Storytelling with Adobe Voice

I've just learned from the amazing blog http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ about an interesting IOS app called ADOBE VOICE which allows us to create video stories.

I just love storytelling and I was thinking of what story I would tell to try this out. The other day I was talking with a group of students of mine, some teenagers, about this love and hate chemistry. I was saying that sometimes feelings change and I mentioned that I knew that from experience.

I caught their attention straight away. They all wanted to know about my love/hate story. I've been postponing this storytelling, but they don't seem to forget that, LOL. This week, we've been focussing on narrative tenses, trying to improve our storytelling by using different verb tense combinations. This is a video grammar class about the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPQjKcnn2No

Well, back to my ADOBE VOICE trial. I thought to myself, why not use the opportunity to tell my story and see if they can notice the verb combinations we worked with last class?

Last class, apart from doing grammar exercises with Simple Past, Past Continuous, Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous, I asked students to choose a story to tell: a funny story, an accident, a surprising story or meeting a famous person. They had 4 minutes to choose one of the topics and write notes which would help them tell their true story to a classmate. After pairs of students told their stories, I asked them to send me their stories via Edmodo.

Next class, I'm going to start with notes I've written down about "Our love ? story" 

Can you guess my story? After students try to predict the story, I'll play the following video which I've created using ADOBE VOICE.

http://voice.adobe.com/v/Nfo2ryMskoi

 

A friend of mine, Lívia Fernandes and her very creative boyfriend, Matheus Pinheiro, created and Adobe video with their adaptation of the story "The secret of the king". I had to share it with you, it's really worth listening.

How can we use ADOBE VOICE?

This is a tutorial showing step by step how to create your own stories. The app is FREE and very intuitive.

How to create screencasts on the ipad

On my previous post, I talked about how I managed to create some tutorials on my iPad. I took screenshots of the app and with these images I created the tutorials. However, I wanted to see if it was possible to create screencasts using an iPad app.

After searching the web, I couldn't find any iPad app which could do that but came across some other alternatives such as mirroring your iPad to a laptop and then record your laptop screen with a screencast tool.

The post I found most useful was this one
http://www.labnol.org/software/record-screencasts-on-ipad-iphone/20958/

Today, I decided to try the last option described by Amit Agarwal.
1. I bought REFLECTOR Airplay Receiver ($12.99) and installed it to my Mac.
2. I activated the Airplay and Mirroring on my Ipad.
3. I used the Quicktime from Mac to record the screencast (other screencast tools I suggest are http://screencast-o-matic.com/ and http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html).

How to leave comments on a TUMBLR blog?

This question was sent to me by a friend, Camila Sousa Sakai, after I left a comment on her Tumblr. She's been sharing her first experience as a future mom via videos on a TUMBLR blog I've been following, http://cssakai.tumblr.com/

Camila is very creative and this is how she announced to her friends that they were pregnant.

Well, now back to the purpose of this post. 

How can we leave comments on a TUMBLR?

It seems simple if you think of Blogger and Wordpress blogs which by default have comments allowed. Now, with TUMBLR, you have to go to your Tumblr settings and allow comments from people YOU FOLLOW.

So, first you have to allow comments, and then you have to follow the blogs you want to send comments to.

This is a simple tutorial I created for her.

Camila, hope this is useful. And CONGRATULATIONS, once again.

How to embed PINTEREST boards to blog posts

Yes, you CAN EMBED a pinterest board.

In my previous post, I shared an idea I had from a fantastic PINTEREST BOARD called "History - tools of the trade". As you can see, I took a screenshot of the board, pasted it to the blog post and linked it to the pinterest board.

I DIDN'T KNOW YOU COULD EMBED IT!

What's the advantage of embedding applications?

Well, one, your reader does not have to leave your blog to explore what you're sharing. They can choose what to click from your blog.

So how can we do this?

I didn't find it so easy, but here is a tutorial I've created to help anyone wishing to do that.

The link to the WIDGET BUILDER page is http://business.pinterest.com/widget-builder/#do_embed_board .

This is a board I chose to embed in this post. It's A SUPER HERO board full of interesting ideas for class activities.

Jing Pro + making a wordcloud background transparent

Learned two things this morning and wanted to share with Life Feast readers.

First, I watched a video made by Carla Arena where first she uses her webcam video to introduce what she's going to show and then shares her desktop. I already had Jing installed in my laptop , however, not the Pro version which allows you to record your webcam video and also publish it easily in Youtube. http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

image originally from Shelly Terrell's blog

Second, while reading a post by Shelly Terrell , I learned you can add wordclouds to images and make the background transparent. Idecided to try it out. It took me some time to find the place where to click, for this reason I decided to make a tutorial showing it step by step. Another great tip she gave is to use ~ between words of the same sentence. Ex: in this image she has the question How~do~schools~involve~parents? http://www.wordle.net/ + Powerpoint



This is the tutorial I made.

