sabato 31 ottobre 2015

Free Tools in education

Free Tools for  educators

Last Saturday was a great one. Thanks to SimpleK12   http://www.simplek12.com/ I had the chance to see some webminars dealing with Free Tools on line, it was a  day for educators and all the webminars were free.  I must confess that the experience online made me think about the best ways for working in a digitalized classroom and this was great.
SimpleK12 offers  free webminars online and also webminars for  people who belong to SimpleK12, in some cases you have to pay to have access to some materials online(registered users).

If you want to learn more about what is offered  just follow this link  http://www.simplek12.com/upcoming-webinars/

This is my collection with  some information about  some great  tools which I think we should all be able to use : I have already used some of them but  for many I must admit I have been thinking about but I have been working in a learning   environment where most of the students do not have a  good internet access point . My great hope is to be able to work online from home and also in collaborative projects from home and at school.  The padlet will be updated anytime I find interesting tools which seem to be interesting.






What skills for the future ?

Almost in the same week I saw a webminar online and it was  about the future and what our  students should learn  and what skills they need : the references were based on a report which was presented on line:  DRIVING THE SKILLS AGENDA from the Economist . Our students need to learn how to work in a different way and collaborate, use webtools and have  21st century skills.


http://www.economistinsights.com/analysis/driving-skills-agenda


This is the reason why I feel that we should all change our way of working and our lessons.


To be continued...........................................

sabato 10 ottobre 2015

DIGITAL STORYTELLING LEARNING ON LINE WITH COURSERA


                 DIGITAL STORYTELLING  
         WITH  COURSERA

After 5 weeks I finished my  MOOC course  about  DIGITAL STORYTELLING( DS) with COURSERA see   COURSERA MOOC COURSE
To begin with  it was an interesting experience and I could learn a lot about DS, the new tools which we can use  to create videos, how to write a script and how to  choose pictures and music. We learned from video tutorials and we  tried to work by following the tips of the professors who were a good guide for us by focussing on how to plan a story, create a story board and how to edit a video.

I was not so successful,but I could enter a new world: DS can be a challenge, but  it can help us develop new activities and  provide  help in  writing stories with our students.

These are some great videos which were shared by the  students in our course, they used different video editors but they were successful and I was pleased to see such good  videos: these are just some which I was able to see


  
Lilac Love from ellen feeley on Vimeo.




I would like to underline that we worked on peer assessment and self-assessment and the choice of the topic and the tools made the difference.  I did not  make a great video and I am going to learn more about  WEVIDEO  because I could not  finish my work.  One problem was the length of the video  and I did not finish editing the video. I used another tool but again it was a problem. I will therefore  try to see why I could not save the final video. I used screencast o'matic but the final output of my video was really low quality.  I got  28/36 marks but they told me that I should improve the quality of the photos and  of  course  use the video makers which they had suggested.

Anna  Laghigna made a great  video: an interesting video which shows how well she can work with modern web 2.0 tools



Finally some  links for further learning and  studying and  develop  great  videos  when teaching:


http://www.shellyterrell.com/digitalstorytelling.html                                                                      
                                                                 
In my website you can find more information about  my experience online    and my research about  DS                                                                                                                                                          
                                  
https://sites.google.com/site/thenewworldoflearning/digital-storytelling


In addition I am sharing this interesting  LIVEBINDER :
Click here to open this binder in a new window.




I am going to work to learn how to make  better videos and I hope that I will finally become good at making  them.

Enjoy working online and editing videos!