Thursday, June 11, 2015

A few good programs...


A few programs I use or think might be useful:

ChatterPix is a program that is installed on the I-Pads in my classroom.  My kids enjoy using this program and we have used it for various assignments.  They did a shape hunt.  They took pictures of different objects in the room.  Then they made the objects talk.  They recorded themselves saying things like, “I am a door.  I am a rectangle.  I have 4 sides.  2 sides are long, 2 sides are short.  I also have 4 vertices.”  They also used this program when we were learning about Famous Americans.  They took pictures of the people we were studying and each student had to say one fact about that person.  We have a cord that allows up to hook the I-Pads to the Promethean boards.  They kids love watching the ChaterPix they make!

In the library, I think it would be fun to take pictures of the characters in books and have the characters tell about themselves.

Blabberize is another program that seems to work like ChatterPix.  There aren’t as many features but it can be used on the computers and the pictures and sounds can be embedded or shared, which is a nice feature for older students and teachers to use.

Although I don’t have experience with the program Audacity.  It seems like a great program to create a Podcast.  At our elementary school, the librarian is in charge of the morning announcements.  I think a Podcast would be a fun and different way to do morning announcements in the classroom.  I also think that it would be a great way for teachers to create digital study guides. 

6 comments:

  1. Chatterpix sounds great, I'm going to look into that. Wouldn't it be great to have an audio of the morning announcments for kids to listen to if they missed the information they needed? Do you have tips on using the mouth in blabberize?

    I was thinking of having a character from the books promote themselves, but can we use book covers? Not sure of the copyright there. My understanding, though I've never seen it written, is that things like book covers and movie posters are meant to be used. The creators want people to see them as much as possible.

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    1. My son showed me how to size the mouth correctly in Blabberize. Each of those dots melt into the circle you make, so it can get very small. You kind of have to play around with it and you'll get the hang of it.

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  2. I was thinking about book covers, especially with the website project coming up. perhaps a questions for Dr. Perry.

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  3. Educational Fair Use for some instances but do NOT use book covers from Amazon if you do not have their permission. Use from publisher's website or author's website.

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  4. I think your idea of using a podcast for a study guide is brilliant! I wish I had thought of that...

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    1. Thanks! Feel free to steal it. I don't think it would work in the school I teach at but I'm going to try to file it for later :)

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