This week I was introduce to Crazy Talk, an innovative piece of software which transforms any digital image into a talking, animated character bringing them to life with real time puppeteering. you can make it as simple or intricate as you like. You start by uploading a photograph, image or you can use one of the many images already in place. Then by clicking and dragging Certain dots into place the software enhances facial fitting. You can use only four points, which is the basic fitting or you can move up to a more advanced level if desired. Emotion can be added to your actor with emotive one-click mood animations, ideal for beginners or young children, or you can have full control of custom facial for the more advanced. everything becomes animated: eyes, eye brows, lips, nose, cheeks, full head movements... The out comes looked fantastic and I could not wait to have a go. We watched online tutorials to get us started. The first part was fine we chose a bear picture so we could make him into Bertie Bear and add to our Wiki. We uploaded it and and matched up all the points, we used the more advance setting but only because we though we had to. we added teeth and things then recorded a story for our bear to tell. So far so good we thought. It was time to add our facial expressions and head movements. The software automatically added simple mouth movement which we were happy with. We tried to add in the head movements, blinking ect but really struggled. We were starting to get pretty fed up and were thinking this would be no use in the classroom as it was way to difficult and time consuming. Then we realised you can add one click mood animations, perfect. There were lots to choose from and we took the time to to see what many of them looked like. Here is what we came up with.
I love this program as I feel there is so much you can do with it from discussing emotions with young children or autistic children to using a historical character to introduce a topic to bringing children's work to life with an animated character.
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Wikis
Throughout the course of our elective Tamar and I have been working on our collaborative wiki which we have now finished. The focus is healthy living and aimed at the early years level. The purpose of our wiki is to guide the children through the topic, engaging them with different activities from our child friendly environment. The wiki ties in with other areas of our elective such as: our movie, animation, vokis, Crazy Talk ... We did this as we wanted to show our learning within the wiki and for our other activities to have more of a purpose making our learning relevant. We decided to use the character Bertie bear to guide the children through the topic. Bertie is mainly a voki although we do have one version of him we made in Crazy Talk. All of the activities are explained using videos and vokis as we felt this would make it accessible to the early years as they are just starting to read and lots of text would put them off. The use of videos and vokis also means that the activities are not heavily teacher lead allowing children to be responsible for their own learning and provides them with an element of choice. At the bottom of every page we included teacher's notes for quick easy reference of what the page includes. There are also two or three activities which may need teacher involvement and these are highlighted within these notes.
I think that using wikis in this way is a good way to have a topic all in one place, which the children can work through at their own pace, making choices about how they want to move through the topic. To take this further, it could also be shared with the parents creating a stronger home school link and more parental involvement. extension activities could be added depending on the needs of the children. This makes the learning more personal. If the wiki is made private then photos of the children carrying out the activitiea with comments can be added. I feel that the introduction to using wikis at this age would also be beneficial for children's fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. If children were familiar with this level of I.C.T at this age then progression can happen in future years where children can each have an individual page to add to giving them added responsibility, the knowledge to design and create their space and providing them with the feeling of empowerment. There are always concerns when allowing children free rein of a wiki, such as what is to stop one child going on and vandalizing it by erasing content or adding profanities? Richardson (2010 p61) believes, however, that "Giving students editorial control can imbue in them a sense of responsibility and ownership for the site and minimize the risk of someone adding something offensive." I agree with Richardson to a certain extent, but it really depends on the nature of the class. If you think that this could be a problem there are other alternatives out there from wikis that use passwords and logins to software that can be installed on your computer.
Tamar and I found it fairly easy to make our wiki with no major difficulties, but when it came to the layout we found it very temperamental. We wanted our wiki to look perfect and professional but when we organised the layout in edit then viewed it in save it would change the format. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Although this irritated us I do not think it is a problem as the children don't need to strive for the same quality that Tamar and I wanted. Please follow the link to view our wiki.
