I spent a good deal of the summer holidays in the South Island. It seems from the people that I have spoken to on my return, that it was a good thing that I did! The weather up here in Auckland was less than summery and was very wet. In the South Island we baked, it was great.
I have created a time lapse video from the trip and you can see it below. Why share a ‘holiday’ video on an education blog? There are free apps for the iPad that enable time lapse projects to happen in class. A web cam and Sam Animation will turn any computer into a time lapse camera. The point being that from recording how the earth rotates to watching flowers bloom, takes time. Time lapse allows students to see what might be an abstract concept happen because this slow process can be sped up through time lapse. Sure there are plenty of time lapse videos for them to look at on the Internet, however if they were to create them for themselves, they would have a greater understanding of the time frames involved. The advent of digital cameras, web cams, free apps and software now make this once technical skill a simple reality in the classroom.
On a different note, each scene in the following video represents an hour of time, where I could do nothing but relax, let the camera do its stuff and marvel at the beauty around me.
I have spent the day with the students of Upper Harbour Primary. We have been looking at using tools such as the iPad to capture change over time using apps such as those highlighted here. They will be using their iPad or iPod’s next year to capture this kind of change over time. The web cams in their computers can also be used to record time lapse videos really easily by downloading and installing the free version of Sam Animation from Tufts University.
The following site has some good examples of time lapse in the wild, to get students thinking about what they could make the focus of their time lapse work. However, speeding up the world of the slow in the class or the school environment is made easy with the techniques I demonstrated to the students today. Once I got home I set up my camera and took the following study of the clouds.
I came across a post on the Upside Down Education blog today that discusses the effect that furniture can have upon elearning pedagogy in a classroom http://upsidedown.edublogs.org/2011/11/06/learning-spaces/ In my Building a 5th Wall in Your Classroom I suggest how this can be done by simply moving furniture around. The presentation is below:
I was inspired to make this conclusion having seen the excellent presentation by David Jakes who describes how the layout of furniture in a classroom has a direct impact upon the learning that it can facilitate, it is well worth a look. http://www.slideshare.net/djakes/would-you-want-to-learn-here-3015221
Last year I started a collaborative animation project that was assigned a QR code from Talesmof Things. Now it is time to market this idea again. The post can be seen here and it would be great to see how we could develop the animation and eve see if we could create a storyboard to start with. All contributions accepted, so please get your students to have a go at this one. The original post is here: http://dakinane.com/blog/2010/10/25/qr-codes-and-collaboration-online/
I have long been a fan of time lapse photography and the addition of the time lapse app to my iPad has now enabled me to take simple time lapse footage. You can see the example taken from my office window below.
More importantly this app can be used in a classroom to enable students to demonstrate change over time, such as the effect that yeast has on dough as it proves or ice cubes melting etc.
However if you wish to see some truly beautiful time lapse photography, you should also look at the You Tube video below.
I discovered from one of my various feeds yesterday about the new ‘Helicopter View’ option in Google Maps. So I tweeted it out yesterday:
Today I have had a play with the feature, it is great especially when combined with Jing, so that you can capture the video of the virtual journey. I would have uploaded an exmple, but the screen shot will have to suffice, the journey I captured with Jing was 916mb in size… To activate the Helicopter view is very simple. All you have to do is to put in a start location and a destination point in the get directions option of Google Maps, once the route has been calculated, a small “3-D” graphic appears to the right of the first direction, simply click on that and the animation plays. Depending on your internet connection it may take some time for the information to load, but it is worth the wait.
This is a great feature from Google and I can see so many practical uses for it on websites, in the classroom etc.
My latest article for Interface Magazine has just been published. The online edition has been out for a couple of days, but the hard copy landed today. You can read the article here:
You can also collect some principals from my Twitter list.
The guys at Google Labs have just released this great tool to enable SWF files to be converted into HTML5 format, which means that flash videos can now be played on i-devices such as ipod touch, iphone and ipad. What is really cool however is that as part of the service a QR code is created so that these self same devices can scan the code and link to the resource to be viewed immediately as a test, the link only lasts 15 minutes however. Once you have ascertained that the conversion has worked, you can download the new HTML5 file and then upload it to your chosen site. This will prove to be invaluable in an e-learning situation. I am now going go away and devise some scenarios where this facility can be used efficiently.
Check out the QR code I have created, using the AddThis plug in for Firefox, above and play the SWF animation on your i-device courtesy of the HTML5 conversion.
I purchased an iPad last week and have spent the last week or so checking out it’s potential for learning.
There is no doubt that the app store has a plethora of tools that meet the enrichment layer of the e-learning strands. But I have been looking for tools of collaboration and publishing. I will be posting my reflections on this great content consumption tool over the next few weeks. What I am looking for is the other layers of e-learning and how this tool can facilitate this in the classroom. Watch this space.
What you should know is that this post has been written on the iPad via the Wordpress app… So easy content creation is an option…
Dragontape has been on my resources page for a while now, it is a great tool but convincing teachers to see its learning potential is sometimes hard. The devastating earthquake and resultant tsunami is a good case in point. Many students will arrive to school on monday morning wanting to talk about this event and dragontape allows teachers to collate, trim and publish video clips into one. Doing this enables teachers to focus on the information they need their students to focus on. It is also a tool that students can use equally well too.
The embedded video below was made in Dragontape from several video sources on Youtube.
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