time.  This is fine.  Problem is that most of that time came out of my math classes.  The "team" did not figure out that they too had to donate some time to the cause.  Oh well.  Perhaps next year the "team" will recognize the importance of the project and jump on board earlier... here is hoping!!

We have given the students  a rubric for them to use.

They should have a first draft of their movies done by the end of the week.  Next week we will use the rubric and student responses to edit and critique the finished movies.  My goal is to have the students leave comments behind at youtube.   The groups will then have a chance to redo their movie and resubmit it.  Peer feedback will be important to a better finished product.  The top groups will benefit from this editing time.  Last year we found many groups with grammar and topic errors. A good peer edit will eliminate many of these small errors.

A problem will occur when the other groups do not finish on time and hand in inferior work.  It is a fine balance with due dates and students.  Some make the due dates others do not.  With the movie being 20% of the third term I hope this motivates them to complete it on time.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by randomcuriosity

Youtube Annotations

This is a repost from the Mathzone

I love Youtube. All of you have access to the class youtube account. There is a neat thing that can be done at our account. Since we own the videos that are created we can add an extra layer called annotations. this means that you can leave comments throughout the video.

I left some comments behind at Charissa's Video.


Your annotation can be a shape or a talk bubble. Please go and leave a comment behind on the video. Make sure that you do not make the video look sloppy with your annotation. You should choose a spot in the video where an annotation will not deter the presentation.

Annother cool tool is to leave a link to your other video at the end of the first video. Just cut and paste the link into the link box in the annotation editor.

Have fun. Looks like another cool tool from google and youtube. I see a choose your own math story happening here soon. This will be so cool!!

What to use to upload videos

There are so many options now when it comes to uploading videos on the web. I am still a big fan of viddler because of the layered commenting feature. Here your comments appear like pop up videos as the video is played.

The students all post at youtube and this makes it meaningful to them. Recent changes have allowed for many different applications to be made using youtube. One being a choose your own adventure style. This layering effect to link videos together interests me in seeing how this could work in a classroom. Here is that video...



Also you can edit how the embed appears in your blog or wiki. You can edit out the related videos which can in some cases be inappropriate. Click the little blue gear beside the embed and you have this option.

Flickr allows you to upload video but you are limited to the size and length of the video. Short pieces could be uploaded here. These are my two boys singing and dancing. This is convenient because most of us have flickr accounts already. Hassle is the file size and time limit though. Shame because the quality is quite good. This was shot on a flip ultra.






Now I am trying out vimeo. It allows for HD video to be uploaded and the higher quality video is appealing to me. You are limited to 500 mb a week but for important uploads... perhaps this is the ticket. Here is my son singing at the concert this week. He loves to sing and ... scratch.



Untitled from Chris Harbeck on Vimeo.

All of these options. Wow we have come along way in a few short years.

Youtube, blogger and Substitute teacher

One of my former students will be subbing for me on Tuesday. She is an incredible person and young enough that what I am going to experiment with will not phase her.

I have created 2 video inserts for the lessons tomorrow. One will do the primary teaching of the integer unit being taught to 4 of the classes. I put a brief screencast using smart notebook and uploaded it to the class blog. Problem with blogger is that the video is very small. I have placed copies at youtube that can be magnified to full screen so the whole class can see. I hope that this experiment work. Half an hour of my time makes the her job easier.

She now can focus on helping the kids not teaching the lesson.

Hope it works
Integers Part 1



Part 2

Numbers Numbers Numbers

I was going though youtube and found this.



I do not know how I will use it but.... there have to be possibilities.

Enjoy

Think before you post

Here is a great video from youtube. I found it reading Miguel Guhlin's Blog




This should bring the point across to students about thinking before they post.