WOW, was this VoiceThread FUN or what!? It was definitely a learning experience for me. Every ETEC class was extremely overwhelming for me. But after sitting down, taking a deep breath, and doing this all step by step, I came to the realization that I was being way too hard on myself and this was a lot easier than the crazy person in my head was telling me.
For my 3rd graders, I chose to introduce and teach my lesson on ECOSYSTEMS! The students loved this lesson and were very engaged throughout the whole lesson. It was difficult, though, as there were not enough computers in the classroom, but we made it work and it was a success. The first slide of this VoiceThread had a picture of an ecosystem. I had the students doodle/circle and explain to me what organisms they were circling and why they were combining the two. The second slide had another picture. The students were to think of facts over the food chain. The last slide was another picture and the students were to imagine hurricanes and decide/think of what would happen to that specific picture if a hurricane hit the area.
Here are a couple of the pictures that I used in my slides:
This was definitely a frustrating task for me, but I didn't let my frustration show because my students LOVED it.
Here are a couple of the pictures that I used in my slides:
QUESTIONS that I have:
- I have a blog that I am doing for another class and the site went down at one point and ALL of the blogs that everyone had posted VANISHED. It got me to thinking... is there anything that we can do with our VoiceThread's to ensure that nothing will be lost if the site is down? There sure is a lot of work that is put into these VoiceThreads.
- How would you suggest doing an informal assessment over Ecosystems?
- How often should a technology lesson like this be used in the classroom?
I loved your voice thread! I thought it was interesting and very informative! I think this is a very helpful tool and a creative way to teach the ecosystem.
ReplyDeleteRE: How to back up a VoiceThread if the site goes down. First of all, I have NEVER seen VoiceThread go down. I'm sure they have plenty of back-up servers working for them so we never see them go down.
ReplyDeleteAlso - by saving your PPT slides, movies, etc into one folder, you will always have a back up copy to quickly recreate if needed. Finally, you could export the VoiceThread, although it costs a few dollars per VoiceThread.