V is for Vocaroo!!

I just LOVE LOVE LOVE Vocaroo! It's an online voice recording service and it couldn't be any easier! Click to record and you are set! You can email your voice recording or even post it to your blog or classroom website. SO SIMPLE! I really need to use this more on my class blog...parents and students just love audio.

My idea next year is to use this for reading fluency. Having students record themselves and play it back...tracking progress, etc. I think it would also be great to have them email a message to mom or dad when they've done something really cool in class, met a goal, or just wanted to say hi. You can also record instructions for the class or sub if you are absent and send it via email. It literally take seconds to do.

The cool thing about vocaroo is that there isn't a limit on message length. It's worth it to create an account, because it will save your voice recordings for 5-6 months. If you don't create an account, your messages will be erased after a month or so.

So...here's my tiny little vocaroo just for you....so you can see what it looks like when you embed the audio.

Q&A and a Tutorial -- How to do a Green Screen in 7 Easy Steps

Thanks for the positive response on my 3 Rs video I did with my kiddos! I did have a few questions that I thought I'd answer. Hope they help!

What did you use for the green screen?


I just used a twin size blue sheet. Any green or blue sheet will work. Or fleece fabric. Or even bulletin board paper! Just make sure it's free of wrinkles and hanging nice a flat.

How did you get the scenes behind the kids in the video?

I went to Google images and searched for the scenes that I wanted (ex: disco floor, grocery store). Possibilities are endless!  

What program did you use?

I used iMovie09. There is a green screen feature on there that is super easy to use.


Helpful tips:

• It's best if the kids wear brightly colored shirts. White does not work. 
• Make sure your 'green screen' is ironed!
• It's best to shoot the kids from knee up -- it will look funny if you do a full body shot because your green screen won't be on the floor. 

 How to do the Green Screen Feature in iMovie (for Macs)

1. Upload your video into iMovie -- one that you have filmed in front of your green screen.

2. Find a background image that you like. I wanted to be on a beach. :) Go to Google Images and find the picture you want and drag to your desktop.

3. Drag the image from your desktop onto your iMovie Project Library. Now you want to highlight your video clip and see how long it is. Mine is 4.1 seconds. I want to make my pictures 4.1 seconds as well. Both your video and the image have to have the same time. So click on the gear on your image and click on clip adjustments. 

to 

4. Change the clip to how long your video is. Again, mine was 4.1 seconds, so I'm changing the duration of the image to 4.1 seconds.

5. Now select your entire video clip and drag onto your image. Here you can see I'm dragging my video onto my picture of the beach in the project library.

6. A box will immediately pop up. Scroll down and select Green Screen.

7. *Voila!* I'm on the beach!

I hope this helps! It really is easy once you figure out how to do it!

50 Followers! A "thank you" for you all!

Thank you so much for following along. Blogging has been a lot of fun!

We are getting ready to start our butterfly unit very soon! We get caterpillars from a local 4-H office -- lucky us! We get to observe the changes it makes to turn into a butterfly.

I've created an investigation booklet for our butterfly unit. Here are a couple of examples:

You guys, I tried to upload to google docs....but my fonts kept messing up! Any suggestions on how to keep the fonts in the original document?

If you would like this FREE resource for your unit, please comment with your email address and I'll get it to you.

Thanks again!!

Producing A Music Video -- Earth Day activity!

One of my favorite musicians of all time is Jack Johnson.

I have all of his songs on my iPod....and when I listen to them, I feel like I'm here:

They are easy, breezy, fun, laid back....perfect for spring and summer listening. Jack has a kid's CD called Jack Johnson and Friends: Sing a-longs from the movie Curious George. This album has a track called "The 3 Rs". A perfect selection for the upcoming Earth Day celebration!

So after we've talked about ways to "go green", and how to reduce, reuse and recycle....I play this song for them and we brainstorm how we are going to make our music video. Working in groups, students came up with actions, dance moves (they are pretty sweet!), and what things we wanted to teach the audience about going green. I filmed the students in front of a "green screen", did the magic on iMovie and *voila*!  We produced our very own music video! We played this for the whole school during lunch on Earth Day and all of the grades LOVED it!

