Dec 30, 2010
Christmas cards prepared by our students
We had a Christmas card competition in our school and I've made a presentation out of them, trying to include everything while putting more emphasis on some of works than others. That's why difference in the tempo with which the cards move. The preparation of the presentation turned out to be a tiring and somewhat boring task. Editing photographs with Picnic took several hours but putting them into the right order in the Movie Maker and synchronizing them with the music took me several days ( as each time I had to listen to the music from the very beginning in order to adjust the time of the slide presentation to certain music passages). In some places I just wasn't able to match them perfectly. There are probably easier ways for that - I should have read the instruction for producing videos first.
Dec 29, 2010
My attempts at Wordpress
I've started creating a blog for the school European Club using Wordpress. I have yet to come to the conclusion whether I like it more than Blogger or not. Wordpress offers you a greater number of themes to choose from, some of them are gorgeous but not all of them will suit the conception of your blog as the extent to which you can cusomize them is very limited (unless you aren't prepared to pay for that). You can't, for example, change the font. Different themes allow you to customize different features which making it even harder to come to the conclusion which one suits you most. I spent a couple of days looking through all the themes and trying to adjust them to my vision of the blog. Customizing here is easier.
Dec 16, 2010
Dec 12, 2010
Dec 2, 2010
Nov 30, 2010
me by Tatiana
me? by Tatiana: "Picassohead"
Looking for a drawing tool which could be easily used by kids in the lectures (for description of the appearance) I had a try at "Picassohead". I found it to offer very limited opportunities and to be rather
suitable for producing abstract drawings than 'realistic' pictures kids enjoy drawing.
Looking for a drawing tool which could be easily used by kids in the lectures (for description of the appearance) I had a try at "Picassohead". I found it to offer very limited opportunities and to be rather
suitable for producing abstract drawings than 'realistic' pictures kids enjoy drawing.
Nov 19, 2010
VoiceThread
VoiceThread
What is it?
VoiceThread is an online collaborative tool that handles images, documents and video and allows people to comment on the prepared with this tool presentations using voice, text, audio or video.
It supports PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and enables users to import photos from the web (eg., Flickr, Facebook ). Users can doodle while commenting, use multiple identities. Creators of Voicethreads can decide themselves which comments are shown through moderation options. It can be easily embedded into a webside and even into Moodle. It's secure- participants of a VoiceThread project are added by its creator, so only they can contribute to the work being done. Presentations can be shared with the whole world or just among the group members.
How to use in your projects?
-It can help participants of the international projects to get to know each other better as it enables them to combine photographs or other visuals with written or audio comments. Teachers start by introducing themselves and invite students to talk about their lives etc.
-It can be used for practicing pronunciation of words as well as vocabulary and structures that students need for their projects. In that case, teacher records the words/phrases and students listen and record these words as well. It can be also used for the preparation of an audio 'dictionary' with pictures.
-It can provide an introduction into the topic and encouragement for students to start their research
-Students can record their own voices when telling a story, collaboratively doing research or sharing their opinions about a certain issue. They may also comment on their colleagues' work or just leave messages for their partners living far away from them.
Pedagogical value
It's a multimedia tool that enables interaction between the student and the material, the student and his/ her projec partners as well as the student and the teacher. It's easy to operate, free of charge and its attractive, as it gives lots of options for its users. It enables those students who are shy to take a more active part in an oral tasks of the project.
What is it?
VoiceThread is an online collaborative tool that handles images, documents and video and allows people to comment on the prepared with this tool presentations using voice, text, audio or video.
It supports PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and enables users to import photos from the web (eg., Flickr, Facebook ). Users can doodle while commenting, use multiple identities. Creators of Voicethreads can decide themselves which comments are shown through moderation options. It can be easily embedded into a webside and even into Moodle. It's secure- participants of a VoiceThread project are added by its creator, so only they can contribute to the work being done. Presentations can be shared with the whole world or just among the group members.
How to use in your projects?
-It can help participants of the international projects to get to know each other better as it enables them to combine photographs or other visuals with written or audio comments. Teachers start by introducing themselves and invite students to talk about their lives etc.
-It can be used for practicing pronunciation of words as well as vocabulary and structures that students need for their projects. In that case, teacher records the words/phrases and students listen and record these words as well. It can be also used for the preparation of an audio 'dictionary' with pictures.
-It can provide an introduction into the topic and encouragement for students to start their research
-Students can record their own voices when telling a story, collaboratively doing research or sharing their opinions about a certain issue. They may also comment on their colleagues' work or just leave messages for their partners living far away from them.
Pedagogical value
It's a multimedia tool that enables interaction between the student and the material, the student and his/ her projec partners as well as the student and the teacher. It's easy to operate, free of charge and its attractive, as it gives lots of options for its users. It enables those students who are shy to take a more active part in an oral tasks of the project.
Nov 4, 2010
Collaboration activity
Hello my dear golden-brown group!
I've set up a wiki to carry out our collaborative task in a more convenient way and am inviting you to collaborate there
I've set up a wiki to carry out our collaborative task in a more convenient way and am inviting you to collaborate there
Nov 2, 2010
eTwinning Star presentation
It turned out that I had not been able to put the presentation on the blog because of the problems with the Internet Connection - it was so slow that I had not able to see the embed code of the presentation. So, here it is now.
Star project
View more presentations from Tatiana.
eTwinning Star project promo presentation
To give you an idea what our project is about, I've created a short presentation about it. You can viw it here
Oct 31, 2010
My reflections on the Planning Stage activities
Planning the project with the use of Google Docs hasn't turned out to be a fun rewarding experience I hoped it would be. First of all, there were problems of technical nature. My group members did not reply to my invitations to collaborate on the Google Docs and I was afraid that they were not able to get to the planning form, and went on creating new documets and sending invitations to my group members for hours. I also hoped planning to involve direct and enthusiastic exchange of opinions, but our schedules were different and there was not much of lively communication among us. I'm thinking, setting out some tasks for each of us to do daily and deciding on the time when all of us could come and chat about our work could have been a solution. And of course, this could have been achieved by setting the Google Docs Calendar, but I had started working on it and gave it up as something quite useless. I should have known better.
Not everything was bad, though. We managed to brainstorm ideas for the project and each of us contributed what she could to the development of the project plan. My ideas, as always, turned out to be too complicated - I was trying to figure out exactly how the project would be going. So, it probably needs some simplification, but nobody so far has suggested which parts of it should be got rid of. Still, we don't have to simplify it. I believe, it may be possible for students to carry out this project - all depends on their language level and enthusiasm.
Not everything was bad, though. We managed to brainstorm ideas for the project and each of us contributed what she could to the development of the project plan. My ideas, as always, turned out to be too complicated - I was trying to figure out exactly how the project would be going. So, it probably needs some simplification, but nobody so far has suggested which parts of it should be got rid of. Still, we don't have to simplify it. I believe, it may be possible for students to carry out this project - all depends on their language level and enthusiasm.
Oct 29, 2010
Oct 27, 2010
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