Here is another poem written by Philippa Werry. The photos were taken on one of our school camps. Every year I take the class somewhere. This time it was to the Abel Tasman National Park, We stay in tents at a camping ground and go out on the launch along the coastline and walk back through native bush. Class Blog about our camp Abel Tasman National Park The poem was read by Sam P and Tyler 648KB 52 seconds
'Write a Poem' was written by Desna Wallace in the Part 2 Number 2 2001 NZ School Journal. Multiple copies of school journals are a wonderful free resource given to all NZ primary schools to support the teaching of literacy. There are four general levels of journal published four times a year. I only have good things to say about these journals. Seeing advertising is now visible on Podomatic here is a link to a reading resource you can buy. Allanah's Book. I get a grand total of $1.32 per book s...
In celebratrion of the New Year Jordy, Jackson P, Braden and Nathan recorded this poem by New Zealand poet, Philippa Werry. They cleverly decided to add their own sound effects. The video was recorded by myself at the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar which was celebrated in Nelson, NZ in 2005. They had anchored a barge out in Nelson harbour which is overlooked by the Port Hills. Everyone got an excellent viewpoint and the fireworks looked spectacular reflected in the water. Well done...
On the last day of school for 2006 we recorded some of our favourite poems that we had learnt over the past year. Our plan is to publish a new poem each week over the holidays so you wouldn't forget about us. We know that a lot of people listen to our podcast in the northern hemisphere and your school only takes a short break over Christmas. We go back to school in February- that is a long time to take a break. Check out our blog to keep in touch. 1.4MB 1 minute 18 seconds
Tonight was Appleby School's Year Six Leaver's Assembly. We sat in the evening under the canvas eaves of the ampitheatre to listen to Metamorphic, the school band, play a set. Then we had some interesting speeches and all the leaving children got an Appleby School leaver's badge. Chanelle stood and gave a lovely speech on behalf of the children, we sang a couple of Christmassy songs and then had a family supper before going home to bed. We only have one half day of school left before we break fo...
We have just returned from an outdoor education experience at Bridge Valley in the hills near Nelson. We had a wonderful recipe for success- warm weather, happy children, great parent support and a challenging range of facilities. This video gives you an idea of some of the highlights. 20 MB 2 minutes 39 seconds
One of the features of Appleby School is its wonderful yearly Pet Show Day. This year's one was really great with lots of entries in all the events. What a great day we had.
Through our podcasting we have found kindred spirits in linking with Cefn Fforest School in Wales. We have exchanged letters, emails, photos, blog posts, gifts and a very small geocaching bear which is travelling about in Nelson having a wonderful time. Look for photos on our Moturoa Blog of his travels. After a couple of practice runs, Cefn Fforest School teacher, Paul H and I arranged to record a Skype conversation this morning. Children in my class decided on a question they would like to ask...
I am trying to see what kind of podcast you can get just with Podomatic's recording. As I see it the downside will be that you only get one shot of making the recording. If you muck it up you can't edit it, add or delete. It all has to be done in one go. It is a really quick way of doing the business though if you know what you want to say. 117KB 29 seconds
I am exploring all of the different ways I can think of to make a podcast or vodcast. For this one the basis was a Powerpoint presentation I had made some time ago for my class on composing photos using the rule of thirds. To turn the Powerpoint into a podcast I saved it as a movie then dragged that movie into iMovie to add the voice track. I had found another open-source music website and couldn't get the music track I wanted to download so played it through the laptop speakers and recorded it ...
This week was a very busy one for us at Appleby School. Our senior classes performed on stage with Suzanne Prentice who is a famous New Zealand entertainer. She has been awarded a Queen's Honour for her music services. The sound tracks on this podcast are of Moturoa class singing a couple of Suzanne's Christmas themed songs. We recorded this part back in the classroom. Our performance was 'wicked'. By Braden (Year Four) 1.6MB 3 minutes 7 seconds
Each year Pete leads a school band at Appleby School. The popularity of the band is evidenced by the growing number of instrumuments and children that are keen to have a go. Today they are getting ready to go on tour around some of the local schools. We were their practice audience. The band's name is Metamorphic. See how far they have come on their journey to musical stardom! Aren't they a talented group. 13MB 2 minutes 16 seconds
For some unknown reason some of our laptop animations in Kid Pix ceased to work. After a little web browsing I found a fix and a reason why! After updating Quicktime the newer version allows for Flash animations to be turned off or on. It defaults to off. You need to go to Quicktime and switch them back on again. This podcast will show you how to do that. Hope it will be useful.
I got the idea into my head about a week ago that I would like to be able to do a 'How To' podcast using moving graphics capture from my computer screen. I had seen a couple of other people do it and don't like to feel like I am missing out. LOL. Tonight, Greg, our ICTPD national facilitator, gave me a link to TILT TV for educators. This was 'just-in-time' learning. From TILT TV http://tilttv.blogspot.com/ I got a couple of links and I even fired up my PC to see if I could do a screen capture fr...
