Click here to view class presentation cube in new window.

Click here to view tutorial cube in new window.

RVLIO can help organize the types of text written in CCSS, while also being produced and published online. Embed it on a blog to get further discussion beyond the four walls of the classroom.

What Common Core Anchor Standards do you see presentations and technology addressing?

• ELA Literacy
• ELA Writing
• ELA Speaking and Listening

Here is one of the tutorial slides used in the cubes:

Images and Creative Commons: Have students create their own images, take their own photos, or find photos that have Creative Commons Licenses and have them properly cite the photo either on the same page as the picture or at the end.

Final thoughts:

What I don’t want to happen is for teachers to take boring reports and think they are making them exciting by kids creating them in a cool tool like RVLIO. The task itself needs to be an exciting task, worth their time, and the products need to be worthy of sharing outside the classroom because the students’ ideas are of value to others.

How do you create worthy tasks for students?

What take aways do you have from this class?

What questions do you still have?

Click here to view this cube.

For our class today, these are some of our links and our agenda:

1. Jigsaw Common Core Standards — Find standards that digital storytelling will address:

• Speaking and Listening

• Writing

2. Defining what good digital storytelling is

3. Explore prompts / Create own prompts

4. Storyboarding and more explanation

5. Production — Choose the technology

• Strengths?
• Easy to use on netbook? Chromebook?
• Drawback?

• Kerpoof
• Little Bird Tales
• Animoto for Education — (See tutorial of  Animoto for Education if needed)
• VoiceThread — (See tutorial of VoiceThread if needed)
• Xtranormal
• Voki for Education
• Blabberize
• Storyjumper
• Picture Trail
• Capzules
• Zimmertwins
• Smories – We are looking for a “sign up” link for this site
• Slidestory
• ACMI Storyboard Generator
• Biteslide
• Soo Meta
• Pixorial for Educators
• Storybird
• Smilebox ***For teacher computers only because of download

Tips:

• Remember to look at the terms of agreement and think about how to use it in your class.
• It’s wise to see other content the students can get to from the site to make sure it is appropriate.

6. Images and music

• Images and Creative Commons: Have students create their own images, take their own photos, or find photos that have Creative Commons Licensesand have them properly cite the photo either on the same page as the picture or at the end.

• Background music and Creative Commons: If there is not music to choose from on the app or site, then find music that is legal to use in your video. I select music from the list suggested by Creative Commons. However, background music is not a necessity, especially if it’s new to the class. Melody Loops was suggested by Cheri Springer, and Dano Songs by Gina Fraher.

• Production: Before production, I treat this part of the process much like I would the rough draft of a writing assignment with editing and revising. Here’s where the mini-lessons come in about voice, word choice, etc. I like to conference with my students to make sure they are ready for production, then I allow them to start once they’ve gathered all of the photos and music (optional).

7. Publish, share, reflect, and celebrate

What are your take-aways?

What questions do you still have?

Step 1: Create a new document.

Step 2: Go to File –> New –> From Template

Step 3: Search for your document.

Step 4: Select the document you want to use, then click Use this Template.

Step 5: Rename the document to make it your own.

Did this process work for you?

Do you have any questions or tips to share?

The teachers wrote down on three different sticky notes their top three choices of what they wanted to learn about. Here were their top choices:

• Singapore Math
• Blogging
• AR Alternatives (independent reading, motivation, accountability, etc)
• Alternative Assessments / Portfolios
• Meaningful Grouping / DI
• PBL and cross-curricular units
• Close Reading
• Make and Take / Center activities

There was no designated facilitator, no handouts like a formal professional development, no presenter “feeding” information to the teachers. Instead, they learned together about the topic.

It was very successful based on the feedback. Some suggestions for their future Ed Camps were to have some guiding questions for each session and some possible links to help get them started if needed.

 Have you ever experienced an Ed Camp? If so, what was it like?

 What would you choose for your PD?

Compfight is a Flickr search tool for Creative Commons and public domain images.

Here’s how to use it:

The image you chose and the attribution is placed in your post:

Photo Credit: Theophilos Papadopoulos via Compfight

So easy!

Were you successful with using Compfight to place images in your post?

Step 1: Copy the Embed Code.

Step 2: I remember wishing there was a sign saying, “Insert HERE” to guide where to paste the HTML code — and that’s when this idea came to mind. Type in all capitals the word HERE in the exact place you want to place the item you are embedding.

Step 3: Click the HTML button on your website or blog to go to the HTML editing screen.

If you are in SchoolWorld, look for it in the bottom left corner. In Edublogs, look at the upper right corner of the editing menu.

Don’t worry if your words looks different, that’s the HTML code. Just look for your HERE that you typed. Highlight the word HERE, then paste the HTML text over that word.

Step 4: Go back to the Design or Visual editing screen you were previously on by clicking the button.

You may not be able to see what you embedded from this screen until you publish it, but it should be embedded now.

Were you successful with embedding the HTML?

Do you have any questions about embedding?

This post is written for our AJUSD staff. Please refer to the Edublogs Teacher Challenge for expanded explanations, discussions, and details.

Why blogging?