Tamar and Lyndsay's Healthy Living Wiki
I think that using wikis in this way is a good way to have a topic all in one place, which the children can work through at their own pace, making choices about how they want to move through the topic. To take this further, it could also be shared with the parents creating a stronger home school link and more parental involvement. extension activities could be added depending on the needs of the children. This makes the learning more personal. If the wiki is made private then photos of the children carrying out the activitiea with comments can be added. I feel that the introduction to using wikis at this age would also be beneficial for children's fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. If children were familiar with this level of I.C.T at this age then progression can happen in future years where children can each have an individual page to add to giving them added responsibility, the knowledge to design and create their space and providing them with the feeling of empowerment. There are always concerns when allowing children free rein of a wiki, such as what is to stop one child going on and vandalizing it by erasing content or adding profanities? Richardson (2010 p61) believes, however, that "Giving students editorial control can imbue in them a sense of responsibility and ownership for the site and minimize the risk of someone adding something offensive." I agree with Richardson to a certain extent, but it really depends on the nature of the class. If you think that this could be a problem there are other alternatives out there from wikis that use passwords and logins to software that can be installed on your computer.
Tamar and I found it fairly easy to make our wiki with no major difficulties, but when it came to the layout we found it very temperamental. We wanted our wiki to look perfect and professional but when we organised the layout in edit then viewed it in save it would change the format. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Although this irritated us I do not think it is a problem as the children don't need to strive for the same quality that Tamar and I wanted. Please follow the link to view our wiki.
Tamar and Lyndsay's Healthy Living Wiki
Friday, 11 February 2011
Handheld collaborative Doc
This week we were given the task to take one aspect of using an IPhone or IPad and look at how you can incorporate this into either your personal learning or university collaborative learning. We each had to pick a different area to write about and enter it into the collaborative Google Doc. Here is mine.
IPad collaborative lecture (Lyndsay Dunn)
For this collaborative task I chose to look at the IPad and how it can be incorporated into a collaborative lecture. I selected this area to reflect on as I have used the IPad in lecturers previously and have an understanding of how they can be used, but using them as part of a collaborative lecture is something I needed to research further.
There seem to be many different advantages of using the IPad in this way which could enhance learning. The first advantage that came to mind was using the device, so that lecturers can receive instantaneous or real time feedback. Tools such as Poll4 can be used for simple questions or to elicit deeper responses and are quick and easy to set up. Google Docs is another collaborative tool, which can be used to create and edit documents in real time by a number of people. I believe that by having this anonymous exchange of information, alongside verbal, can encourage interactions from the students. Anonymity may encourage more students to have a voice and be supported in their learning. Many students have answers to the questions being asked or have extra information, but never put their hands up. Lecture theatres can be a daunting place for some people.
An app I would like to discuss is Dropbox. Dropbox is a web based file hosting service, which enables users to access and share files on different devices using ‘cloud computing’. Using this app, lecturers could drop their power points into the Dropbox or students could download them from Blackboard dropping them into their own Dropbox. The IPad can then be used in lectures to pick up the power point and add notes. Students can not only add their own notes, but the lecturer may wish to add extra notes as well to enhance the lecture, personalising the learning to the particular class.
Good Reader used along with Dropbox is another tool to encourage collaboration. This app allows pdf files to be annotated, highlighted and drawn upon. Once this has been done the document can be shared among the lecture theatre. E books can also be highlighted and shared in a similar way giving access to more information.
There seems to be many advantages in incorporating the IPad into a collaborative lecture and am aware I’m just scratching the surface, however, it is important to look at the negative side too. As with most technology once you get used to using it it’s hard to live without. It is inevitable that at some point there will be some sort of fault and for this reason it is important to have a backup plan.
Changing the structure can be a good thing, however, it also means that time and effort must go into training and figuring out how to use everything. This will be easy for some people, but others may struggle or lack of time may be an issue and let’s not forget the people who don’t like change.
Using new technology is always exciting, but I feel that some may become distracted and lose focus on the lecture. Students could be looking at their Face book, checking their email.... instead of paying attention to the lecture and it could go undetected. Some students may be one step behind and miss out on important information while they are concentrating on something else.
There are always two sides to a story, but I think in this case the positive would outweigh the negatives. There are always going to be people who don’t want to pay attention in lectures, however, people need to take responsibility for their own learning.
For this collaborative task I chose to look at the IPad and how it can be incorporated into a collaborative lecture. I selected this area to reflect on as I have used the IPad in lecturers previously and have an understanding of how they can be used, but using them as part of a collaborative lecture is something I needed to research further.
