Using Windows Live Movie Maker

Our students have been creating ecology powerpoints and wanted to publish their movies on the web on our schooltube.com channel. Once published their were able to share their links with their epals. Otherwise the file sizes were too large to email. I made a series of screencasts using Screencastle and/or Jing to talk them through the process of using Windows Live Movie Maker and the Sound Recorder in connection with work they had already done in PowerPoint.


Saving PowerPoint Slides as JPEGs



Importing Pictures to Windows Live Movie Maker




Adding Titles and Credits to Windows Live Movie Maker



Adding Narration to Windows Live Movie Maker


Adding captions and Using other tools in Windows Live Movie Maker




Adding Transitions To Windows Live Movie Maker



Saving Projects as a Movie to ready it for uploading to Schooltube or Youtube.




Uploading Movie to Schooltube.com

Wimba on Crack and what is a chat anyway?

Last week was challenging to me because I was teaching some tooltimes and attempting to help students in the class at the same time.  I had to keep leaving the computer I was demonstrating on and I am sure having a snowball mike would have helped.  We have many different levels of proficiency in the class right now, and those most proficient are at home on wimba.  I felt pressure to keep up the dialogue for them at home and still assist the students in class with their problems.    I know when I was home on wimba for the first time, there was a lot of dead air, like a radio station, that was not a good scenario so I tried to avoid it.  Another thing I noticed is that this class does not use the chat window as much as previous classes, so it was hard to track who was on track at home and who wasn't.  I was disappointed when I realized the last two demonstrations of diigo and delicious were not archived.  They are useful tools and I could have used those archives with my teachers, guess I will have to make jings.  I am still learning how to keep it all flowing together without dropping any balls.

Need a sponsor!

Ok, here is my offer. While I LOVE Jing, I suspect I will love Camtasia way more, so I am seeking a sponsor to pay for it for me.   I accept all serious offers and will provide a series of screencasts in exchange for your sponsorship, so long as you select some tool I actually know how to use.

Quizlet.com Tutorial

Good Friends on Good Reads!

Last one is a rotten egg!
No seriously, the last one is my epal from Guatemala

My epal from Guatemala is finally on Goodreads.com.  I am thrilled!  With all the social networking going on out there, I cannot seem to get my friends to join easily. I know we all read books, maybe they don't all read as voraciously, but they do keep up a respectable pile by their beds.  I have sent out invites a few times, and they slowly trickle in. After a whole year, I am now up to a whopping seven friends.  Ugggh!  I hope if you are a reader, you will take the time to participate.  I have found some good books my friends have suggested to me this way, and I always know what they are reading.  I LOVE talking about books more than technology.  I tell my students about this web 2.0 tool, I want them to track what they are reading while they are young.  Hopefully it will stay free as they grow up.  Yeah Goodreads.com.

Epsilon System Hacked: Has Your E-Mail Been Stolen?

I know mine must have been, I received eight different emails from various companies that my email information was exposed due to the Epsilon hacking incident.  I wonder how many of you got that same message? United retail group, Best Buy, Target and College Board all sent me Epsilon warning notifications in one day.   We use a specific email just for any online transactions, but it doesn't help.  Ultimately, we cannot have a throwaway email.  We actually need some of the  information companies send when we buy stuff online.  For instance, at the Apple store, they email us our receipts, well, I need those receipts.  I need the entrance ticket to the SAT test for my daughter, I need the concert  tickets and boarding passes.   There has to be a secure email associated with my banking and shopping where I can receive notifications if there is a problem.   This past month, I have received three emails from friends that were clearly not from them, they were hacked and now I have changed all my passwords again in case they start getting some from me.  I send out  quite a few emails, I know that may be weird in this world of texting, but it is how schools get work done.  I do not need people scared to open my emails. I have  eleven email accounts and have started just opening them all on my phone, rather than on my computer, I can handle a virus on my phone easier.  The sprint store is closer than the Apple store. Haha!   Meanwhile, I just keep changing my passwords and trying to stay ahead of the hackers.

