Rachel created the following VoiceThread today about Jan Brett‘s book, “The Gingerbread Baby,” during the 2009 KATE Conference in Wichita, Kansas. She recorded the first three pages’ comments during the actual conference, in front of about 150 English teachers! She recorded the fourth/last page right after the conference keynote was over. We planned this VoiceThread last night, with Rachel selecting the Creative Commons photos she wanted to use from Compfight. She also practiced what she would say with each photo. Great job Rachel!
Marco Torres took some AMAZING photos yesterday and today, when we were able to have dinner and hang out with some other great Maine educators. These are a few of my favorites, see more in his October 2009 Flickr set. My photos from today are also available in a Flickr set. 🙂
One of our favorite October traditions here in central Oklahoma is going to “Fright Night” at Frontier City, a theme park located on I-35 in Edmond. Generally we go later in the month, but this year we needed to go early because of travel schedules. As usual we had a great time, especially watching the show, “Dead Man’s Party.” In the third video below, you’ll see Sarah get up on stage and dance as the construction worker in the song “YMCA” by The Village People. We stayed and danced after the 2nd show– we actually saw it three times! This was a lot of fun! It’s also great that when you order your tickets to Frontier City online in October, they are half price. It’s still expensive at $17.50 each, but much less than “normal” price.
Each of these videos is 90 seconds long, which is the maximum length permitted by Flickr. Some of these songs and the acting in the performance was a little scary, but “a little scary” in moderation can be fun and even healthy. It’s definitely a lot of fun to have a chance to dance like this as a family. We don’t get these opportunities very often!
I shot these videos with my iPhone GS. I apologize for the distortion in the audio at some points. The sound was definitely VERY loud where we were sitting!
This visit to “Fright Night” marked the first time both Sarah and Rachel chose to ride a rollercoaster! We actually all rode the “Steel Lasso” three times, and it was a lot of fun. This was the photo of Rachel and Mom on their last ride. Rachel was pretty excited by the experience!
Wow. I had no idea Sarah’s YouTube-posted response to President Obama’s speech would receive such a response. In the 35 hours that have passed since we posted this online, it’s been viewed over 26,000 times, commented on over 350 times, rated over 600 times. And we’re not even 2 days out. Here are the current “honors” given by YouTube, it’s a top “education” category video in over 20 countries presently.
Thank GOODNESS I chose to moderate comments on this video. Good grief there are some heartless folks out there, commenting on YouTube. I’ve tried to filter just those comments which use profanity or are disparaging. I let some of the critical comments through too, if they weren’t too critical of Sarah directly. It’s good to see many people commenting in her defense in those cases.
At some point I may turn commenting off for this video, but for now we’ll let it ride. Is this a good idea to have put Sarah on YouTube? Bad things can certainly happen that are tied to the Internet, but overall I think predator danger fears are overblown.
Will Oprah see this video and want to interview Sarah? Will NewsOK? Will President Obama see it? Who knows… It is great so many people have watched it, and so many have left edifying and supportive comments. In moderating those comments, I’m affirmed more than ever that we are on a holy mission in education, and our work is SO important. In addition to helping people learn FACTS and IDEAS, we also must help others learn RESPECT and understanding. It’s really sad to see how cruel and mean some people can be. Thank goodness for comment moderation!
Alexander: Since you were not able to join Sarah and I to watch President Obama’s speech today “live,” I’d like you to watch the speech and then compose a response you can either post here on Learning Signs, record as a video on YouTube, or record as an audio message via AudioBoo. Let me know if you need help with either option 2 or 3. 🙂
Also check out Sarah’s response, and the comments others have left for her there. She may need to record a follow-up video to answer some of those questions!
Since Sarah’s 4th grade teacher chose NOT to show President Obama’s speech during class today, I (dad) pulled her out of class so we could watch it at home on CSPAN and participate in a live-blog “backchannel” with students in Littleton, Colorado. You can view the archive chat there on their classroom blog, “East Dragon Den.”
We need some other participants to make this project truly an “international cooking show” rather than the “Oklahoma cooking show!”
I recorded episode 1 with my Sony GSC-1 Netsharing Cam (flash-based camcorder) in multiple takes. Sarah edited that episode herself with iMovie ’09. We recorded this episode all in one take, using an iPhone 3GS, and uploaded it directly to YouTube with the free application PixelPipe. For some reason the iPhone’s built-in upload to YouTube feature kept timing out, but PixelPipe worked like a charm.
Alexander, Sarah and Rachel: I want you to each select at least three VoiceThreads from this classroom in Canada (page 1 and page 2) and leave thoughtful feedback / comments for the authors. I don’t want you to just say something like, “That was great.” Really listen to what they said in their presentation, and make some observations or suggestions based on your knowledge of the topic or what you think about after hearing their reports.
Let me know if you need help logging into our VoiceThread account. Alternatively, we can setup VoiceThread accounts for each of you to have independently. Let me know what you want to do.
Today was our last day before school begins for the 2009-2010 academic year here in central Oklahoma. Our family spent several hours visiting the Oklahoma City zoo this morning with friends, and we took turns recording a series of NINE AudioBoo messages as we toured around. This was my first time to visit the zoo with my iPhone GS, which has 3G network connectivity— SO much faster than EDGE for mobile uploads like this! If you’re an iPhone owner and/or user and are not yet familiar with AudioBoo, you should be! AudioBoo offers a wonderful free iPhone application which allows people to take photos, record audio, and publish both online from “the field.” Now if you don’t have an iPhone, you can still create phoneboo recordings! I have more options listed on my wiki page for Geo-Storychasing.
Click on the direct links below to see the accompanying photo and Google Map from our locations, where we recorded each short (less than 2 minute) Audioboo. Enjoy!
Today at the Apple Store in Oklahoma City, I’ve been playing with the new MacBook Pro laptops and using Google’s new “show options” features. Alexander asked me to Google his name, and in doing so we discovered Carolyn Y. Johnson’s March 7, 2007 article for The Boston Globe, “Space for everyone: Social networking websites, once purely teen territory, attract all ages.” Alexander doesn’t remember being quoted for this article, but I do! I gave the reporter his mother’s cell phone number so she could interview him about his use of websites like Club Lego and Imbee. Here’s the quotation of Alexander from the article:
Alexander Fryer is interested in more basic forms of play online. The 9-year-old from Edmond, Okla., began using social-networking websites two years ago, before he could even type, frequenting club.Lego.com to build his own virtual projects.
“It’s been exciting because you can see how many people have actually seen what I’ve done,” he said.
Today, the third grader uses ClubPenguin.com, where every child has his or her own penguin and igloo, and has tried out Imbee.com. His father, Wesley, said both sites offer a safe social-networking experience in contrast to the MySpace page, which has been criticized for allowing young people to post revealing personal details.
It’s important to monitor and manage our digital footprints online. I don’t think I ever read this article when it was originally published in 2007. It’s amazing to see how much Alexander has continued to learn online (as have his sisters) since that article was written two years ago!
Rachel has watched her brother (going into 6th grade) and sister (going into 4th grade) work on their assigned “math packets” from their respective schools this summer. Rachel is about to start kindergarten, and she’s been keen to “do some math” of her own. This is her most recent effort, which is pretty good for a five year old about to turn six next month, who’s just been in preK! She worked out all these problems and answers herself.
Number and letter reversals at her age are very common, so we’re not worried about this right now. It’s great to see her wanting to do math on her own initiative!