There seem to be many different advantages of using the IPad in this way which could enhance learning. The first advantage that came to mind was using the device, so that lecturers can receive instantaneous or real time feedback. Tools such as Poll4 can be used for simple questions or to elicit deeper responses and are quick and easy to set up. Google Docs is another collaborative tool, which can be used to create and edit documents in real time by a number of people. I believe that by having this anonymous exchange of information, alongside verbal, can encourage interactions from the students. Anonymity may encourage more students to have a voice and be supported in their learning. Many students have answers to the questions being asked or have extra information, but never put their hands up. Lecture theatres can be a daunting place for some people.
An app I would like to discuss is Dropbox. Dropbox is a web based file hosting service, which enables users to access and share files on different devices using ‘cloud computing’. Using this app, lecturers could drop their power points into the Dropbox or students could download them from Blackboard dropping them into their own Dropbox. The IPad can then be used in lectures to pick up the power point and add notes. Students can not only add their own notes, but the lecturer may wish to add extra notes as well to enhance the lecture, personalising the learning to the particular class.
Good Reader used along with Dropbox is another tool to encourage collaboration. This app allows pdf files to be annotated, highlighted and drawn upon. Once this has been done the document can be shared among the lecture theatre. E books can also be highlighted and shared in a similar way giving access to more information.
There seems to be many advantages in incorporating the IPad into a collaborative lecture and am aware I’m just scratching the surface, however, it is important to look at the negative side too. As with most technology once you get used to using it it’s hard to live without. It is inevitable that at some point there will be some sort of fault and for this reason it is important to have a backup plan.
Changing the structure can be a good thing, however, it also means that time and effort must go into training and figuring out how to use everything. This will be easy for some people, but others may struggle or lack of time may be an issue and let’s not forget the people who don’t like change.
Using new technology is always exciting, but I feel that some may become distracted and lose focus on the lecture. Students could be looking at their Face book, checking their email.... instead of paying attention to the lecture and it could go undetected. Some students may be one step behind and miss out on important information while they are concentrating on something else.
There are always two sides to a story, but I think in this case the positive would outweigh the negatives. There are always going to be people who don’t want to pay attention in lectures, however, people need to take responsibility for their own learning.
Movie Making, the next step...
A new week and a fresh start to editing our creation! Tamar and I were confident and ready to finish it. We were clear where we were going next and what needed to be done. The images were edited and synched how we wanted and it was time to organise our many sound clips. Our clips, which were all recorded in Audacity, needed to be converted into MP3 format, saved then imported into WMM (windows Movie maker) where we could then edit more, if required and organise where they were to appear in our movie. Reading this back there seems to be so many extra steps! Why does everything need to be converted by different tools? There must be a simpler or more efficient way to do this. If anyone knows of a different or better way to do this I would be interested to hear. We followed the steps making sure to save as we went but for some reason, which I have failed to work out, we lost our work about 4 times. Each separate occasion occurred later on in the process, which meant we had more to lose. We wondered if we were asking the computer to carry out too much at once?
Once our sound clips were added, the transitions set and the captions written we nervously watched the movie. Something was not right, it was lacking something and seemed a bit dull. We decided to have some backing music running throughout, so there were no gaps in sound. We found a track and thought it would be easy to add in but WMM only allows for two levels of sound. We had muted the sound from the camera as it was just background noise and had imported in all the speech, so we had used the two options. Feeling frustrated we decided to play the movie out loud into a microphone while recording using audacity. We used Fetchmp3 to convert our backing track and import to audacity. Once we were happy with the levels we combined the tracks into one, converted, saved and imported it back into WMM.
THE FINISHED ARTICLE HOORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!
Although this has been a frustrating experience, on reflection I am glad it didn't go smoothly. I feel I have learnt a huge amount of technical skills and realise that yes, ICT doesn't always go to plan, but the important part to take from that is to accept it may not work, find a solution or alternative and move forward. Problem solving.
In the primary classroom I still stick to the decision that this level of movie making should be kept to the upper stages as long as they have had previous experiences to build on or step by step instruction. I do feel it would be a positive experience for children to go that step further from just capturing images to creating a movie, but it doesn't have to be taken quite to the same level as we did unless the children are ready.
Once our sound clips were added, the transitions set and the captions written we nervously watched the movie. Something was not right, it was lacking something and seemed a bit dull. We decided to have some backing music running throughout, so there were no gaps in sound. We found a track and thought it would be easy to add in but WMM only allows for two levels of sound. We had muted the sound from the camera as it was just background noise and had imported in all the speech, so we had used the two options. Feeling frustrated we decided to play the movie out loud into a microphone while recording using audacity. We used Fetchmp3 to convert our backing track and import to audacity. Once we were happy with the levels we combined the tracks into one, converted, saved and imported it back into WMM.
