Sharing and Learning
This past week, I had the opportunity to work with teachers from every level. It was nice to see teachers of first graders in the room with high school teachers, where the common thread was using technology in the classroom.
One portion of the workshop was creating web-based, interactive puzzles and quizzes, using Hot Potatoes software. Some examples of the activities created are included here. From the examples, you can see that it is possible to insert pictures and graphics. This software is free and easy to use. Finished activities can be posted their products to the teacher website for student use. What a quick and easy way to make your webpage interactive, rather than static.
Multiple Choice Quiz | Crossword Puzzle | Matching | Christmas Activities
Another hot topic on our workshop day was Podcasting. A teacher from the intermediate school explained that a podcast is nothing more than a way to distribute your audio and/or video presentations. If you have a PowerPoint show or audio recording, then you are only one step away from a podcast. A great site to store, organize and share your podcasts is blip.tv. This site takes the hard part out of making a podcast - the generating of the .xml code is all done for you. You can make a link to this site from your webpage and students can access your multimedia presentations from here. Oh, and you do NOT need an iPod to be a part of podcasting. The ElemTech blip.tv site is brand new, but feel free to check it out.
One other session that was well attended was the one on unitedstreaming. Participants were shown some sample projects incorporating unitedstreaming video into Microsoft PhotoStory and PowerPoint. After some demonstrations, assistance was provided as the group went to work to create curricular projects for use with their students. One thing that was agreed on was that Discovery Education has added content to the video library in the past six months and the ability to download lesson plans for some of the videos was really useful.
It’s the perfect kind of day - one where the group can choose a topic that appeals to them and leave with a product that is ready to use.
Filed under: Learning From and
Love the idea of the Elem. tech site on blip.tv.
It’s pretty cool! Hope you are going to add more!
http://elemtech.blip.tv/
I agree that the day was fantastic. It is a shame that more time is not provided to educators for days like this.
For most of the day, I was in the Hot Potatoes room. It is neat to point out that Hot Potatoes activities can be linked to each other in a chain so that they can build on one another. Perhaps you will start with a matching activity, move into a crossword puzzle, and then finish with a multiple choice quiz. Since it uses HTML code, you can also insert all the tags and images you would use on a standard web page. Here is an example I found where they used a heart graphic above the hot potatoes activity to practice identifying the parts of the heart. Link: http://www.raritanval.edu/ResourcesFaculty/InstructionalResources/Heart1to5.htm