3 Ways to Use Technology To Introduce Ourselves

Since Glogster Edu has moved to a paid structure, I look at a view alternative ways to introduce ourselves with technology at the beginning of the year. This post covers the following projects:
1) Videoing "Two Truths and a Lie"
2) Using ThingLink for interactive photos
3) Using The New Hive as a substitute for Glogster EDU

1) At the start of the year this year, I designed a quick "Two Truths and a Lie" video project. The goal was two-fold: To have a fun introduction to each other, and for the new fourth graders to get their first introduction to some of the technology we were to use in the classroom.
I introduced the FLIP cameras to the children, but for the kids who wanted to reshoot and for the kids who were absent, we used Photobooth. This proved to be much easier since we didn't have to download the video clips from the camera. We then used iMovie HD to edit the clips, which I find is an easier introduction to video editing than iMovie '11.

It was a lot of fun watching the series of 30 second videos for each student, and then individually and as a class trying to figure out which statement was a lie before the answer was revealed.





2) This next school year, thanks to thinglink, I'm going to add a second component to our "get to know each other" project. And I think it will tie in nicely with our social studies unit on values as well. Thinglink lets anyone embed audio, video, text, or links directly in images and share them across the web. So we can extend our beginning art project, where we have one half of our face now, and draw what we might look like 15 years into the future. We can use thinglink to add our hobbies, interests, and favorite things.

3) The New Hive is a poor teacher's Glogster EDU. We can add a little more flavor to our photos by creating "expressions" that can imbed video, text, music and links, and be masters of our own designs as well.