THE FINISHED ARTICLE HOORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!
Although this has been a frustrating experience, on reflection I am glad it didn't go smoothly. I feel I have learnt a huge amount of technical skills and realise that yes, ICT doesn't always go to plan, but the important part to take from that is to accept it may not work, find a solution or alternative and move forward. Problem solving.
In the primary classroom I still stick to the decision that this level of movie making should be kept to the upper stages as long as they have had previous experiences to build on or step by step instruction. I do feel it would be a positive experience for children to go that step further from just capturing images to creating a movie, but it doesn't have to be taken quite to the same level as we did unless the children are ready.
Friday, 4 February 2011
Movie Making
This week we started making our movie. I have to admit that I wasn't as excited about this as I had been about other tasks. I was however aware of the importance of this task as film is an integral part of literacy. Bazalgette (2010) states that “film alongside other textual forms helps children to understand the place of print literacy within the wider world of communications, and to understand the different kinds of texts." I also feel that allowing children to create their own film will deepen this learning and understanding taking it one step further.
We were prepared for filming with our script and storyboard. Just like the animation we had kept our story simple to help us achieve an end product. The movie was to be a group effort where Tamar and I joined up with two others from the modern foreign language elective. I am unsure why we have had to do this as I cannot see benefits for either party. We have had to alter our themes to tie in with theirs' We had organised that Tamar and I would focus on filming while the other two would focus on recording the sound, as part of it was to be in French. On the day the person who wanted to write the script was off so we had to re-write it. We felt it would be unfair to leave one person to record the sound, especially as they were not part of the ICT elective. We lost time but still managed to complete the filing. If I were to do this with a class I would collect in all the work at the end of each lesson so that if someone was off nothing would be lost.
Filming was quick and easy. as we had planned each scene on our story board. Once back in the university it was time to check our script and record it. We used audacity to record it in lots of little sections as we thought this would make it easy to play around with.
The next session was meant to be for editing but unfortunately we were unable to get as much done as we had hoped. Before we could start editing the MP4 files needed to be converted into WMP files. We had been given the website ZamZar to do this. It took a while to convert all our file and when we played them through we realised all the files were corrupt. We then spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to download or find a different programme that would do this for us. This sort of setback only helps to remind us that as teachers we must be prepared and have the correct tools for the job. Although this was a fairly big setback for us it would be an even bigger problem in the primary classroom.
Once all our clips had been successfully converted we used Windows Movie Maker to edit. I found this really easy and fast to use. I would have no worries using this in middle and upper stages of the primary but would stick to Digital Blue for the younger children. We were pleased with our edited images and began to start working on our sound clips. I knew that the sound clips needed to be converted to MP3 files and that audacity would do this for us, however it did not seem to be working. Feeling a little fed up and with not much time left we decided to call it a day. We looked for advice later and found it must have been a problem with that particular computer and so feel ready and confident to try again on Monday. I will keep you informed.
Friday, 28 January 2011
Voices of the world
This week I was introduced to Voices of the World and was asked to create a task for the month of March. I had heard about the network from my tutor, but was unsure what it was all about. I took the time to navigate my way around the website to familiarise myself with the concept. The website is only for educators and was created by Sharon Tonner.The aim being to connect children from all over the world using their voices instead of only the written word, such as letters and emails. The network was also designed to help children show an appreciation of different languages, accents and dialect, however, I feel it has achieved much more than just these aims. I feel the network brings us closer to achieving the goal of becoming global citizens. Children can have the opportunity to learn about the world they live in, where different countries are situated, different cultures, how other children of similar ages live and relate this to their own world.
A task is released at the beginning of each month with all contributions completed by the end of the month. Contributions are in the form of embedded code which are sent to a site 'administrator' who then places them on the VOTW wikispace. The VOTW wikispace for that month is not released until the last day of the month, so that all members can look and view all contributions from around the world. This allows the children to view everyone's work and hopefully appreciate the differences in culture.
There are two websites for Voices of the World. One is the children's and the other is the teachers'. The children's website has a brief outline of the task for that month, usually with an example. This is also where the children's work is displayed. (They can not only see their own work, but everyone else's from all over the world.) The teachers' website has a more detailed step by step guide to the task, so that regardless of their ICT abilities they should be able to manage and guide their class. They can also use this site as a means of communication if they need help, want to share their success or would like to make more links with other schools.
