Animated Student Portraits Using Biteable

Sometimes things just line up. About a month ago I got an email from one of my 5th grade teachers asking for help. Her students had been learning how to ask good questions and interviewing each other.  She wanted a quick way to present this information. We all know that time is at a premium, some projects have to be quick. It just so happened that I read about Biteable that weekend. Kismet.

Biteable is a site that provides a library of quick animated slides. Users decide on the slides that best communicate their message and pair them with short strings of text. The slides are well designed and the brevity of the text (50 characters per slide) reinforces the “show, don’t tell” philosophy of design. Students also choose music to accompany the movie. The end result is something students can be proud of.

We created a single account using the teacher’s email and a generic password. Each student used this username and password to sign into the account and create a Biteable for their interview. The shared account did a few things:

• The teacher had access to all the biteable movies
• The account was connected to the teacher’s YouTube account, something that isn’t turned on in our student sub-organization
• When a movie is ready, each student sends an email via Biteable to the teacher, giving the teacher control over when the movies are “published”
• The shared account meant students had to respect each other’s work. This reinforced digital citizenship and our class rose to the occasion.

Students started by referencing the slide library and planning their movie with a storyboard graphic organizer. The graphic organizer was created in a Google Drawing and can be printed or used digitally.  The storyboards helped students think purposefully about their slide choices and the logical flow of the movie.

The text constraint of 50 characters per slide also presented an interesting teaching point. Students had to synthesize their notes into the most important ideas. Even then, ideas often needed to be stretched across slides. Students were taught to do this smoothly by using sentence connectors. Another lesson developed from the students’ sentence starters which tended to use a pronoun or the name of the child.  Students revised their work by placing the adverb phrase or predicate first.

The finished products are beautiful animated portraits of the interviewed students. Because the process was so easy, the focus of instruction was on craft and not the tool. It was also efficient; students typically finished the first draft of their movie in two days and took another two days to revise. I’m looking forward to using Bitable again, let me know how it goes if you try it with your class!

Using FormMule and IFTTT for a moderated student twitter feed.

This project has been updated to use the new Google Sheets and formMule add-on, read about it here

Just about a year ago, I had the pleasure of camping with +Jasper Fox. We talked about Twitter in the classroom as we sat around the fire.  As usual, the conversation was great, we strategized about a Google form that a would allow students to compose tweets and the teacher to moderate them directly to Twitter. It took me a year to realize this simple workflow, but I think my teachers will love it in September. It’s purposeful, student centered, helps to reinforce digital citizenship, has an authentic audience, and promotes a positive home/school connection: win, win, win, win, and win.

This recipe has five components:

• A simple Google Form linked to an “old” spreadsheet
• The FormMule Script from New Visions for Public Schools (thus the “old” spreadsheet)
• A Gmail account created specifically for this process
• An If This Then That recipe
• A classroom Twitter account

First, create a simple Google form with a one paragraph text question for the exit ticket. This PDF from Classroomfreebies was the inspiration. I used data validation to set the maximum character count of the question to 140. Then unlink the form from the original spreadsheet, create a copy of this “old” spreadsheet, and relink the form to the new copy.

Then, add a column labeled “Moderated” to the responses sheet and install the New Visions FormMule script. After initializing the script, proceed to step 2A and set FormMule to fire an email when the moderated column equals “1.”

After Initializing FormMule, you will see a new sheet titled “Email1 Template.” Go to this sheet and set the “To” field to equal the gmail address where you want the moderated tweets sent. The “body” should equal the header of tweet column. You can copy  and paste the variables from the bottom of the sheet. For my example, the merge variable needs to be: “${"What would you like to tweet about today? "}”  The tweet is ready to be sent when a teacher puts a “1” in the “moderated” column. Now, all the teacher needs to do is “perform the merge” in the Form Mule menu and the moderated student exit tickets get emailed to the special gmail account.

Finally, set up an IFTTT recipe that forwards the body of any email sent to the gmail account to the class Twitter feed. This recipe was successful for me. And there you have it - a Google form that can collect exit tickets from your students, and tweet them to the class feed when you moderate them. Let me know if you make this better, or use it in your classroom!

Online Rights and Responsibilities with formRanger

The highlight of this week was a 5th grade lesson on digital citizenship.  Students had previously created a chart of classroom rights and responsibilities and discussed the differences between them.  In my lab, we set out to create another list of digital rights and responsibilities. This is a particularly relevant task considering our upcoming 1 to 1 chromebook initiative. The lesson had three elements that worked: using the right right videos, having students create a list collaboratively in a Google spreadsheet, and then vote on their favorites using a formRanger updated form.

It’s hard finding videos on digital citizenship for 10 year-olds because most of the content is targeted for older or younger students. After much searching I found two that fit perfectly.  The first video is a short piece on digital footprints and was a perfect anticipatory set to start our discussion. After talking about digital footprints and why they are important, students started collaboratively building a list of what they felt should be their online rights and responsibilities. I get a thrill each time I see a class working on the same spreadsheet at the same time.  It is amazing to watch them self organize.

After a few moments, we brought the class back together to watch another great spot by Common Sense Media on Cyber Bullying. We checked for duplicates as a team and the student written Rights and Responsibilities were used to update a Google Form via the formRanger script.   Before the period ended, students had used the form to vote on their new digital rights and responsibilities list.  

The Google spreadsheet and form allowed the kids to be at the center of the process.  In the past we would use chart paper and solicit discussion.  Some students would contribute, others would watch.  This lesson was different - everyone was involved - everyone contributed to the list in some way.  That universal contribution lead to more engaged discussion and a pretty great list.  See for yourself.