ActivInspire Custom Profiles

ActivInspire custom profiles... what are you talking about?  If you are familiar with the different profiles that come prepackaged with ActiveInspire you will know what I mean.  Some examples include "At The Board", "Authoring", and "Math".  You can select these profiles so that you get custom tools on the tool bar and certain marquee features.

At one of the recent COT training sessions about containers I was asked if there was a way to remove all the marquee features so the students do not mess around with the shapes and objects at the board.  Well this blog post is for you!

The following video shows you how to remove all the marquee features so that your students can't manipulate the shapes or objects in your flip chart.  If you have had students resizing shapes instead of focusing on the activity this option will help your students stay focused and remove the temptation to play with the objects so they focus on the activity.

Podcasting Mr. Zak's Class

Mr. Zak's 4th Grade Bilingual class is doing podcasting!  Students are creating digital expository compositions.  Podcasting is easy using Garageband on a mac.  Our district has other tools that can be used to do the same thing.  Wixie is a great alternative to Garageband.  Wixie is an internet application that will run on any computer or device that supports flash.  Here is a cool example from Mr. Zak's student.

Graphing Planets

3rd Grade is graphing!  There is a terrific website that kids and adults can use to display their data.  The website is located @ http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx

This site is very straight forward and can be manipulated with very little effort and instruction on the teacher's part.  I am attaching a great example from our third grade students.  The students researched planetary information.  Students were charged with finding the number of moons each planet has, the distance from the sun, the rotation of each planent, the orbit, temperatures and the number of rings they have. The following example is one regarding the moons of our planets.

Saving at Country Meadows Elementary

This video will show students how to save their files when using programs such as Pages, Keynote, Garageband, and Comic Life.  You also can save pictures, music, and video to the server for access at a later time.

Wixie Intro @ CM

Wixie Intro:  The following is a link to a video for Country Meadows Elementary School.  This link will show students and teachers the basic functions of Wixie.

Wixie

Country Meadows has acquired access for grades 1-3 to Wixie

With Wixie, students can use paint tools, text options, clipare, and voice recording to showcase their content knowledge.

• Create original work that demonstrates their comprehension of the curriculum
• Illustrate to explain abstract concepts
• Create graphs and models to represent data
• Write digital stories
• Create non-linguistic representations to complement writing
• Anytime/anywhere mentality



Integrate into the core curriculum


Wixie comes with hundreds of curriculum activities. Teachers can also create customized content for their classes and distribute it to students in seconds.


You can access this tool at: https://kildeer.wixie.com/


Students can login anywhere in the world using their credentials.  All that is required is flash.

Creating Digital Stories

There are several different ways to create digital stories.  Which ever way you decide works best, it is well worth learning this skill.  Creating podcasts, iMovies, and keynote presentations are three ways to accomplish the creation of a digital story.  The media that is created can be used from alternative assessments to guided reading for your students.  Either way the benefits can be instructional and student centered.

The following is an example of a digital story for instructional purposes.  Students can circulate through a center and acquire this content knowledge or it can be used as a guided reading station.

The following is a podcast that was created by a student.  This is an alternative story telling method that integrates 21st century technology.