Mary+Nunnery's+Cool+Tools+Review+and+Application+Plan

Cool Tools Review

This online digital storytelling program allows students to use pre-selected photos to create a visual multimedia documentary presentation about a particular topic. This program is accessible to students in grades 2 and up. Teachers can pre-select photos of relevance from secure and appropriate sources and save them to folders specific to the project the students are assigned. Students to choose the pictures that they want for their product when completing their presentations. Students can customize their presentation by choosing the order they want their photos to appear, the length each photo is shown, and by adding their own narration with text and audio to the presentation.
 * Primary Access**: [|www.primaryaccess.org]

The feature of this program I like the best is the allowance of the teacher to pre-select photos for the students to use. This feature allows the students to focus more on the content of their presentation instead of spending the majority of their energy locating and choosing the appropriate photos.

I enjoyed Meghan Manfra's presentation on this tool. She addressed the grade levels it would most effectively be used for in instruction and showed through the trainer version of the program how easy it was to use. I appreciated the topic of the trainer presentation she chose "Child Labor in America". The photos she chose from the Library of Congress were very powerful and moving for the topic. It was amazing to see how through the use of the same selected photos we were able to each create a wide variety of presentations on the same topic with varied perspectives and opinions.

Fizz is a protected online storage site for teachers and students to store their educational video productions. As an alternative to YouTube, Fizz allows students and teachers to post their videos in a safe and secure location without the worry of seeing video that is inappropriate. Anyone can access Fizz to watch the videos that have been uploaded, but in order to post a video to the site, invdividual schools have to apply for their own secure storage location. This storage location is created for a fee.
 * Fizz**: [|www.onfizz.org]

Lodge Mcammon was the presenter of this cool tool session and he was stellar in his presentation. He really opened my eyes to the unlimited possibilities video production has in today's educational world. Lodge showed how easy it is through the use of a flip camera for student's to learn by recording each other sharing and demonstrating their knowledge, as well as recording and sharing the world around them.

Second Life is an online virtual world where one can go to visit and learn from others around the world. Each person in second life creates their own identity through an avatar. The avatar can visit different islands throughout the second life world that different people have created for varying purposes. Some islands are strictly social, while others including BookHenge were created for videoconferencing, lecturing, and more educational purposes. During the cool tool session, the presenter showed the possibilites of book study and guest lectures through the use of second life. There are two versions of Second Life, one meant only for adults, and a separate version called Teen Life that is more appropriate for teenagers. Through the use of Teen Life the presenter showed an example of a book club through the Eva Perry Library in Apex, in which the students were able to virtually meet with an author they had been studying to talk and discuss her literary style and other topics.
 * Second Life**: [|www.secondlife.com]

As an elementary school teacher, this program is not age appropriate for my students, however I can see the benefits and possibilities I as an educator could get out of it through becoming a member. Being able to attend lectures, or collaborate with other teachers from around the world in a second life meeting, without the cost of traveling to see them is one of those great benefits.

The one downside I see and heard discussed during the training session was the difficulty level of use for the program. I am not a member myself, yet, but it seemed that there was a learning curve that had to be acheived, mainly dealing with manipulating and moving your avatar, before you could get much benefit out of using the program. It is not a program designed in such a way that you feel you are immediately in and "running".

** Digital Video as Process and Product **

In this session Dr. Carol Pope showed digital video in a different light than the usuals creation of a product. She explained how the process of creating a digital video product is just as powerful if not more powerful for learning than the end product itself. Dr. Pope showed examples of some digital video products her students had completed. She explained that the process her students went through to create the product they did was very much like learning to write and then writing to learn. The process students are required to go through in creating digital video involves exploring, conceptualizing, discovering, questioning, defining, and refining. This process is synonymous with the process we intend our students to learn and use when writing.

The one example I found the most powerful and useful in showing how digital video is more than just producing a visual product, was the [|music videos] her students created in response to a book study they had completed on the book "The Outsiders". Students were required to create a music video showing their reactions and understanding of the book. Their songs and videos had to include the literary language of the book, reference to characters and their traits, main events and artifacts present in those events throughout the story. Through this digital video project students learned about the novel on a level that would never have been acheived with just simply reading and discussing the book. They had to look at the book from another vantage point and interpret the text to create a video in a way that would show their viewers their feelings, opinions, and interpretations of the book.

I loved the literary example that she shared and am excited to try this type of project with my students.


 * Cool Tools Lesson Application**

Grade Level: Second Grade Content Area: Social Studies Length of Unit: 3 weeks Cool Tool: Primary Access, VoiceThread

4.01 Analyze the effects of change in communities and predict future changes. 4.02 Analyze environmental issues, past and present, and determine their impact on different cultures. 4.03 Describe human movement in the establishment of settlement patterns such as rural, urban, and suburban.
 * NC Standard Course Of Study Objectives**

During this social studies unit students will learn about land and communities from the past and compare them to how our land and communities currently are today. They will take the information and knowledge they have learned and apply that to make predictions about what they think land and communities will be like in the future.

Day One and Two: Native America - 1500's - [|Visual Images], Day Three and Four: Colonial America - 1600's [|Video Clips] Day Five: Industrial America - 1700 and 1800 [|Video Clip], [|Video Clip], [|Video Clip]
 * Week One**: Students will learn about American communities of the past. Students will learn about land development, transportation, money, and jobs specific to each community. Video Clips, artifacts (real and visual), as well as historical stories will be shared with the class each day to teach them about each time period in history.

Day One: America - 1950's - [|Video clip], [|Video Clip], V[|ideo clip], Day Two: America - 1970's Day Three: America - 1980's Day Four: America - 2000's Day Five: America - The future (Have students predict what they think America will be like the year they graduate highschool example: 2020).
 * Week Two**: Students will learn about American communities of the present. Students will learn about land development, transportation, money, and jobs specific to each community.


 * Week Three**: Students will take the knowledge they have gained over the past two weeks and create a digital image documentary about America's History: Past, Present, and Future.

Day One: Students will look at images pre-selected by the teacher from various time periods we have discussed. Students will name the time period they think they are from and discuss the images significance to the period of time in history. Day One: Students will complete a timeline of America's History beginning in 1500 and ending in the year 2020. Students will choose events and aspects of history they feel are important to the time period on the timeline. Students can do this on paper or online by using the program [|TimeToast] to create their timeline. Day Three, Four, and Five: Students will use the programs [|Primary Access] and [|VoiceThread] to complete a digital documentary of American History. The purpose and main focus of each documentary will be to show how our communities of today compare to the communities of the past. Based on what they have learned about the progression of history, students will also include information on what they think a community of the future will be like.

//**Student Directions for creation of American History documentary**//: Using the programs [|Primary Access] and [|VoiceThread] you are going to create a digitial documentary of American History. You will choose images from a folder of images that has been pre-selected for you and combine those images, along with text and narration, to present a digital documentary of American History past, present, and future. In your digital timeline, you will need to include images from the time periods we have discussed in class and include text and or narration explaining what was happening during that period of time in history. As you are documenting your timeline of history, you will need to make comparisons about how each chosen time period was the same or different. You can compare and contrast different aspects including the land, culture, and life in a paritcular community.

At the end of the unit, students will have a digital sharing time in which they are paired with other students in small groups to share their documentaries with their peers.