Why and How to Participate in Teddy Bears Around The World Project?

I posted a few weeks ago about the ongoing Teddy Bears Around the World (now in its fourth year) project.

The project blog and hub can be be found at http://www.langwitches.org/blog/travel/teddybearsaroundtheworld/

I have created a How-to-Guide in order to articulate how and why to join such a project, to make participation easier and to facilitate the process of passing on the information.

Feel free to forward via email or print out the flyer and hand them to a teacher who might be interested in participating.

Global Project: Teddy Bears Around the World

1st Graders Create Their Own Read-Along Audiobook

Last year, while our first grade teacher was absent for an extended period of time, I spend a few sessions with them to read a book from the Magic Tree House series, Vacation under the Volcano, and then pulled  students out in small groups to record them. You can read about the process and my reflection on this post “Podcasting with First Grade“.

This year, the first grade teacher took over reading and writing the script in the classroom. She was one step ahead of me in reading and scripting each chapter, as I took three students (Interviewer’s, Jack’s & Annie’s voice) at the time out of the classroom to record them.

Recording the Script

As I was pulling the students out to record, the classroom teacher continued reading, chapter by chapter, and creating the interview script to be recorded with the students. By the time the last chapter was recorded, I had ten written scripts collected. I decided to create a little booklet (created from a MS Word Template) for the first graders, so they would be able to follow along as they were listening to the podcast.

Booklet created with MS Word Template

The audio file is about 15 minutes long. As the class listened to the podcast for the first time in it’s entirety, they had their little fingers on the paper to follow along. Each chapter ending was followed with a special sound to indicate that a new chapter was about to start. This helped any student who had lost their place on the script.

Read-Along

Read- Along

Once we had finished listening to the podcast, I asked their teacher give them a few minutes to write down a couple of sentences about their experience.

My thoughts:

• It amazes me every time. Students are so engaged, wanting to re-record, if their voice, didn’t sound “just” right.
• Students (6-7 year olds)  are very interested in the mechanics of Garageband (ex. tracks, dead air, sound clips, moving clips, etc).
• Students started to experiment with their voices: inflection, fluency, pitches, emotions, volume, speed…
• The written script as an add-on to the audio file was a bonus. Students are eager to “read-along” as they were listening to their podcast. I want to look for an iPad/iPhone app to streamline the process. Does anyone know of an app that would allow me to import a recorded mp3 file (I want to be able to continue using Garagband to record and edit them) and then ” attach” the word doc or a pdf file to that audio file for kids to scroll through at their own pace, as they are playing and pausing the audio file.

Next Step:

• upload the podcast to their classroom website to be played within the blog.
• upload the podcast to our school’s iTunes Podcast channel.
• Send information (how-to-guide) via blog, email or paper print-out to parents to help them subscribe and download podcast episode from iTunes to their devices.
• Work with librarian to establish a book review, storytelling, etc. audio file library accessible in physical and virtual library space to all students.

Reflection:

• I really like to expand the reflection piece as part of the podcasting process.
• In the future I want to involve students by giving them ownership and time to “play” on their own in Garageband to record and edit their voices.
• Assessment: I need to find a way to formally assess the impact podcasting (including script writing and voice recording) has on writing, reading, fluency, comprehension and presentation skills.
• We need to do this earlier in the year to be able to connect our students with other podcasting children around the world. Take a look at my blog post from last year when I asked: A Worldwide Audience for Six Year Olds?

Listen to these first graders make “Dinosaurs Before Dark” come alive with their voices.

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If you have a first grade class or your own child is ready and interested in reading chapter books, download the mp3 file and the pdf file of the script, upload them to your iPod, iTouch, iPhone or iPad (or other device). Now you should be able to listen to the audio as you read along.

Dinosaurs Before Dark Script

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Postscript: I could not stop thinking about the script and the audio file. Thanks to Leigh Murrell on Twitter, I checked into epub, a format that can be imported into iBooks on my iPad/iPhone.

Since I don’t have Pages on my macbook, I used a script file I had created in Word.

Creating Document in Word

I then converted the .docx file to an .epub file by using 2EPUB, a free online converter.

Free ePub converter

Once converted, I plugged my iPad in and dropped the .epub file from my finder directly into the iTunes>Books folder. I then added an artwork as a cover. Once I synched my iPad, I could find the dinosaur “booklet” on my bookshelf.

Import into iBooks

Even the dictionary part works, as you hold one finger down on a word, the dictionary caption pops up with a definition.

Script opened in iBook

I also uploaded the mp3 file to iTunes and now have a Read-Along audio book with the iBook and iPod combination.

Collaborative StoryBook- Florida Explorers

In Florida, the fourth grade curriculum calls for students to learn about the explorers of the 15th and 16th century who came to its coast and influenced the history of the state. As the teachers and I were sitting together to plan the upgrade of the unit, we looked at the instructional goals, standards and objectives, reminded ourselves of 21st century skills and literacies we wanted to incorporate into the lessons for students to be exposed to, practice and “live and breathe”.

I shared with Mrs. R. the Explorer Mixbook project I had co-taught with a teacher from another school. We decided to also create a storybook, using Mixbook again, where students contributed different parts from a common storyline. In contrast to the previous project the story would be a narrative fiction with historical facts intertwined instead of a non fiction book. During one class, students collaboratively worked on ideas for a possible storyline and how each explorer would be represented and how groups would be able to research and contribute their portion of a story.

Brainstorming a storyline

Students started getting their creative juices flowing and kept coming up with more and more ideas to add to the list. Excitement in the class grew larger by the minute. The classroom teacher saved the notebook page with the ideas jotted down as an image and uploaded it to their classroom blog. She extended the brainstorming session by asking her students to add their storyline ideas as comments to the blog post. The class would vote on a final storyline once back in class. Here are a few comments:

Collaboratively writing the introduction and conclusion

Students then started their research about their assigned explorers. They also looked for creative commons or public domain images that they could upload and use for their storybook. Once found, they uploaded the images to Mixbook. For a step by step tutorial how to use Mixbook, take a look at the following chapter of my Digital Storytelling book.

Uploading Public Domain images to Mixbook

Students took turns to create and design the layout of their individual pages and then inserted and formatted the appropriate images and text.

Layout & Text Entry

Upgrade to 21st Century Skills

Upgrade to 21st Century Literacies

Upgrade to Digital Learning Farm based on Alan November

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