OVERVIEW:
I created a short, 30 second video highlighting a trip to Hawaii using Animoto. This was the first time I have ever used this site. After creating an account, I found it quite user-friendly. I liked how you could include photos from different areas (photos on your computer, Facebook albums, Picasa, Flickr). Music and background or themes were also customizable. In the end, after simply choosing photos and uploading them, with a simple click Animoto did all the "work" and automatically put everything into a quick slideshow presentation.
PROS: The entire site was pretty user friendly. It didn't take long to create a quick, fun show.
CONS: Since this was the free or "lite" version, my video was limited to 30 seconds which amounted to only about 10 photos. In addition, while I liked that the photos were set to music, again, since this was the lite version, all of the song choices were unfamiliar to me. While I liked how Animoto then did all the "work" of putting it together, if I needed a specific order or defined structure to my presentation beyond just looking at pictures, this would not be the site to use.
If I were going to use this in my classroom, I would definitely need to be a paid subscriber. Just looking at the website, it does seem quite reasonable (approximately $5/month).
OVERVIEW:
As I work on functional/life skills with students, one thing we do is check personal emails. A student actually had this emailed to them from a relative and it was part of a long chain for forwarded emails. While I would usually delete those types of things for obvious reasons, for some reason I looked at this video and found it really interesting!
One activity we do in class on a weekly basis is a combination of social studies/functional skills. We learn about a state in the USA (capital, fun facts, history) in the form of a slideshow and then cook a food related to that state. For example, did you know that the maraschino cherry is primarily made in factories in Oregon? So, when we learned about Oregon, we looked at photos of Lewis and Clark's expedition, the Pacific Ocean, Nike headquarters, USA Track and Field, and then maraschino cherries recipes. Our "recipe" to cook that week was then a simple Shirley Temple. We do this type of activity weekly with different states and my students love it! Given their cognitive disabilities, there isn't a lot of takeaway or long term remembrance of states from week to week, but they are engaged in the moment!
So, back to the video, I think this would be a fun video to show at the beginning of the year and again at the end for these activities. It shows an airplane flying over the country from east to west with a bird's eye view of historic landmarks and places in our country. I thought it was pretty clever and interesting. It would be fun to see what my students would recognize.
REFLECTION:
1) How could a blog be useful in your classroom or professional life?
I tried using a blog awhile ago in my class but didn't keep up with it. I would have students write posts about activities we did or things we were learning about. It was a combination of functional writing skills and communication. The problem I had was that I felt it wasn't a very relevant avenue at the time, because nobody was reading it. There were too many parameters with privacy and parent access we needed to cover. Ultimately, my use of the blog faded and is now extinct. I'm hoping that through this class, I can again begin using a blog for classroom purposes. In addition to communicating with parents and "displaying" our work and learning, I think it can be a very useful life skill for students to learn to log in, read posts, and write things - as this is a use of technology that is becoming increasingly more popular in everyday life.
2) After checking out some of the other blogging sites, which do you think would be the best option for you?
While I like aspects of all the sites listed, I think I will probably stick to using the Blogger site for now. As with any new program, there is a learning curve and little nuances unique to each site. I feel I could spend hours tweaking little things (how does this look? what if I added this? how do I do that?). As our learning and posting will take place in the Blogger site for this class, I would like to stick to using that, as it is what I will become most familiar and fluent with.
