Technology in the Education Arena

So busy at the end of the school year with making presentations for so many events.  Some of the tools I used provided new ways and old ways to do the same thing – display photos.

To honor one of our teachers, I took photos at her retirement party and then imported the images into iPhoto.  In iPhoto, created a Book, added transitions and music and then turned it into a QuickTime movie in iDVD.

Another idea I tried was to create a Slideshow in iPhoto with the photos, again add transitions and music and then turn it into a QuickTime movie.

For our principal, who is also retiring, I made a movie in iMovie which incorporated videos of the students in each classroom giving their words of wisdom for our principal.  I used video and digital stills along with music.  I love working with iMovie – it is very easy to import video, photos, and music.  Used a Belkin recorder on an iPod to tape our principal, brought it into GarageBand, edited it, and imported it into iMovie.

For our fourth grade students who are leaving our school and moving on, I created a presentation using a very cool software program called “3D-Album.”  This is very easy to use; you don’t even have to save it.  Just open the software, point to your folder containing the digital photos, pick your music, and you are set to go.  There are so many different themes to choose from and it makes for a very professional looking presentation with not much work.  You can make a presentation in about 5 minutes.  But, unlike so many cool tools today, it is not free.

For my daughter’s Grade 8 graduating class, I made a movie in Microsoft’s MovieMaker.  MovieMaker has great transitions and is very easy to use – easy to put in photos, easy to put in transitions, easy to put in music.  Did I say EASY?  It looks great.  One problem is that MovieMaker freezes a lot (even on my one-year old computer at home) so you just have to make sure you save periodically.  A Grade 2 teacher in our school worked this year with her students in making their own movie in MovieMaker using all the photos from the entire school year.  Each student’s movie was unique to them and they turned out great.  Another teacher in our school made a movie for her first grade students with MovieMaker and she used LightScribe on the DVD’s.  It was really awesome and very professional looking.

Made a presentation for our school’s award ceremony.  Used PowerPoint for this.  I love PowerPoint when you have to put in lots of text.  The one thing I wish was easier is putting in audio.  It is not so bad with one song but when you are trying to insert multiple songs, it is much trickier.  What I chose to do was insert the music on the first slide and pointed to the music on a cd rather than trying to put in one song and figure out what slide to end on and begin another song.

So, all in all, I tried new tools, used old tools and had a lot of fun and continued to learn more about ways to put together some creative presentations not only for myself but students as well.