Finishing and Sharing Your Digital Story

HOORAY!  You will be completing your last tech project of the year this week.  Please be sure to use your checklist when finishing your digital story.  You will need to include a "title" slide. Please be sure to use your first name only on your title slide as your digital story will end up on your blog.  Include citation or credit slides at the end of your story.  You will find instructions for "rendering" and sharing your story next to your workstations.  Please read this resource carefully and use your critical thinking skills to help you accomplish this task.
I cannot wait to see your finished products!!  Good luck!
Mrs. White

Bringing It All Together

Before starting on your final search for images and music, I would like you to take a moment to complete a survey for our guidance department.  You may or may not remember taking a survey earlier in the year.  Our wonderful school climate committee used the results to help develop some of the things that have been happening in our school over the past few months.  We would like to ask you to take this survey again so the data can be re-examined.  This is a great example of how using forms and surveys can help get information, provide opportunities for change, and then how taking another look at new data can help determine if changes have been helpful.  Please take the "Student Feelings Survey."   Once you have finished be sure to submit your answers and then close out of the survey.
Okay.....now you are ready to move on to the task at hand for today!  You should have found, saved, and cited all of your images for your digital story.  If you have not, please get it done quickly.  You will then need to move on to finding, saving, and citing your music.  My last post (Checking Out) has some music sites for you to look at.  If you find a song and would like to edit it, you have "Adobe Soundbooth" on your desktops which will allow you to do this.  Remember to save your edited music or originally downloaded music as MP3 files.  Put these on your pdrive.
Now you will want to "organize" your photos in your web album in Picasa.  On the far right you will see the "organize" tab.  You can just drag and drop the pictures in to the correct order.
Once you have organized them, drop down the "Actions" tab and select "Make a Movie."  This is the last option.  A window will pop up and your want to select, "Launch Application."  You may be asked to log in to Google again.  Please do so.  You will then be brought to the desktop version of Picasa.  Give you images a few moments to download.  The more images you have, the longer this will take.
You should now be in Movie Maker.  Look around and check out the options.  You may want to start by adding your text slides and arranging again.  Don't forget to add a "credit' slide at the end of your story with all of the citations for your images and music!!!There is a "help" tab, so use it when you have a question.
You will want to take some time working on the timing of your images with your music.
Have fun and don't be afraid!!!!  You can't break anything. You have all of your images and URL's just in case.
**Okay so we all know technology can be a little bit frustrating at times.  We have learned some things during class using Picasa Movie Maker.  Occasionally all of the pictures won't download in to your movie.  We have tried, unsuccessfully, to follow the help menu directions to add photos.
***If you would like to use Windows Movie Maker instead, you may do so.  You will find WMM by going to "all programs" in the start menu.  Please be sure to "save as" to your pdrive and name the file.  You will need to download your photos to be able to import them in to your WMM project.  I have left some instructions to do this easily.  Please be patient.  I will help you with this during class 2 if you are having difficulty!!
You  have until May 31st to finish this project.
**If you should get frustrated or confused on Tuesday or Wednesday when I am not there, please take a break and work on your blog.  You have been given feedback from me and there are some things you should fix.  It would also be great to hear from you again....another post!!!  So you have plenty to do.
You should NOT be listening to music other than the song you are selecting/editing for your story, and you should definitely NOT be playing any kind of games!!!!  You have a lot to do to get this digital story in ship shape by the 31st!!!

Take Responsibility for Your Learning (Grades)!!!

***Important Announcement:  
You need to check your grades in X2!!!  If you do not have a grade recorded for your podcast it will become and remain a "0" on Friday, May 24th.  Please be sure to make arrangements with me before then if you are still having issues.  If you have a "0" for your Blog Design grade you will need to get me what I need by next Friday, May 24th, or it will remain a "0"!!!!  It is your responsibility to email me with URL's, not my responsibility to ask you!!!  Remember to return the ungraded rubric as well.
We are getting close to the end of the school year.  You know the policy for making up a missed class.  It has been the same all year.  Please go to MOODLE and check out the assignments you missed.  You have only one week to do this.
You were given your Blog Design Rubrics back during class 2 this week.  I know ILT 1 and ILT 4 did not receive them yet.  You will get them back on Monday.
As for your podcasts, that feedback was given over two weeks ago.  Please take responsibility for your learning.  You need to follow up on questions you may have.  If you do not speak with me and ask questions, your grades will remain the same.
You know where to find me so please do and get that work turned in!!!!!