SUPER EASY presentation tool - Zipcast

ZIPCAST is the easiest presentation tool I've seen so far. You don't need to learn about complicated controls, no download required, participants can join you with the click of a button. It takes no more than 60 seconds to set up a session!

Zipcast Activity Stream via kwout

This is a tutorial to show you how to create your first ZIPCAST

Zipcast Activity Stream via kwout

Google Wave TUTORIALS

A collection of TUTORIALS I've found in Youtube

Tutorials about Google Wave:

• How to send invites from Google Wave
• How to add youtube videos to a wave
• How to add contacts
• How to make folders
• How to search for waves
• How to create a saved search
• How to tag waves
  

Google wave extensions

This week I received a google wave invite from Andressa Cardoso, a talented colleague from Goiania, and have been playing with it ever since. After having watched many youtube videos and having read Orli's great posts about it (although she says she's not very enthusiastic about Googlewave) I feel less lost. :)


My objective now is to add fellow teachers as my contacts in order to test the tool and create meaningful waves.

This is an interesting document shared by Orli about Google wave extensions.


Google Wave Extension List -

These are the extensions I've tried:

Emoticony - you can use emoticons.

Tweety - lets you tweet from within a google wave.

Now, the best way , in my opinion, to tweet from a wave is to click on this symbol when starting a blip (a message), and insert this URL http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml

Thiago Eduardo tought me how to drag and drop files into a wave. For that you need to install the gear from http://gears.google.com/ .

I still feel like a fish out of water, but I'll persist.

A nice Google Wave tutorial to get started:



If you're an EFL teacher and would like to find other educators with whom you can wave or if you'd like a wave invite add your name to this wiki http://webheadswave.wikispaces.com/

ActivInspire - E-board training videos

Now that our school is about to update our e-boards with the ActivInspire software, I´ve produced a series of simple tutorials showing how to add captions, use the camera, hide texts and images and so on. If you use the software or plan to, feel free to watch the tutorials.

All tutorials can be watched at http://screenr.com/user/anamariacult or at my youtube channel. Remember to click HD, for better quality videos.

These are just two of them

Exploring Vocabulary Clouds

I had always liked word cloud generators for pre-reading tasks. With WORDSIFT you can get much more than that.

gwientjes in Youtube has made a great tutorial explaining how it works and giving wonderful ideas about how to use it in class.

UTIPU - screencasting

This was my second attempt to use UTIPU and fortunately a successful one. It wasn´t very easy though. After I downloaded the Tipcam from http://utipu.com I tried to record my screencast. Then, I clicked on the upload button, which I thought would save my video either to the utipu site or to youtube, but I got a message saying I was unable to do it. I clicked on the button play file and the video browsing window kept loading but nothing happened. So I thought my screencast hadn´t been recorded.

After watching a tutorial in utipu I saw that I could upload my video to the utipu site from my browser. So, I went to http://utipu.com , clicked on the UPLOAD button, selected the video file and MAGIC, my screencast was there. The feature I was really interested in was the possibility of making a screencast with good quality and being able to place it in my youtube account. So what I did was: I went to my youtube account, clicked on the UPLOAD button, selected the video file saved in my computer and voilá, after some hours, my screencast coulb be seen in YOUTUBE.

Suggestion: If you´re a beginner at screencasting, I guess the easiest site to use would be http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
But once you have the time, it´s worth giving UTIPU a try. At least for me, things didn´t work out so smoothly.

This is the tutorial I made using UTIPU to show my students how to make an online book.

Tutorial1: Promethean e-board

This is a tutorial I´ve made using DIMDIM to help teachers start using the Promethean e-board. We´re giving a face 2 face training but I wanted to have a tutorial so that teachers could refer to later on.



TUTORIAL 1 - Using basic tools
TUTORIAL 2 - How to make flipcharts

A blog to help teachers create their own blogs

I´d like to share a blog I created last year in order to train teachers at the school I work at. We had two workshops in which I introduced them to the basics of blogging. I created the blog in order to provide them with written instructions they could refer to later on and repeat the tasks we developed during the workshop.
http://bloggingteachers.blogspot.com/

I learned a lot about blogging reading tutorials, asking people questions and trying out stuff. I guess if you like reading and are really interested in trying out blogging, the BLOGGINGTEACHERS blog might be helpful. It gives detailed instructions on how to start a blog, how to add pictures, audio, chat boxes and other widgets.

Edmodo tutorial

I was meaning to make a tutorial in order to help colleagues to see how edmodo works and I tried utipu but unfortunately I couldn´t manage to see the video I had recorded. The feature from utipu which interested me is the possibility to easily send the video to youtube. ADVANTAGE: can send tutorial to youtube. DISADVANTAGE: have to download program to your computer and :( couldn´t see the video I recorded.

Then, I decided to try screencast-o-matic to make the tutorial.
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cjlqhcnBd