Category: Creativity

Nutshell: Prezi’s New App for Visual Storytelling

NutshellPrezi introduces a new way to share life’s little moments, in a nutshell.

Combining the simplicity of photographs, the compelling nature of video, and the fun of animated graphics, Nutshell uses Prezi’s new storymapping technology to create short, shareable cinematic narratives that can be shared easily and instantly.

Besides creating fun social media updates, Nutshell opens the door for all sorts of unique messaging opportunities when videos feel like too much of a production and plain photos just are not adequate for capturing life’s moments.

3 Easy Steps

  1. Snap three pictures.
  2. Add captions.
  3. Choose graphics and let Nutshell turn it all into a shareable cinematic story.

Features

  • Library of free animated graphics that you can use to create short cinematic stories
  • Instant sharing to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
  • Send nutshells directly to friends via email, text messages, and WhatsApp
  • Full camera support for iOS 8.0 and above
  • Much more

Educational Connections

  • Provides students with a creative alternative for submitting reflections, journals, etc.
  • Share engaging news and announcements with students and parents.
  • Integrate with standards focused on communication: personal expression, propaganda techniques, etc.
  • Enables creative ways for students to share their interpretations of poems, stories, books, plays, and other works of art.
  • Empower students to collect evidence of their thinking during a lab or group activity.
  • The finished product can serve as an artifact of learning, potentially making thinking visible in your classroom.

There are many other educational connections. Please share yours in the comments to this post.

Developing Young Authors with Storybird #aaim14

StorybirdI’m enjoying being in Ft. Smith, Arkansas for the 2014 Arkansas Association of Instructional Media Conference. Below are my slides from the workshop that I facilitated yesterday. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively. The slides also include a link to a special download containing information for using Storybird in preparation for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment.

Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas and at all grade levels. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.

Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.

Making: It’s More than Just Working with One’s Hands

Maker Education“That time in the shop saved my life. Putting aside the anxiety and worry for an hour or two, while I worked on a project or took a class at TechShop, could always turn my mood around, or at minimum kept me distracted enough to do something productive. The patience of the teachers and the encouragement of others around the shop was my lifeline. Eventually, that became the new normal. It still is. Just keep going: moving forward, working on the next thing, and helping as many other people as possible.”

From The Audacity of Making by David Lang (@davidlang)

Image Source: chicago.tinkeringschool.com

hgsepzfol #hgsepzfol

Developing Young Authors #MECA14

StorybirdStorybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas and at all grade levels. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.

Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.

Below are my slides from the workshop that I’ve taught a couple of times this week at the Mississippi Educational Communications Conference (MECA) in Jackson, MS. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.

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Sounds Good to Me: Learning and Digital Audio

Yesterday, at the Mississippi Educational Computing Association Conference, I had the opportunity to share ideas for integrating digital audio with teaching and learning. One of my doctoral students, Fair Josey, collaborated with me on this workshop. I’m sharing the workshop information and resources here in response to inquiries I received last night via Twitter and Facebook. I hope that you find this useful and invite you to share your ideas for using digital audio in the classroom and at home.

Workshop Description

Enable students to make their thinking visible through the use of digital audio. Learn how recorded tutorials and messages, storycasts, book trailers, audio chatting and commenting, teacher recorded feedback, and more can enable students to engage with course content inside and outside the classroom and better equip parents to help with homework. Several freely available websites and apps will be demonstrated. Strategies for designing lessons and practical tips for implementation will be shared. Connections to special education, foreign language, and ELL classrooms will also be made.

You can view the workshop slides – which include video tutorials, links to examples of student projects, and more – by clicking on the image below. All the workshop materials and resources are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.

Learning with Digital Audio

Art Teacher Honored for Fostering Thinking and Creativity

Amy Lange“Amy Lange was named the 2012-2013 Shelby County Schools High School Teacher of the Year. This Millington Central High art teacher inspires her students to be successful in art, as well as their core academic classes” (Source).

I’m enjoying working with Amy as her doctoral advisor and I’m impressed with her abilities to foster creativity. Amy is currently involved in a deep investigation of some of the work from Project Zero at Harvard University (Making Thinking Visible, Artful Thinking, Teaching for Understanding, and the Future of Learning). She and I are beginning to collaborate on the development of teaching materials, professional development workshops, and other resources centered around these ideas. Watch for more about this in the future.

For now, enjoy this video that highlights some of the outstanding work that Amy does to promote thinking, learning, and creativity.

Event Tags: #pzc2013 #hgsepzfol

Series: UM IDT Student Spotlight

13 Yr. Old CEO of Innovative Educational Gaming Company

Elementeo(Repost from 06/11/2007)

Event Tags: FOL2013, hgsepzfol

Anshul Samar is the CEO of Elementeo, a startup company seeking to combine fun and learning. This article provides an overview of the company’s goals, video of Anshul’s CEO speech, and a description of the company’s first game which teaches chemistry through a role-playing board game.

This is interesting to me on many different levels. Watching the video of Anshul’s CEO speech gives me the impression that this may have actually been a class project. Regardless, couldn’t a student activity like this be the jumping-off point for effectively integrating technology with teaching and learning?

  1. How many content areas/topics/objectives/skills would this kind of activity include? I’ve noticed 1) math, business and economics, 2) science/chemistry, 3) art and graphic design, 4) language arts, 5) perhaps copyright and patents, 6) ……???
  2. If this was a class project, do you think that the teacher could have ever imagined that this would be the result?
  3. Elementeo is seeking to put the fun back into learning. Has education taken the fun out of learning? It seems that these students think so. What does that tell those of us that are teachers?
  4. If this is not a class project and Anshul and his friends did this of their own initiative then perhaps we, as teachers, should reconsider what it is that we have our students doing. I suggest that a traditional lesson/unit on entrepreneurship would likely not teach students nearly as much about the world of business (and the other aforementioned content areas) as this activity likely did.
  5. While students weren’t necessarily playing games but rather developing games, this could be an example of effectively bringing gaming into the classroom and integrating it with the curriculum.
  6. Let’s begin to consider all the elements of effective teaching and learning (according to today’s research) that might possibly be identified in a class project like this. Such an activity might include 1) problem solving, 2) discovery learning, 3) legitimate peripheral participation and/or authentic/situated/contextual teaching and learning, 4) communities of practice, 5) collaboration, 6) project management (for those instructional designers among us), 7) ……???

I think this could be a rich discussion. Please, please chime in.

3D Printing Pen that Lets you Draw Sculptures off the Page

3Doodler02“It’s a pen that can draw in the air! 3Doodler is the 3D printing pen you can hold in your hand. Lift your imagination off the page!” (Source)

“Forget those pesky 3D printers that require software and the knowledge of 3D modeling and behold the 3Doodler, the world’s first pen that draws in three dimensions in real time. Imagine holding a pen and waving it through the air, only the line your pen creates stays frozen, suspended and permanent in 3D space” (Source).

Learn more about 3Doodler.

Hat tip to one of my co-authors, Sharon Smaldino, for bringing this to my attention.

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