Ms. De Santis’ Blog

Entries from July 2009

Animoto and student accounts

July 30th, 2009 · 3 Comments

Animoto is an astonishing tool for student creations.  There are a few easy steps to create classroom accounts for your students.  With this method, all the finished videos will then be sent to one email account. This works well for younger students (who are too young for an email account) and also provides some oversight.  My students know that I will see everything- this discourages potentially inappropriate behavior.

1.    You need to apply for your Animoto educator account (go to www.animoto.com-  scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and select the education link and complete the form.)

2.    While you are waiting for your account, set a Gmail account. Even if you already have one, you might want to set up one only for Animoto emails.  This will make it easier to locate student work and not overload your personal inbox.

3.     Within a few days, you will get an email with your class code (this include a link that will enable you to set up student accounts).

4.    Once you get the link, you can set up your student accounts.  Here is where you need your new Gmail account.

5.    Using the account code link, you can form the student accounts using the following format for the email requirement:
emailaddress+1@gmail.com
emailaddress+2@gmail.com
emailaddress+3@gmail.com
and so on.

Let’s say your Gmail account is bsdanimoto@gmail.com. Your student accounts might be

bsdanimoto+1@gmail.com

bsdanimoto+2@gmail.com

bsdanimoto+3@gmail.com

and so on.

6.    When you are completing the registration process, you create the name and password for each account.  Since I share my accounts with many classes, I make the password the same for all the accounts.  I also use fairly generic names as well.  Then the students can change the name during the finishing process.

Tags: animoto

Looking for Reading Units???

July 29th, 2009 · No Comments

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Seeking resources for middle school novels?  This site has vocabulary words, chapter questions, and other activities for a host of elementary school novels.  Special thanks for Kathy James for this suggestion.

Tags: Content - Language Arts

Eliminate Elementary School Research Trauma

July 26th, 2009 · No Comments

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Using this site for an elementary research project would surely reduce stress (for teachers and students) and improve student learning.  From the Kentucky Virtual Library, How to do research is a kid friendly visual approach including planning, searching for information, note taking, sharing (the sharing page is packed with 21st Century learning options) and evaluation. (The steps are very close to the Big6 method).  Students can explore selections for each step and there is a teacher’s toolbox.  Use this for whole group instruction or allow students to move at their own speed.

Tags: Content- Cross Discipline · Content - Language Arts

The best yardstick ever!

July 26th, 2009 · 3 Comments

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Micrometers or light years- Universcale compares them all.  Compare the DNA with an atom (DNA is larger) to a nanoparticle (DNA is smaller).  This is a fascinating approach to investigate scale- especially with those items too tiny (or huge) to be viewed in the classroom.

Tags: Content - Math · Content - Science

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