Helping each other through many channels

I am so glad that Ericka jumped right in a showcased Prezi for us tonight, I just couldn't get a handle on it the last time I used it, which was last week. Apparently it is all in the framing. I must have missed this in their tutorial, Ericka's was much better. I use them on my interactive boards all the time, But I am using the ones other people created, now I want, no, I NEED to make my own and master this tool.

Tonight's class was rewarding on many levels, even though I could feel the frustration emanating from a few people, they have no idea how much they upped their game tonight. In my first class, we did not do the wimba/blackboard work they were doing for a few weeks. I heard others making plans to meet together and finish it, and that made me extremely happy, they have already picked up on how to work together to solve problems. It is important to get their cell phone numbers and skype names in our address books right away just so we can help each other. Tonight, I was able to call Kevin to get in to the building, Brandy was able to call me to get the dial in to phone wimba, and Ericka skyped me to get into skimmer when she locked herself out. Amy texted in to get someone to let her in, Ann texted in to class to find out if we were still working, it just goes on and on, including the butt dialing in of my husband twice, who has no idea he was there.

The point is, we will all make it through if we stick together and are willing to be there for each other. I am glad we had the chance to showcase a few quick tools. Hopefully people play with them and hit us with feedback on how they would use the tools in their classes with students.

NY Tech Meetup-

I was looking for a free talk-radio solution so I could host my own show and I may go with this solution.  While exploring, I found this wonderful channel on Livestream.

Watch live streaming video from nytechmeetup at livestream.com

Cacoo! Cacoo! Cacoo! No birds here...just good partnerships

Our Cacoo!

Tonight I was lucky that Erica decided to  Chat with me on Skpye to talk about our contract items.  We decided to do a Cacoo together, since I had never made one before and she had never collaborated on one before. Since she had experience using the tool, this was helpful for me, but she was also able to use it in a new way.  I had no experience with the tool, and it was helpful to have someone with me as I practiced my Cacoo skills.  We initiated a Skype phone call and used the chat feature in Cacoo.  I could see how this would be wonderful to use with a class.  I have to investigate some more to see how many users can be on one Cacoo at the same time. It is very easy and both of us were able to edit at the same time, which is an upgrade from webspiration.  It doesn't turn our mind maps into outlines though.  It had some amazing features, is perfect for a project or idea where people get to put their heads together in different locations.  It is amazing how the collaborative web 2.0 tools allow students that cannot sit next to each other in class to still work in groups across a room from each other. Below is our quick Jing on Cacoo- you can hear us talking through Skype.

Yeah- I did it!

Tonight I came home after class (Integrating Technology into the Classroom)  and successfully exported my 7 year-old personal blog to this site and published only the tech posts I wanted here.  It took me only 5 minutes to move over that many years of work.  I cannot believe it. My normal blog has EVERYTHING on it, book and theatre reviews, recipes and family events, the DDR (Ask me what that is) as well as all my tech stuff. Since I would like to keep my techie and school stuff separate from my personal blog, I am so pleased I was able to do this. HOW did I do it you might ask? I googled it, just like we shared with everyone tonight in class. No one knows how to do anything until we google it, or YouTube it, but we have to look to find the answer. LOOKING IS KEY!   Now I am off my soapbox and onto enjoying my new techie blog space.

 I am so excited to fit in another course before the year is out, and this    one looks to be another zinger- we will be using more tools I haven't yet tried and I am sure that will only increase my effectiveness as a Technology Integrationist.  For my wild card options I will pick  tools I haven't used before, so I can gain as much new knowledge as I can.  Since I have used many of the mentioned tools with my students already I have to be careful to challenge myself.  I am also excited to help out the other students in our class, I am sure the three of us who have had Amy before will be able to be of some use to the rest of the class, and they in their turn will help the next class they are in.  It is a beautiful system.

Here is the voki I created tonight to introduce myself, some of them my  classmates made were quite funny.  My students loved it when I used voki for instruction and we had a lot of fun in our last class using avatars to introduce our Instructional Theorists. we did have some trouble with voki freezing up on a few computers.  This frustrated a few of us and when I got home and logged into my account, the voki I made in class was gone.  I had to create another one.    The application also froze up a few times at home.  We are lucky we have other avatar web 2.0 applications to choose from in case this happens.   Amy said she would post them all in blackboard for us and I did view at least three of them in my last class.