Ngaruawahia

Today We

Connecting and Collaborating in Google Slides - GAFE Welly

Sharky

Making animations in Google Slides 

Using Book Creator as an ePortfolio

I am currently supporting with a group of teachers to use Book Creator as an ePortfolio for junior school learners. The students have selected samples of work to share via their learning journals.

The goal is for students to be able to choose a variety of examples of work across the curriculum to show progress over time. They are able to select samples of writing, maths and other class learning.

They are able to use these to talk about their learning with their parents and whānau during their three-way student led conferences and discuss their progress with the family with a view to encouraging and setting scaffolds for further learning.

We chose Book Creator as a vehicle for this as it so easy for children to use but has many features that enable learners to enhance and record the experience.

Children took photos of their work, either from wall displays, from their paper books or screen grabs of their work.

They then wrote or narrated what they had inserted into Book Creator to further explain and expand on what they had wanted to share.

This process was simple enough for the junior school students to complete independently. They were then able to review what they had narrated so that they were able to ‘proof read’ and check that it was what they wanted to say. They were also able to get peer feedback from their classmates as they shared and showed what they had uploaded. Their classmates were also able to give them constructive feedback on their learning. There were opportunities to revise and further clarify meaning.

The books were then either exported as movies or to iBooks or to Google Drive for safe keeping.

The process of building a portfolio for juniors was made simple by the use of Book Creator.

For more ideas on using Book Creator in the classroom, visit the Redjumper Blog.

Using Speech Selection to support proof reading in Book Creator

I have been working in a class where the teacher was trialling some scaffolds to support some reluctant writers and she was looking for ways to engage them in the writing process, while at the same time improving their writing capabilities and proofreading skills.

We used a combination of apps to motivate the students to write. I suggested we use AR Dinopark for the students to take photos with a partner which they could then use for writing in Book Creator.

AR Dinopark is a free augmented reality app for making photos of dinosaurs with learners. You get the triceratops  free and buy other dinosaurs via in app purchases. The children really enjoyed framing and taking the photos of each other using AR Dinopark and we found this to be a great motivator for writing.

The students worked collaboratively to bring their photos into Book Creator. They needed to import their images, record their writing using the microphone and then add their text.

Once they had written their text, they used the Speak function from the Accessibility Menu to hear their writing read back to them.

Before using the Speak Function we needed to have enabled it by going to

• Settings
• General
• Accessibility
• Speech Turn on Speak Selection

There are options available under Voices, such as English UK, US or Australian.

You are also able to adjust the Speaking Rate. Slower is better for younger children.

Highlighting text as it is being read also supports struggling readers.

When hearing his writing in this example Jayden was very surprised that it did not sound as he had wanted it to be when he wrote it  As he didn’t have full stops the speech function read right through where the pauses should have been.

He decided his writing needed some punctuation and expression. He took the iPad to a quiet spot and replayed it as he edited his writing.

This experience of using Speak Selection helped support the learners in becoming independent writers with evolving skills in self review and self reflection. Book Creator made it easy for the students to build their stories.

For more ideas on using Book Creator in the classroom, visit the Red Jumper website.

Blogging

Presenting on Blogging as an ePortfolio today at Gisborne Girls' High School.

Modelling - adding video to a blog

You can add a you tube video to your blog post by using the URL and inserting a video.

To add other videos, you need the embed code, usually listed under Share. Copy the embed code and go to your post. Switch the editor to HTML and paste the code in to your post.

You can use this to embed any HTML code into a post. If you are embedding a Google Slides presentation, you may find the size displayed on your post may be too big. Go back to edit your post and read the HTML code, logo for Height and Width. You can resize the object, a good time to use your maths, proportion and ratios.