Technology @ Hebron

In grade 6/7 Science class students have been creating Mineral presentations, limited to 7 slides and some basic information about their chosen mineral. Before students started their research and creating their slides, we looked at some examples of good and bad slide design:

We also discussed other important aspects such as planning and practicing your presentation, and how to present to a group using slides:

Students then planned out their presentations using a Google Drawing (with box shapes for each slide), started researching the information they needed, recording their citations and finally began creating their slideshows in either Google Slides, PowerPoint or Keynote.

Below you can see some screenshots of student work as well as some of the students giving their presentations in class:

And here is an excellent example of everything we discussed with students about slide design and layout, made for this project in Google Slides:

In Spanish Flex class students have been working through a range of technology projects on their MLTI MacBooks. They have been using Word, Pages, Google Drawings and PowerPoint to create a number of different document types. All these projects will be based around a Spanish language festival allocated to each student.

To start the year off and provide each student a platform to showcase and reflect upon their work, we spent the first two lessons setting up individual blogs on Blogger, including template and layout design and creating two introductory posts. And as the trimester has progressed they have added reflective posts after each project was completed, including screenshots of their work, to create an online portfolio of their work.

Links to their blogs are listed below and here are a few screenshots of their designs and posts:

http://21bonisaflex.blogspot.com
http://21costac.blogspot.com/
http://21younkcflex.blogspot.com/
http://21dockbflex.blogspot.com/
http://21newelloflex.blogspot.com/
http://21bussieremflex.blogspot.com/
http://hockeygirls14.blogspot.com/
http://22godomskydflex.blogspot.com/
http://22baskinm.blogspot.com/
http://21prattn.blogspot.com/
http://21proctorkflex.blogspot.com/
http://21swanbeckt.blogspot.com/
http://22frumientoeflex.blogspot.com/
http://22newelleflex.blogspot.com/
http://21allensflex.blogspot.com
http://21vsteele.blogspot.com/

During the Freshmen Skills class this week students were introduced to note-taking on the iPad, with most of the time spent looking at the Notability app. The students were shown a TED talk on YouTube and for 5 minutes they had to take notes by typing into a Notability note, for 5 minutes they had to use the pen tools and for 5 minutes they had to use a physical pen and paper.

Their paper notes where imported into Notability using the iPad’s camera (and annotated and highlighted added on top). We then compared and contrasted these different ways of taking notes, as well as discussing where and when each approach could be used.

Next, we looked at some of the other objects and documents you can import into Notability, such as web clips for saving and annotating web pages and using the Open in.. shortcut to import PDFs from my Hebron. We also connected our Google Drive accounts within Notability to make it fast and easy to import saved documents.

Finally, to wrap up the workshop, we watched through this video on visual note-taking to see another approach that could be used, taking advantage of all the tools that Notability offers:

Here are a few examples of what can be created using these techniques:

To kick-off both the start of school and our iPad 1:1 program, on opening day one of the student activities was a scavenger hunt, with various stations setup around campus. As well as figuring out the locations, students had to use the Camera and iMovie apps on their iPads to film their journey and turn it into a movie trailer for Hebron Academy. The final projects were then shared via Google Drive.

Below are a few screen grabs for the trailers that were produced:

And here is a YouTube playlist of the best four films created:

Seniors in Elements of College-Level Literature and Composition are tasked with writing a project proposal and researching it using films, video games, books, or music albums. The proposal, once approved, contains what their topic is, what their materials will be, and an overarching research question they will consider as they delve into the topic.

The seniors were then filmed presenting on their topic. I took their films and uploaded them to YouTube where I used annotations to provide feedback on their performance. I’ve included a few examples with brief descriptions.

Andrew Kluge – The Trade of the Century

Andrew discussed the trade of Wayne Gretzky to the LA Kings from the Edmonton Oilers and how it changed the long term course of hockey in North America. It’s a great example of effective visuals that power his presentation and support his argument.

http://youtu.be/7hVgYW1oDNM

Marisa Mao – Heroism in Eastern and Western Cultures

Marisa had one of the most conceptually great ideas of all the presentations, though her organization could have been stronger. She has an issue during the video with her not being able to talk over the clip she shows, which sadly hampers a strong concept and unique idea.

http://youtu.be/KM3Xkoehrps

Justin Lee – Moon and Oblivion

Justin showed off his film critic chops by comparing two very different films with similar themes. It’s a little too summary heavy to be great, but his visuals and ideas are still quite good.

http://youtu.be/7gsdLMHORHk

These are just a few ranges of examples that highlight the potential of this project as well as areas I need to more effectively teach and model presentation and research skills. Hopefully this is a useful and fun way to look at video and feedback with the iPad and YouTube.

Mr. Paul, English Literature Teacher