A task is released at the beginning of each month with all contributions completed by the end of the month. Contributions are in the form of embedded code which are sent to a site 'administrator' who then places them on the VOTW wikispace. The VOTW wikispace for that month is not released until the last day of the month, so that all members can look and view all contributions from around the world. This allows the children to view everyone's work and hopefully appreciate the differences in culture.
There are two websites for Voices of the World. One is the children's and the other is the teachers'. The children's website has a brief outline of the task for that month, usually with an example. This is also where the children's work is displayed. (They can not only see their own work, but everyone else's from all over the world.) The teachers' website has a more detailed step by step guide to the task, so that regardless of their ICT abilities they should be able to manage and guide their class. They can also use this site as a means of communication if they need help, want to share their success or would like to make more links with other schools.
Our group was given the chance to create the task for March. We decided it would be a good idea to use the song 'Happy Birthday to You' as our topic as it is sung all over the world. We felt this would be interesting for the children to share the different ways this can be sung and what it sounds like compared to our version. There was a vast number of different tools available online for us to use. It was almost overwhelming. We wanted to use something we had not used before, so that we could further our learning, but it was quite difficult to sift through and work out the different features. Time always seems to be a factor and it would be good to be able to sit and 'play' with different tools to increase awareness of what is available, but unfortunately it is always limited both in class and at home. I will just have to chip away at this sort of thing with any spare moments, although, now that I have the use of an Ipad surely this will make it easier :) (more about the Ipad to follow, I promise). Our group decided to use Anamoto which is a free programme that combines your images, music and video clips into a small production a little bit like a movie trailer. We found it really easy to use with simple step by step instructions. We made an example using birthday images that were already available on the site. For the music, we found a YouTube video of 'Happy Birthday' and converted the soundtrack into mp3 using Fetchmp3. We then uploaded the mp3 file to Animoto which then combined everything to create our example.
Although I am pleased with the result I feel it maybe should have been modeled as we are asking the children to sing and use their own pictures (no children in pictures) and drawings, however if we had sung this may have put them off for life.
Once our creation was complete we made simple step by step instructions for the teachers. As we wanted the children's voices on their versions we told them to use Audacity to record their version and export to mp3 format.
I think that using VOTW is a brilliant way to communicate with different schools and learn about different countries in relation to your own. I was aprehensive at the start, as I thought it would be more hassle than it is worth. I can now see the benefits and would consider doing this when I have my own class.
Monday, 24 January 2011
Animation
Today I created a short animation with one other member of my class. We had previously decided on our cross curricular topic of healthy living. We knew we would be creating a movie on healthy eating later in the elective so, decided to use exercise as our focus for the animation. We wanted to keep it simple as we had less than three hours to create the story, character, to film, edit, add sound and text and upload to YouTube. We decided to use the character of a bear and make an exercise video. Before the class I was a little apprehensive as I had attempted an animation in B.Ed1 which had been unsuccessful. I think this was down to time restrictions and then in our one last push to finish we ended up losing some of our scenes. This time, however, everything worked out well. I was conscious of the time so stayed focused and kept it simple. We used Digital Blue to create our movie. The equipment is easy to use and I would feel confident using it with a class. We quickly remembered the basics to filming and worked through the different stages of our exercise video. We wanted to use a specific song for the animation which we found on YouTube. We then used Fetch to convert the track into MP3 file format. We tried to add our track to Digital Blue but were unable to do so and had to move over to Windows Movie Maker. Although this was slightly irritating at the time I am pleased now as I can use both programmes. We added our track finding the section we wanted to use and fading the music in/out to sound more professional. Finally we added text and uploaded our animation onto YouTube. It was a proud moment.
The task was supposed to be collaborative where we would write the script then pass it onto the next group, who would create the characters and so on until the story came back to the original group to film. I think this is a good idea and would definitely use it with a class, but am glad we did not have to do that today. I do not think we had enough time to do this all in one session and would not have had the opportunity to get to know the programmes. If I were to use this with a class I would split it up into different lessons, so the story boarding would be one, designing the characters would be the next...
All in all I really enjoyed today and am looking forward to using my new found skills in my teaching practice.
See animation below.
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