Global Citizen Prezis

In English, we are exploring the topic of what it means to be a global citizen.  Students used a website called Prezi to create dynamic presentations concerning this topic.  Here are some exemplars:

Global Citizen on Prezi

Global Citizen on Prezi

Goanimate

Students in my English class used www.goanimate.com to create responses to a short story they read that dealt with the topic of slavery and freedom.  Here are some of the productions:

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Two Web 2.0 Collections

Here are two websites that have collections of interesting websites that could be useful to teachers.

Curriculum21

Webtools4u2use

Glencoe Literature Study Guides

Glencoe has a number of study guides for novels available online.

Linoit Poetry

The English students composed poems of different varieties.  They used a website called Picfont to put their poems onto photographs.  Then, they used a website called Linoit to display their creations.

Here are a couple examples.

Poetry page one.

Poetry page two.

Musical Animations

I wanted my students to do an activity that would get them to think about the way that music is used to enhance and complement the mood in movies.

I tasked them to create animated sketches that would include a variety of different moods.  The site we used was GoAnimate.  The great thing about GoAnimate is that some of the animation templates include music that is already categorized into various moods.

GoAnimate is fun and relatively easy to use.  The students all enjoyed using this site to create their productions.  Here are a few exemplars to enjoy:

 

Glencoe

Here is a great resource that I found out about from Larry Ferlazzo.

It is a website hosted by the textbook company Glencoe.  The content is intended to be used in conjunction with their textbooks.  However, it is not necessary to possess the textbooks in order to take advantage of some of their online resources.

Glencoe’s landing page looks like this:

As you can see, in the corner is a box you can use to access their online resources.

There are many subjects available.  The subject that interested me was Social Studies.  Selecting Social Studies takes you to this page:

I have opened up the “World History” tab.  You can see that there are resources for three text books available within World History.

Selecting “Journey Across Time” brings you to this page:

You can see that there are many resources available.  Some are better than others.  I would recommend the “In-Motion Animations,” and the “Student Web Activities.”  However, perhaps the best resource on this site is the “Spotlight Videos.”

There is a large library of videos available.  Here is a screen shot showing just some of them.

Hip Hop Songs

Students in my music class composed hip hop songs.

They used Myna to create the background music and beats. Myna is a free online audio editor. It includes a library with many audio samples that can be stitched together.

This student used 19 different audio clips in her production.

Then, the students used Ujam to record their voices. They used headphones to listen to their music on Myna while they sang.

Myna can be used for voice recording, but I prefer Ujam because it has many neat effects that can be utilized to improve and distort the sound of your voice. The only drawback is that Ujam has a one minute time limit. If necessary, this problem can be solved by having students record two different sessions and then using Myna to paste them together afterwards.

Here is one student`s voice, as recorded on Ujam, before he added his music.

Song by Kangirsuk

Having recorded their voices, the students download the MP3, and then uploaded it to Myna. They then did any necessary adjustments, such as changing the tempo, to match the vocals to the music.

Here is the song created by one student who actually did not know what to write about, so she read from the novel, `The Giver.`

Hip hop song by Kangirsuk