Animoto?

In case you haven't seen the FLOOD of messages on the #sschat Twitter feed, NCSS (National Council of Social Studies) held their 2011 conference this weekend in Washington D.C. Among the many presenters were a number of the "heavy-twitters" from SSCHAT.

Ron Peck was kind enough to post a link to his presentation about Video in the Classroom. It gives a great overview of Common Craft video formats as well as Animoto. Ron also posted an amazing set of links that I spent hours pouring over. I knew nothing about either technology, so I decided to take a look.

Common Craft seems like an awesome style of video. Their bare-bones characters and 'animation' (which consists of literally dragging paper images on and off the screen) make the end product look very home-spun and simplistic, but powerful at the same time. The sample video, Electing a U.S. President (in Plain English), is a great example of Common Craft at its finest.

On the flip-side, there was also a link to a 'behind the scenes' video that shows one class' experience creating a Common Craft video. I almost passed this one by, but when I saw it was from Paul Bogush, I took note. (I'm a huge fan of Paul and his excellent blog). This video put Common Craft-ing in a different light for me. The planning, creation and execution of all those zillion little moves - all to tell a 2-3 minute story - seemed like a big hurdle for me and my students to leap.

Then, I started down the Animoto path. Now, this was something that seemed a bit more manageable for me in the classroom. Once I had an idea for what I wanted to capture (in this case, it was the recent flooding in Thailand), it turned out to be very simple. (To be honest - the hardest thing was settling on a soundtrack!)..

Anyway, after finding a few pictures and converting my moldy WMA file to MP3, this video took me all of 3 minutes to create:





I am going to ask around and get some feedback from teachers using Common Craft videos. (I'm not giving up yet!)... In the meantime, I'm going to start thinking about "Animoto-izing" a few future assessments.

Thanks for the creative shot in the arm, Ron!!

My attempts to use WallWisher...

Richard Byrne at (FreeTech4Teachers) recommended a webservice called WallWisher. It is a way to do online sticky notes.

I decided to try it out and "build" my first curriculum unit for Ancient Civilizations.

Once I got the hang of it, it was pretty easy to use. The 140-character limit was a bit tough to take, BUT it made me think about what I wanted to say (and not just blast out some long narrative.

Here's what I came up with: Unit 1 - Early Humans+Mesopotamia by Mr_Padula

Welcome to my blog!

This is my FIRST attempt at a blog, so I hope all the time and effort is worth it!

I hope to keep track of my journey toward integrating technology with History/Social Studies in my classroom. Currently, I teach grades 6, 7 and 8 at the Lyndon Pilot School in Boston, Massachusetts.

If you want basic teacher-ish information about History classes at the Lyndon School, you can visit my Wiki at lyndonhistory678.wikispaces.com