Month: January 2016

Technology for JTerm Project

Examples and short explanations on each of the tools you can use.

iMovie- the best way to learn how to use it is to play with it.  Here is a short tutorial.

You will likely make your This I Believe podcast and Interview movie on iMovie. A nice touch that iMovie as a podcast tool allows is that you can add pictures to your podcast. It would be a nice touch. Please save your finished iMovie to YouTube. You need not make it public, but you do need to make it shareable to anyone with the link.

If you prefer, you may use Garageband to record your podcast. If you’d like to play with sound and add voice effects – don’t go crazy – and instrumentation – again, don’t go crazy- to your podcast, Garageband is the way to go. Here is a video tutorial.

and here is a more detailed online tutorial. You should make sure to have Soundcloud. The video above assumes you have soundcloud to host your podcast.

Here are three tools you can use for the visual component of project 1:
1. ThinkLink is easy. The free version works just fine, though you can get  a membership if you really want to be fancy.  You can embed text, quizzes, and links on top of an iMovie that you send to YouTube. Then you can add to that video as I do here. Thinklink also let’s you add links to any picture. Perhaps you will take a picture that somehow captures what you believe. Then you can add all sort of links to it.

2. The phoetic app might be a cool app to use in conjunction with the first or third project. Phoetic lets you make a word cloud out of a picture and the words build the picture. It might make a great visual for This I Believe. You also could use this as your visual for the first project.
Here is one a student of mine made last year. The picture is the cover of Maniac Magee that is “phoeticized”.

3. Piktochart- This is an easy tool to use but it is not iPad friendly. If you are going to work on a computer and not an iPad at home, you can use this. Here is an example of a piktochart I made for this project.

 

Memory Palace

Recently I’ve spoken with other teachers and students on how to give presentations. I also have helped students with studying for tests. Presentations and test taking both ask for a lot of memory. Though I do believe schools overemphasize memory, there are times memory is important.

I’ve come across a concept that you may find useful in trying to remember things. It is called a memory palace. You pretty much visualize your house, or this school, or anything else that is very common to you, that you know in detail. Then attribute facts and data to items we come across while in that space.  Watch below for how it is done.