If you are a teacher that loves project-based teaching and connecting with classes around the world you'll know that Wikispaces is the perfect platform to use. But did you know this? Wikispaces has added an amazing new feature to their free education version platform called Projects. This new feature allows you to create a special place for your project within your classroom wiki. In other words, you don’t have to create a separate project wiki for your classroom projects.
Set up a project for your class within your own Wikispaces wiki
In your normal classroom wiki you can:
Set up a project or even a number of different projects
Assign students to teams if necessary (a team could have just one student)
Control editing and viewing privileges for each team’s space
Use templates created specifically for that project. A project template can be used as a starting point or home page.
Each team space will have their own copy of the page which means they can interact with it, instead of just viewing it. Templates can include text, graphics, multimedia, links and any number of embeddable resources. Imagine an interactive, multi-media project rubric students can use to document work and self-evaluate as they go!
Teams of students can easily create new pages within their team space that are automatically linked to their home page for easy navigation. Basically, as someone put it, “the Projects feature allows organizers to create a wiki within a wiki!”
I think this can best be explained by means of a Slideshare.
How to create a template using for a project using Wikispaces
We are going to take this one step further now to show how you can create a template page (as many as you like) and add it to each project. This could be the project instructions, the rubric or whatever you choose! Here is the Slideshare with all the details:
This is a guest post from Lisa Gair who is the technology teacher at the Rock Academy in Fish Hoek. She originally placed this post on her school blog: http://rockacademynews.blogspot.com/, and since Lisa is a keen SchoolNetter I asked her if I could use her post on the SchoolNet blog. Thank you Lisa!
With us making increasing use of technology for class related projects, we are encouraging children and parents to take their camera's on outings and to special school events, and then to email their photographs to school which can either be used for their work or for the Blog. However, when emailing high quality photographs of sometimes up to 4MB per photo, it can become a long and tedious event! Below is one way of reducing your photographs to send to school in an email format that is quick and easy.
Step 1:
Select the photo's you would like to email by holding down your CTRL key and selecting the photo's.
Click on : "File". Select "Send to". Select "Mail Recipient".
Step 2:
Click the Dropdown Arrow in the Dialogue Box that appears.
Select the recommended size.
Click on "Attach".
Step 3:
Your email window will automatically open with the selected photo's attached and ready to send.
There are many url shortening online programmes around, and I could never quite understand the need for them until I started sharing and networking! For example when using Twitter a long web address will use nearly all your 140 characters! The application I have tended to use is Bit.ly.com, so I thought I would do a quick share on how it all works. Below is a screenshot of the Bit.ly interface.
Whenever I start communicating with my PLN using Twitter, the first thing I do is open Bit.ly So let me explain how it all works.
1. Open https://bitly.com/ and join as a member. You don’t have to join, but if you do you’ll find a record of everything you have shortened! When Bit.ly starts you’ll get this empty blue box at the top. That s where you will paste your web addresses.
2. Copy the web address you wish to shorten and paste the long address into the blue piece. It will immediately shorten it to a new short address. From this...
3. ...to this! The new shortened address happens almost immediately! All you do now is copy it and use it!
So, to summarise. Join Bit.ly and it will keep a record of your shortened addresses for you. The shortened address is easier for people to click on and it works especially well with Twitter and Facebook where you have a restricted number of characters.
I have found that sometimes a YouTube video spreads over to the side bar in a blog, so if you occasionally have that problem and don't know what to do about it, please read on. I am going to explain how to change the width of the video so that it fits in to the body of the blog.
1. Open up the YouTube video that you wish to embed, and click on 'Share' and then 'Embed'
2. Copy the embed code but when you have put it into your blog post (in the HTML part), change the width of '560' to '420'. Don't change anything else.
3. You'll see that it now fits in perfectly. Save and publish your post.
I have recently been exploring several different ways of putting video on to a blog or wiki; and when a friend asked me for some ideas on how to do this I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to summarise what I have tried up to now and what I plan to try in the future and use it as a blog post! So here goes... 1. SHORT VIDEOS This is something I learned through someone else – isn’t it amazing how we learn from one another all the time! In Blogger and Edublogs you can easily add video if it is not too big in size. The problem comes in how your video camera saves files. The files (I think) need to be .wmv to be uploaded. This is where YouTube Downloader comes in handy. Use YouTube Downloader to convert files This is a free downloadable programme that can convert movies to different formats. You need to select the second option 'Convert video (previously downloaded) from file'. It works with any video. However Edublogs and Blogger show these videos differently as I will show you now. Showing videos in Edublogs and Blogger a) Edublogs: Last year the Grade 3s used Photostory 3 (with narration) to make videos about Fish Hoek. This is how Edublogs shows the video: Fish Hoek (Edublogs says about their video approach, "It doesn’t embed your file in an actual video or audio player in your post; it only inserts a link to the file. When readers click on the link it opens another page where the audio file is played or it downloads the video onto their computer"). b) Blogger: This is how Blogger shows the same video. It actually embeds the video. http://grade4fishhoekprimary.blogspot.com/2011/05/learning-about-fish-hoek.html I
I have to say that I really prefer the Blogger approach with ordinary video clips. Unfortunately Wikispaces only allows embedded video which is what I will discuss next. Short embedded videos using One True Media The video application I have tried to date is One True Media. A teacher from the USA visited us and the class spontaneously broke into song so I captured it on my camera and put it into OneTrueMedia
Another teacher I linked with in Canada, Mr Millward, did his class graduation using OneTrueMedia. As you can see the programme is very creative. http://millwardb.edublogs.org/2010/06/23/graduation/ Short videos using Animoto With Animoto you are only allowed short videos of 30 seconds free but there is an Animoto Educators account which I have applied for and received. This entitles me to myself and 50 of my students having the Plus account in which we can upload full length videos (maximum 200MB). Last year one of the Grade 5 classes participated in the ‘Monster project’ and many of the teachers around the world used Animoto to show everyone where they were at. Here is a sample from a Grade 2 class (Miss Hariju) in the USA:
2. SCHOOL TUBE VIDEOS I must say that I love School Tube and it is my first choice since it is all about school! I learned about it from another of my PLN friends from America, Bob Greenwood, with whom I was involved in a project. He teaches Grade 2 and he has his own channel on School Tube. He makes so many amazing videos. Take a look: http://www1.schooltube.com/Organization/OrganizationHome.aspx?oid=129695
So that is what I did. I applied to become a moderator on School Tube and I was given a school channel. Any movie uploaded there gives me an embedding code and I put the code in my blogs and in my wikis. Our 2011 Adobe Youth Voices project is uploaded there.