Some reasons and benefits of educational blogging are:

• Sharing learning with others, including parents/guardians and families.
• Writing for an authentic audience.
• Motivation that occurs when others respond to the post and comments.
• It addresses Common Core Writing Standard #6: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others. Note, the Kindergarten Common Core Writing Standard #6 states, “With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.” — Blogging is a fabulous way to address this standard.

 Tagxedo – Tag Cloud with Styles

Examples of Class Blogs

This list was adapted from Sue Waters’ list to include some AJUSD blogs as examples. When there wasn’t an example at that grade level, I used the one she suggested.

1. Kindergarten Duckling – Kindergarten
2. Mrs K’s Class - Grade 1
3. Mrs. Rivera’s Class – Grade 2
4. Fraher’s Class and Friends - Grade 3
5. Mrs. Hamman’s Class – Grade 3
6. Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom – Grade 3
7. Mrs. Goucher’s Class – Grade 4
8. 4KM and 4KJ @ Leopold Primary School - Grade 4
9. Mrs. Bliss’ Dragon’s Den - Grade 5
10. Mr. Avery’s Classroom Blog – Grade 6 (More math geared)
11. Mr. Miller’s Classroom Blog - Grade 6 (More Social Studies geared)
12. Huzzah – Grade 6/7
13. Krebs’ Class Blogs - Grade 7/8 (More Language Arts geared)
14. Mrs. Ligon’s Science Blog – Grade 7/8
15. The Edublogger class blog list - includes Maths, Science, English, History, LOTE, EFL /ESL, Library, School news blogs and more!

Sign Up for Your Class Blog

1. Place a new ticket under the category Edublogs.
2. Once the account is created, an email will be sent to you with a temporary password that you can change. Your URL will be http://blogs.goaj.org/(your AJUSD user name). The Blog Title will also be your username until you change it.
3. Once your blog is created, go to your URL, and the login will be at the top

Customize Your Username 

Your username is the same as the district’s username. This cannot be changed. However, you can change your display name. For example, my district username is twatanab, however, I could change my display name to Mrs. Watanabe.

It’s important to change your username to something students and your audience will connect with, such as your name.

For our Prospector University Class, you’ll need to customize your name.

Changing Your Password

You can change your password at any time by going to Your Profile page, found in the Users menu.

Customize Your Blog Theme

This is how you customize the look of your blog.

• Changing your site title and tagline
• Changing your header text and background color
• Uploading your own custom image header or using a default header
• Uploading your own background

For our Prospector University Class, you’ll need to customize your blog.

Setting Up Pages

This section is about setting up pages, and the pages you should have.

• Why you need an About page
• Examples of Class blog ‘About’ pages
• Create your About page
  1. Introduction to the Visual Editor
• Why have blogging rules and guidelines
• Examples of Class blog ‘Blogging Guidelines’
• Create your Blogging Guidelines page
• Setting up the links to your pages

For our Prospector University Class, you’ll need to have an About page and Guidelines page.

Next Steps

• Activity 3: Writing your first posts – What you need to know
• Activity 4: Writing comments – What you need to know
• Activity 5: Working with Widgets – What you need to know
• Activity 6: Helping parents and students connect with your class blog
• Activity 7: Fair use, copyright, and intro to using images
• Activity 8: Cool tools for enhancing your blog posts
• Activity 9: Connecting with other classes

For our Prospector University Class, you or one of your students will need to write your first post.

Final Thoughts

If you are reading this post as part of your Prospector University Class, please comment below by answering some of the target questions, and share your link with us so we can visit you.

How did setting up your blog go? How do you feel about it?

How do you plan on using your blog with your class?

Do you have any questions?

Leave a comment below with a link to your blog so we can visit you.

Sequencing or Deleting Pages

First, launch the Page Sorter.

• The Page Sorter window will appear, displaying the current pages created.
• From here, it is easy to reorder the sequence of pages in the workspace lesson by dragging and dropping the page in the desired location in the Page Sorter window.
• To delete a page, click on the page to highlight it, then click on the Trash can in the Page Sorter window.

• You can duplicate a page in the Page Sorter window. Just click on the Page Sorter menu icon, then select Duplicate Page.

Saving Pages

• Click on the Mobi Workspace Menu.
• Select File, then Save As.
  Click here to view video tutorial about saving and sharing workspaces.

Click here to view other tips and tutorials for the Mobi.

How does this help with creating lessons?

Do you have any Mobi Lessons to share with us? If so, please share here.

What questions do you still have?

Introduction to Mobi

On our desktop, we investigated the features of the menu. (Note, the image below is interactive, just roll the cursor over the image to see more links).

We also customized our Main Toolbar by going to the preferences, and clicking on the Customize Toolbar tab. Here are a few of our favorites that we added to our toolbars by dragging it and dropping it in the Main Toolbar area:

Here are three tutorial videos to review our introductory training:

• Mobi Interwrite Workspace Tutorial Video
• Quick Guide (for the first time you use it)
• Getting Started Guide (same as the one that came with the Mobi)

Gallery Training:

Final thoughts:

The Mobi gives the students an opportunity to share their learning by showing their work, sharing their learning with evidence from what’s on the screen and visually representing their thoughts. The Mobi also allows the teacher the mobility around the class and the ability to  bring the device to the students.

How do you see the Mobi used to help student learning?

What new tips or features did you learn about the Mobi?

What questions do you still have about the Mobi?

What issues would you like help troubleshooting?