You can view the video at my old website HERE. This site is no longer updated, I'm using my blog instead. My dog makes a special appearance at the end. :)

I will post details and step by step instructions of how I did the green screen effects another time.

What's a Voki??

Voki is one of my Top Ten Web tools for teachers.  With Voki, students can create personalized avatars that speak. They can type in text or they can actually record their own voice to their voki. It's super cool!

Here is a voki I made for fun. It took all of 10 minutes. Just click the play button!




I plan to use Voki with my first graders when we do our Poetry unit in April. Students will use voki to publish one poem. So their avatar will read their poem and we can publish it on our class blog. Cool, huh??

Other ways you can use voki with your kiddos: Retelling stories, character traits, fluency practice, publishing writing...lots of fun ways!

Blogger Tutorial 2: Want More Comments On Your Posts??

We all LOVE comments. They are like a virtual high five. How can you make it easier for your readers to leave comments??

Just say no to "word verification".  It will save your readers time and make commenting easier.

And as I was going through the steps this mornings, I *thought* I had this setting disabled, but I didn't. Oops!

So from your dashboard, click Settings. Then right underneath that, click Comments.

 

Scroll down and you'll see  "Show word verification for comments?" This is where you want to select "no".

 Some of you might still want the word verification, but from my experience, I don't get any spam anyway. I just want to make commenting easier for my readers. 

Happy Saturday!

Blogger Tutorial: How To Create Pages

There are certain things that you want your readers to find quickly without searching through pages and pages of blog entries. Creating pages can help with this. It's very simple, but can be an overlooked feature of blogger.  Most common pages are "About this blog" or "About me" and contact information.

Start by clicking "New Post". This will bring you to the posting section. Click on Edit Pages.

Then click on New Page.

This brings you to a screen that looks a lot like a regular new post. Type it just like you would a new post, but it will create a new tab at the top of your blog. This is nice because your readers will see it right away.

You can add up to 10 pages. This is what it will look like with the tabs.

Go ahead.....give it a try!

Ten Things I Have Learned From Teaching...

Rowdy In First Grade is having a link-up! Ten things you have learned from teaching.....and go!

1. Kids really DO say the darndest things!

2. Each one of my student's is someone's baby. They deserve all the love and respect in the world.

3. I can't imagine a job where I don't start over every August! Keeps things fresh and interesting.

4. We are teaching kids and preparing them for jobs that don't even exist yet.

5. Kids are DIGITAL learners....light and sound motivated! We must use this to our advantage!

6. A simple "I really like your shoes" can make a six-year-old's day.

7. Sometimes I just need to back off and let the kids take control of their learning. They are capable of so much!

8. Happiness = new Crayolas or Mr. Sketch markers.

9. I can never have enough books.

10. Coffee is my best friend. :)

Number Grid activity for Smart Board -- free download!

Hey all you SMART teachers! This is a notebook page that I have added to my daily calendar. It is great for practicing before/after numbers and +10 and -10 on a number grid. The kids just love this. You can download this for free HERE.

I have taken the plunge and now do all of my calendar on my SmartBoard!! What a difference! We can get through so much and it really keeps the kids interested. I'll post more on how I do my calendar another day.

My Top Ten Web 2.0 Sites for Teachers

1. Glogster -  Create digital posters with pictures, graphics, audio, and video.

2. Voicethread - a multimedia slideshow for presentations

3. Prezi - makes powerpoint look so amateur. This is an awesome presentation tool!

4. Vocaroo - Record your voice and send via email. Super easy to use, just click and talk! I like to use this for reading fluency.

5. Wordle - create a word cloud -- takes brainstorming to a new level. Fun too!

6. Animoto - create your own music video! I use this for all of my slideshows of pictures that I put on my blogs.

7. Google Earth - How do you teach your students map and globe skills? Put the old boring globe away and download Google Earth. It's free....and you can take your kids on 3D virtual fieldtrips anywhere in the world. This was also a great tool for our postcard exchange.

