Tegan added our URL to the sign-up-sheet then as a group we decided that the most important element for us to concentrate on was the online presentation. We still have a couple of components to add, (that we identified from our group meeting that we had before today's lecture), however, these components could be added by us individually whereas the creation of the presentation required the whole group to be together.
So that we could record our presentation we worked in the student common room to avoid any distractions or interruptions.
Tegan had all the images on her laptop from the volcano eruption activity that we recorded so she began to create a PowerPoint presentation. We reflected back to the lecture earlier in the day and remembered Jenni saying that our Wiki should have a beginning, (an introduction), a middle, (the content), and an end, (a summary). With this is in mind we followed the same guidelines with our PowerPoint slides by starting with an introduction.
Introduction: We began by introducing the topic of our Wiki which is Volcanoes. We then introduced ourselves as "The Explosive Team" and mentioned each team member individually. The next slide we added was a brainstorm of ideas that we had at the beginning of this Task which helped us create our final product. We then added a slide that displayed how each of the tasks that needed to be completed were allocated followed by a slide showing where we got our resources from and an example of a lab safety video that we thought the students would definitely enjoy.
Content: This is where we added slides relating to our Wiki such as the Home Page, Lesson Plan Page, Teacher Resource Page, Student Resource Page etc...
Summary: To summarise we gave an overview of our project be mentioning the teaching area and year level the project is based on, the learning objectives, the technology resources used and how we have included the "9 Elements of Authentic Learning." We thought that it was important to show an end product for our project so we also included a short screencast video of our group volcano experiment activity that we conducted.
By following the above guidelines we found that our PowerPoint slides flowed together well and the information was very informative, however, we wanted the audience to acknowledge how much fun we had working on this project and we also wanted to engage them. With this in mind we decided to add a small section of one of our teacher resources, (a volcano song), as part of the introduction.
As a group we all felt really pleased because we had found Microsoft PowerPoint to be an easy technology tool to work with that produced professional looking slides. As an Education Assistant I use Microsoft PowerPoint regularly with the students that I work with because the students also find the presentation tool simple to use and they love the different themes and functions that are available. Most of the students teach themselves how to use Microsoft PowerPoint by exploring the presentation tool and collaborating with other students, however "How to use Microsoft PowerPoint 2010" is a great You Tube video resource.
We then proceeded to upload our Microsoft Powerpoint to PresenationTube so that we could record our narration. PresentationTube is a free video presentation recorder that synchronises a variety of visual aids including PowerPoint slides.
DISASTER STRUCK!
We allocated each group member various slides to introduce and clarified what we were going to say and then we started to record. After fifteen minutes we were all about to pull our hair out! Every time one of us made a mistake we were unable to record over the error, instead we had to start the recording again from the beginning. The pressure of not making any mistakes was so intense that we were all stumbling on words during the recording and feeling bad when we were the cause of having to start the recording all over again. The whole group started to get stressed out because time was ticking away and we knew that this was probably going to be the last opportunity that we would all be together to record our presentation.
Finally Tegan suggested we try using our original choice of technology tool, (Screencast-O-Matic), and create a screencast video. This was not as straight forward as we thought either!
The first problem was we were unable to click on the PowerPoint slides when using Screencast-O-Matic so each time we wanted to narrate a slide we had to retrieve each slide individually and then do our recording.
The second problem arose when we tried to add the "Volcano Song" as the backing music to our first introduction slide. We had to click on the volcano song video link and then quickly navigate back to Screencast-O-Matic and click on record, it sounds easy but it was impossible to get the correct timing and we were continuously missing the first part of the song. Stress levels began to rise again and we almost decided to forget about the song but then Sarah suggested we record the volcano song on her iPhone and then play it back over the laptop microphone so that Screencast-O-Matic could pick the sound up. Success, this method worked well and we were all so excited that we were able to include the song in our online presentation.
The rest of the screencast recording run smoothly because we all felt at ease knowing that if we made a mistake during our recordings we would be able to re-record over them, unlike our first attempt using PresentationTube.
We all gave a sigh of relief, Tegan clicked playback on the Screencast-O-Matic menu bar and we all sat back apprehensively waiting to view our online presentation. A huge cheer errupted in the student common room as we realised that we had successfully created our online presentation and we had almost finished Task 3. The "Explosive Team" had a group moment and we all told each other how proud we were of our team work and of the fantastic Wiki project that we had all created.
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| The "Explosive Team" feeling extremely happy! |
Tegan:
- Add links to the student resource page.
- Embed our screencast video presentation into our Wiki home page.
- Find some research books to include in our teachers resource page.
- Finish of the Blogs.
- Create and add the teacher tips to the lesson plan page.
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