Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Playing around again...trying to embed a voicethread:


OMG I did it! So this is a voicethread. It's like a movie that's part slide show, and part responses to the slide show. All you have to do is click the play button right under where it says "comment".

Had an opportunity to talk to a group of B.Ed. students at McGill today about online teaching as a career choice. It was fun, and I think, I hope, one or two might just be reading this. I hope they found it interesting, even if only the part where my daughter called me, twice, during my talk, to ask if I could take her shopping....:)

10 comments:

  1. I love that you were able to share your excitement for teaching math (and blogging) with the B.Ed. students.

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  2. I just saw the shoutout on twitter and read through both your blogs. Audrey, you're doing some amazing work! I love your blog; the posts are all thoughtful, enthusiastic and engaging in a way that models life long learning for your students and other teachers like me. You rock!

    I've a couple of suggestions/answers to issues you've raised in earlier posts:

    Try posting your PPTs to http://slideshare.net. You can find me there too as dkuropatwa.

    My favourite way to get math on the web is with the SITMO equation editor; you can embed it on the sidebar of the class blog so the kids can get at it easily any time. (Its offline at this writing while they update the service. The message on their website says they'll be back in a couple of days. In the meantime they also have an extension for the Google Chrome Browser.)

    By far and away the comment you wrote that brought an ear-to-ear grin to my face was:

    "More and more it seems like this is less about math than it is about emotions and relationships!"

    You grok this. In fullness. Teaching (and learning) is always about relationships first ... and who gets that better than a math teacher? ;-)

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  3. Oh, one more thing. I noticed the kids' scribe posts are getting longer, more detailed, including more images and colour used in a meaningful way. For what it's worth, that's the way I've seen it unfold every time. It keeps getting better. ;-)

    If one of your kids does something over the top you may want to spend a little time digging around The Scribe Post Hall of Fame and maybe hand out awards to them. (I really have to pretty up that wiki a bit ... I'll get around to it. Eventually. ;-))

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  4. You are awesome, Audrey. I have so much to learn from you! Can you teach me how to add a VoiceThread to a blog? Very useful...

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  5. I have to calm down before responding here.

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  6. Deep breaths....OMG OMG!

    Darren - I have watched and listened to so many of your presentations, read your posts, scrolled through the Scribe Post Hall of Fame, you name it. You were the inspiration for me to give it all a go. Thank you so much for your kind support and encouragement! I can't believe how transformative this has all been, and how quickly it is evolving. Thanks for the equation editor, I'll try that out. About slideshare - is it different from/better than scribd? Thanks again, omg, I just saw your tweet, wow. Thsnk you, blogfather!

    Kerry - awww thanks! It's really easy to embed - if you go to the end of your voicethread, you get to that black window where they give you the different share options. One of them is embed, click on it, and you can either copy the (I think it's) html code or select the blog you want to embed it into. (Bad english, sorry all my english teachers.) Et voila!

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  7. Hey Audrey! Thanks for the kind words. My life has changed, all for the good, because of the connections I've been able to make with folks online. It's curious; sharing seems like such a fundamental attitude online but amongst some colleagues who don't have an online presence it seems less so. I've always wondered why that is?

    Slideshare is like a YouTube for presentations and now they do docs too. Scribd was designed to share or embed docs on webpages without having to download the doc to read it.

    I use both. Slideshare for presentations (or my SMART Notebook lessons) and Scribd for docs. Although I'm starting to lean towards Slideshare only. Here's why:

    With Slideshare anyone can download any presentation (if the owner chose to allow that) as long as they have a (free) Slideshare account.

    With Scribd you can only download if you upload docs first. (You have to give a little bit to get a little bit.) Alternatively you can get a paid Scribd account to download more docs.

    So, the way I see it, there is more of a barrier for students with Scribd than Slideshare if they want to download a doc and remix it, say, in a scribe post. ;-)

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  8. I agree with your point about sharing. I think people who are connecting online already get - or grok! - that collaboration is the only way we can move ahead, get better, or just plain keep up. I used to think that I needed a year off just to come up with ideas of better ways to teach, then another year to create activities, lessons etc. But then I realized that so many organizations out there, like explorelearning for example, have already done that, and done it way better than I could ever do if I had 10 years. Besides, I can't afford to take time off!

    I think anyone who has an online life is therefore open to sharing because they have already benefitted from others' doing so. As you said, you have to give to get, and not only on scribd! Anyone who doesn't have a presence online or at least read what's out there, is still thinking, as I used to, that every teacher has their own style, their own understanding of the subject that is non-tranferable to another teacher. Which is less and less true now that education is more about customization, rather than the rubber-stamp industrial model of education. Idea for my next post just formed.....thanks for making me think - again!

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  9. Hey Audrey!
    I can assure you that we very much enjoyed your talk at McGill! You're full of creative and fun ideas for integrating teaching, mathematics and the internet all together. Can't wait to read your future posts :)

    -Kathryn

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  10. Hi Kathryn! That is wonderful to hear, thanks for posting!

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