8. Podomatic -  Definitely the easiest way I've found to create a podcast straight to the web.

9. Voki - Create an avatar and use your voice to make it talk...super fun!

10. Blabberize - Make your images talk -- this is one the students will absolutely LOVE!

 I plan on doing more in depth posts on each of these sites in the future, so stay tuned!

Have you used any of these in your classroom? Which one are you most curious about?

Glog follow-up...

Just wanted to share some of my students Glogs! I had to work with half of my class at a time. The second group is just about done with theirs as well! Two 30 minute sessions and we were able to get them finished up! The kids just LOVED them. Later on this quarter, we'll incorporate glogs into a content area. This was mostly to show the students how they worked and for FUN! They did learn how to upload pictures, resize and rotate images, record audio, and manipulate text. Pretty cool stuff!!

You can check out the glogs HERE.

On the Hunt for a Pot o' Gold -- St. Patty's Day Scavenger Hunt!

 

We are so excited for St. Patrick's Day! I'm especially excited for all of the fun things I have in store for my firsties on Thursday. 

One of my favorite things to do on St. Patrick's Day is to hold a scavenger hunt. Students will come into the classroom and see this note from a sneaky little leprechaun. 

Attached to the letter, will be a riddle with a clue. Students will be on the hunt throughout our classroom and school for the pot of gold. I made the clues rhyme, I'm kinda proud of myself! 

Inside each library pocket will be a shamrock with a letter on it. 

There are 14 total clues. A couple of the pockets will have 2 letters inside. Once they reach the library, they will have all of the letters. The letters spell out the location where the pot of gold can be found!

And each student will be able to have a few of the chocolately gold coins! That's my kind of treasure!

What are some of your favorite St. Patrick's Day activities?

Who's feeling lucky??

ME ME ME!! :)

Good luck to you all with the awesome giveaways this week!

First up is Ms. Durning's blog with the $10.00 amazon.com gift card. Awesome!

Next up is What the Teacher Wants...with the...*Drumroll please* $100 gift card to the Container store!! WOWIE!

And Thirst for First is giving away a popcorn popper and Inspired Apple's Abby "Let's Get Poppin'" Unit. Awesome stuff!

Projects by Jen -- St. Patrick's Day Lucky Charms!

Have you heard of Projects by Jen? She hosts all kinds of online projects for teachers all over the world. I've participated in a couple of her projects and they are always worthwhile. The kids love it!

There is a project that you can register for RIGHT NOW! The St. Patrick's Day project is a fun one and many of you are probably already planning on doing this activity in your classroom. Take it one step further the Jen's online project! You can go to her site and register here!

Free Download -- Sh-Sh-Sh-Shamrock! Kooshball activity

This is a download for those of you with smartboard. I put this activity together for one of my centers. Students take turns tossing a beanbag and hitting shamrocks on the smartboard. They read the /sh/ word, then put a leprechaun over the shamrock that they selected. Great independent center! I have a TpT, but my smartboard lessons are free to download. I hope you can use this! You can also adapt it for other content areas as well.

Go here to download!

Let's Go Glogging!

WHAT'S A GLOG???

Pretty cool, huh? Glogster combines graphics, images, text, audio, and video to make a one-of-a-kind digital poster. I am using glogster with my firsties this week. They are making "all about me" glogs to share with their classmates. Normally this would make a great activity for the first few weeks of school, but when I introduce a new web 2.0 or technology to the class, we always start with something not related to a particular content area. Later, we can use glogster to do book reports, compare and contrast, present research reports....the possibilities are endless!

Today the students created their wall, uploaded their picture, and chose 5-6 graphics to include on their glog. They learned how to resize and rotate their graphics as well. Later this week, they will add audio and make it "pretty". Fun stuff!

Have you used glogster in  your classroom?

Welcome to my teacher blog!

I have gained so many wonderful, innovative ideas through many first grade teacher blogs. I hope to return the favor.