Comic Strips and Animation Tools

An extremely interesting session tonight, using comic making tools and animation making tools. The two I chose to go with comic master and goanimate. I chose to go with comic master as I believe the look of the final product is fantastic. A real good comic style finish which when printed looks great, it makes me think that if I got students to use this tool and share the links it would allow some fantastic comics to be printed and put around the classrooms. The unique feature of this tool is that even though the character choice is limited it is varied enough to allow a fun twist to be added. The content is adaptable and can be made relevant for the lesson. I chose to use this with my sport as a business unit, they are level 3 learners but will appreciate the creative elements to it and the group collaboration. The content is about a theoretical company designing a new product and the next steps after creating a concept. The learners will be encouraged to do the same with the ideas they have created.

The second tool was goanimate, a site that allows 42 seconds worth of animated clips to be shown. It is relatively straight forward to use and again can cover any range of content you wish. The boardroom background fitted in well with an example board meeting which will allow learners to begin to consider the style of meetings they will need to have and how to conduct these meetings. The fun voices adds a nice twist that students will find amusing without losing any of the relevance.

All in all thumbs up.

The links to these are below, have a look and a smile.


Business Meetings by gareth.jones on GoAnimate

Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.

Week 3

Week 3 involved the concepts of presentation tools and video tools. the concepts/technology looked at included prezi, screenr, animoto and sliderocket. All of these methods are adaptable for your own teaching, they start off a little fiddly but perserve and you will see the benefits.

Below is my first prezi, designed for a set of level 3 extended diploma in sport students who are studying a business pathway.

WebQuest

Time for you learners to take control and focus your attention on a specific task. A webquest is designed to allow you learners to focus on specific content for a lesson and could be creating documents, summising paragraphs, finidng images, quotes or videos and even capturing screenshots for your assessments.

Please follow the link for the webquest, open the link and complete the tasks. Once the tasks have been completed post them back onto this blog.

https://www.box.com/s/qujq7qgwvi3g1o3ib1fd


Happy Questing!!!!

QR Code

A free QR code from http://qrcode.kaywa.com/.

Technology as a teaching and learning tool

It is hard to be a technosceptic (yes my own made up word) when your area is sport. Technology is in your face, ranging from analysis methods that will make the crucial difference to social media being used to advertise sports products. It is hard to escape from the clutches of technology and even more so when an never ending line of sportsstars want to endorse the technology available and how it made a difference to them. Nothing to do with hard work and talent then? Just technology and the world is your oyster.

It is easy to get into that mindset when you remeber your time at school and university and through your training where there is no focus really on what technology can do. You are encouraged to "investigate" ILT and create a couple of methods but if you do not understand it how can you make it work for you.

However, it would be old hat to attempt to educate the future of sports (industry, performers etc) without using this technology, and we may as well embrace it. The useful elements of technology far outweigh the potential drawbacks. The big hurdle is often learning how to use it and more crucially making it adaptable and relevant to your lessons.

Personally, I believe that embracing technology can go hand in hand with old fashioned teaching and the balance between the two is the key. Overuse of one results in an over reliance and uncertainty about the other. It requires a special blend to get it right and that blend will differ depending on subject, level individual tutor and facilities available. Make no mistake about it technology is fast evolving and it is time we accept that embrace it, embed it and take full advantage of it.

Facebook and twitter once the bane of a lecturers life can now be seen as resources, communication tools if you like. Mobile phones, so long the scourge of all education professionals shall now be harnessed for the use of good.

It is time to take control, become the masters of technology within our classrooms and make it do what we want it to. Let the revolution begin.

Dfilm

Dfilm movies, cool and fun. A resource for all. Check it out!!!

Dbfilm

Health and Fitness Day!

Feb 14th - WLESA will be all over the college for a Health and Fitness Day.

A wide range of activities will be taking place, ranging from a BBQ to beauty treatments to fitness classes and charity fund raisers.

Be part of a unique college experience.