Cefn Fforest SChool in Wales has inspired us to have a go at a live vodcast with real people. We had a great opportunity to do this as the Year Fives were away today at the Inter-School Athletic Sports so we only had a small class of 18 Year Fours. We looked at some of the things we like at Appleby School. The vodcast was put together quickly with the minimum of editing but was lots of fun to have a go at! It is 10MB big so if you have a slow connection you may like to have a cuppa and do a coup...
By accident really we found that we could upgrade Kid Pix 3 to allow us to make a podcast using Kid Pix instead of our usual Garageband. Once we got the hang of it it was a piece of cake. You just make a picture that has sound recorded on to it and then make a slideshow of those files and then export the whole lot to Ipod. We can't edit our sound bytes like we can in Garageband but the end result is great with more of the children's creativity expressed in their own art work taken with a backgro...
Our podcast is getting itself noticed by other educational podcasters around the globe. It makes the world seem like a smaller, more connected place!
This week we changed the format of the podcast a little and had more of a conversation about Jane Evans' art. Jane is a famous Nelson artist who is known for using bold colours to express emotions and feelings in her art work. We had a class trip to the art gallery to learn about her art works last week. In this podcast Jackson C, Elliott and Jillian all make a contribution.
We have been learning about logos and how they help to sell a place or product. We are looking to changing our school logo in the future as well. We used very advanced technology this time because we interviewed Teri, a student from nearby Brightwater School, using Skype, the free internet telephone application. We never actually left our classroom. Teri explained about her school's logo very well. Thank you Teri. What a cool way to interview people who are in far off places. One more thing of n...
Nikki's New Entrant class have been learning about the Lynley Dodd's books. Lynley Dodd is a very well known New Zealand author. Slinky Malinki is a cheeky and friendly cat by day and master stealer by night. Each child drew a picture of Slinky Malinki in Kid Pix and then recorded a rich caption to go with it. Nikki put it all together into a slideshow & movie and I turned it into a podcast. Quite a collaborative effort. Well done Waimea class.
Pete's Year Five and Six class have been working extensively creating music with Garageband. William and Josh have created this jingle that will be played on a local radio station.
I have been asked to do a couple of PD sessions with local teachers on what a podcast is and how to create one. Some of the teachers at the meeting will not have Apple computers so this becomes a bit of a problem. So I set out to create a podcast on my PC. I used Audacity to record audio and then imported it in to Movie Maker for adding the graphics. I have republished this podcast at a higher bit rate (whatever that is) in order to hopefully have the thing play completley when it subscribes int...
Ruby and Lara did such a good job on this digital poetry production that they deserve a wider audience. Their voices have wonderful expression and are nice & clear. The music is from http://freeplaymusic.com/ and is copyright free. Freeplay music is an excellent resource of quality music. Mrs Pritchard does always come back for more. :-)
Jamie and Sam J worked on this podcast about Pete. All of the teachers were very co-operative in letting us come and photograph them while they were working. To change a Quicktime movie into one that is OK for podcasting you need to export it for IPod settings. One day I will get a video IPod nano!
Jessica and Emily collaborated to make this vidcast. Notice how they used the Ken Burns effect to make the photos appear as though they are moving. Ken Burns was given the job of making a movie about the American Civil War but he only had still photos to work with so he gradually zoomed in on them to make them look more interesting and to focus more on the subject. Mrs Pritchard was a great subject of the vidcast.
We have been doing some great digital poetry. Digital poetry is when you write a poem and then take photos to illustrate your poem. We would have like to make the photos move but some of the laptops were playing up. Gloria and Georgia did a great job of this poem about all the wonderful things Mrs Murphy does to help us around the school.
We had the pleasure of being able to interview Dean Schneider, a New Zealand nature photographer, who had come to visit with us for an afternoon to learn more about the sorts of things we are doing with computers in our classroom. We were surprised to learn that Dean had taken the photographs for the school reader 'Helping the Hoiho' which was Dillon's favourite when he was younger. I think all NZ children would recognise that book.
We have been busy exploring websites that support our learning. This website is a really good one with lots of maths resources that can be used in a variety of ways. Note that this is a vodcast in that it is more than a series of photos to illustrate the oral text. At one stage it zooms in in a similar way to the ULearn vodcast. Another thing to note is the soundtrack. I made this by using an audio hijacking programme to record the Firefox sounds I made by running the mouse over link boxes on th...
Instead of the usual story of, "What we did in the holidays," we made a podcast instead. A much more fun exercise in that everyone had a turn in front of the microphone. It took lots of practise to get our voices sounding nice and clear and with plenty of expression.
I am trying a new something that I have never tried before- making a video podcast about my trip to the Ulearn Conference in Christchurch in the September school holidays. It worked!!! I am so proud of myself!!!! It is 10MB so you lot on dial-up will be sad. But hey!! Pretty clever stuff- what do you think! Thanks for the encouraging comments from you good folks but I had delete them when I re-did the podcast with the copyright free music track. Jack Johnson had to go in order that I set a good ...
