Audio
I used the program Audacity to record my relaxation audio and used freesound.org to get my soothing background music. For this recording I wrote my own script. It was challenging to find the right words to use, words that you hope will put someone else in a state where they can calm and quiet their mind. I found some Tibetan Bowl music to accompany my words and to create a feeling of wellness and relaxation. The challenge with the music was to try and match it to my words and for it not be too overpowering. The reason why I chose to do a relaxation audio was because of the meditation component of my Yoga class. My students loved spending the last 10 minutes of class listening and relaxing to a recording from youtube. I thought it would be a challenge to make my own recording. I would also like to upload it onto youtube at some point (but I’m not sure how just yet). This seems like the story of my life for this course, figuring out how to use technology that I have never attempted before.
Graphic
I used PowerPoint to create my graphics. My goal was to create some visuals to put on the walls in my room when I teach the surface area unit. It helps if the students have a visual in the room that they can reference when they are struggling. In the past I would write steps on poster paper myself and post that in the room. Now that I’m becoming more proficient with making graphics, I can easily do them on the computer. I want to enlarge the graphics, print and laminate them before putting them on my wall. I did one graphic for finding surface area of a rectangular prism and one for finding surface area of a cylinder. The first two graphics go together and will make one poster, the same goes for the second two.
Video
For my video I used a site called Powtoons which provides animation software. I created an animated video to help in explaining the five parts of the Particle Model of Matter. The challenging part of this was the fact that I had no experience using this site. I watched a few youtube instructional videos and then through trial and error I managed to put together an educational video. The site itself was fairly user friendly, however I put in many long hours to get a video that lasts about 2 minutes. Overall it was a good experience, I could see myself using this site again or getting my students to make a video on this site.
https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/eBDnLocG5GW/untitled-2/
Steve,
I really like your audio recording. You did a great job of layering your voice over the background “music”. I also enjoy making posters for my class as I find that there are not many that are grade 9 appropriate to buy. My one suggestion would be that since you want students to be able to reference them from anywhere in the room maybe make the font of the calculations larger since you have white space available in the posters you created. I have looked at Powtoon a couple of times in this course and the reason I have stayed away from it is that I find the free membership limiting. When watching your video, however, I see that they do allow you to use the upper-end graphics, they just label them with PRO+. I like how you ended your video with what you will be covering in the next lesson, I find my higher end kids like when I do this. It’s been great working with you throughout the course Steve. Good luck with all the new tech you’ve discovered and hopefully we get a chance to work together again in the future.
Abbi