3. YOU TUBE VIDEOS I also like using YouTube and I have a channel there as well for all my school videos. Once you have posted a video it gives you a code which you can embed into any blog or wiki. This makes it very easy. Often with school videos I make them private so that they can only be seen by whoever has the YouTube address link. When we were on a video swap project with Denmark (Grade 6) we used YouTube’s private code for this. I sometimes think that parents will be happier with the use of School Tube because it is mainly for teachers. I believe there is now a YouTube ‘Teacher Tube’ channel which is an even better option. 4. FOR THE FUTURE I would like to try out video sites recommended in blogposts: a) Vimeo
My BIG question at the moment is - how do you compress large .avi files of say 1.8GB in order to upload them easily? (Later...okay, I have just found the answer to this. You put the whole .avi file into Windows Movie Maker and it reduces it amazingly with little loss of quality. It really works...yay!) 5. A GREAT PUBLICATION ON MAKING VIDEOS FROM RICHARD BYRNE I love Richard Byrne’s site called Free Technology for Teachers. One of the books he so freely shared is about making videos on the web. He allows others to embed his documents so I am going to embed the video book here.
I have been thinking recently of the different ways of putting video on to a blog or wiki; and when a friend asked me for some ideas on how to do this I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to summarise what I have tried up to now and what I plan to try in the future! So here goes...
SHORT VIDEOS
This is something I learned very recently through another friend – isn’t it amazing how we learn from one another all the time! In Blogger and Edublogs you can easily add video if it is not too big in size. The problem comes in how your video camera saves files. The files (I think) need to be .wmv to be uploaded. This is where YouTube Downloader comes in handy. This is a free downloadable programme that can convert movies to different formats. You need to select the second option 'Convert video (previously downloaded) from file'. It works with any video. However Edublogs and Blogger show these videos differently as I will show you now.
Last year the Grade 3s used Photostory 3 (with narration) to make videos about Fish Hoek. This is how Edublogs shows the video: Fish Hoek
(Edublogs says about their video approach, "It doesn’t embed your file in an actual video or audio player in your post; it only inserts a link to the file. When readers click on the link it opens another page where the audio file is played or it downloads the video onto their computer").
I have to say that I really prefer the Blogger approach with ordinary video clips. Unfortunately Wikispaces only allows embedded video which is what I will discuss next.
SHORT EMBEDDED VIDEOS USING ONE TRUE MEDIA
The one I have tried to date is One True Media. A teacher from the USA visited us and the class spontaneously broke into song so I captured it on my camera and put it into OneTrueMedia
SHORT VIDEOS USING ANIMOTO
With Animoto you are only allowed short videos of 30 seconds free but there is an Animoto Educators account which I have applied for and received. This entitles me to myself and 50 of my students having the Plus account in which we can upload full length videos (maximum 200MB).
Last year one of the Grade 5 classes participated in the ‘Monster project’ and many of the teachers around the world used Animoto to show everyone where they were at. Here is a sample from a Grade 2 class (Miss Hariju) in the USA:
SCHOOL TUBE
I must say that I love School Tube and it is my first choice since it is all about school! I learned about it from another of my PLN friends from America, Bob Greenwood, with whom I was involved in a project. He teaches Grade 2 and he has his own channel on School Tube. He makes so many videos. Take a look: http://www1.schooltube.com/Organization/OrganizationHome.aspx?oid=129695
So that is what I have done. I have applied recently to become a moderator on School Tube and I have my own school channel. I plan to upload everything there. It gives me an embedding code and I put the code in my blogs and in my wikis. Our latest Adobe Youth Voices project has been uploaded there only today after the group inserted royalty free music clips to give the movie more feeling. http://got.im/0JTE
I am running two 'creative writing and video-making' computer clubs at school, so I think I will be using this site a lot.
YOU TUBE
I also like using YouTube and I have a channel there as well for all my school videos. Once you have posted a video it gives you a code which you can embed into any blog or wiki. This makes it very easy. Often with school videos I make them private so that they can only be seen by whoever has the YouTube address link. We are on a video swap project with Denmark (Grade 6) and we use YouTube for this. I sometimes think that parents will be happier with the use of School Tube because it is mainly for teachers.
My BIG question at the moment is - how do you compress large .avi files of say 1.8GB in order to upload them easily? (Later...okay, I have just found the answer to this. You put the whole .avi file into Windows Movie Maker and it reduces it amazingly with little loss of quality. It really works...yay!)