Checking Out!

MCAS scheduling has messed up our tech class schedule for the last time this year.  HOORAY!!!!  Congrats to my students for their hard work and determination on testing.  With that said, I will only see most of my students once this week.  Have no fear!!!  If you continue to use your "Effective Effort" strategies you will have no trouble completing your digital story on time.
This week you will finish finding, saving, and citing the images for your story.  Please be sure to upload them all to ONE web album in Picasa.  Make sure you are using the correct URL on your Google doc for the citations.  AFTER you have found all of the images from your shopping list, you will then go to find, save, and cite the music for your story.  Remember, we are using copyright free music for this project.  The best place to look would be where you found the music for your podcasts.  Do you remember where that is?  I also found a great site with some other music options.  Read carefully though as some of the suggested sites require buying a membership to be able to download.  Check it out- Top 10 Places to Get Free Music.  You could also try, Audio Archive or Freeplay Music.
The due date for this project is May 31st!!  I have been so impressed with the search techniques being used by my students.  You are doing a great job using filters and advanced search tricks to get what you are looking for to use in your stories.  Yeah tech kids!!!

Shop 'Til You Drop

Okay guys......the pressure is on!   You will need to continue shopping during class.  Some of you will be down in the other lab with a substitute due to schedule rearranging because of sixth grade math MCAS.  You don't need me though, you know what to do!!  Please help one another.  Remember to upload those images to your Picasa web album and to put the URL's on your Google doc.  Please don't forget to clean out the download folder on the desktop of your computer.  (It is in the "My Documents" folder)  Shopping will need to be complete by the end of next week.  This will include music, but we will talk about that next week.  Use those filters in "Advanced Search" and you will have better luck narrowing down your searches.
Have fun and happy shopping!!!

Time To "Shop!"

This week you will be finding, saving, and citing the images for your digital stories.  At this point in the school year I feel as though you have enough confidence and experience to find and use resources to help you with this task.  Therefore, I will not be leading you step by step through this process.  I will point you in the direction and be available to help you problem solve and to encourage your critical thinking, but I will not be handing you a resource with all of the answers laid out.  Please check out my recommendations below and remember I am here to help; just not to tell exactly.

Before you get started on your image hunt, I want you to take a look at a couple of videos.  The first is called, "Anti Bullying Ad", and the second is called, "Talent Show."  Do you think these are PSA (public service announcements) or digital stories?  We will talk about this at the beginning of class one this week.

I would recommend using Picasa to organize your images.  You should probably start off by creating a new web album and labeling it "Digital Story."  If you need some help just check out the help guide.  You will also want to create a Google doc and label it "Citations for Digital Story."  Be sure to use the "Tips and Tricks" for searching in Google. You want to find "Creative Commons" images to use in your story.  You have your storyboard to use as a "shopping list" to help you find your images, "ingredients."  Have fun shopping!

Podcasts Corrected!!!

Hip Hip Hooray and Happy Cinco de Mayo!   There is a double reason for celebration today.  I have finally finished listening to all of my students first attempts at podcasting.  Overall, I am so pleased with their work.  I think some of my students could have a future in broadcasting.  A couple of them have "radio" voices and I can imagine they would be quite successful doing voice overs some day.  The topics were varied and interesting.  The most consistent issue my students seemed to face was the inability to get rid of the breath sounds or popping noises they made by holding the microphone too close to their mouths when recording.  I am sure the next time they make a recording they will aim a bit lower for that "sweet spot."  You can find their podcasts at "Podbean."  Many of my students also created a blog post which included a link to their Podbean accounts.  This was a great experience for all of us.