Introducing Yourself to Your Students

While browsing around the Web today, I came across this blog post by Melissa Seideman about using Animoto to introduce yourself to your students. Check her post: Instead of Telling Your Students Who You Are, Show Them. She suggested using Animoto to do this.

Animoto is online tool for creating quick videos by uploading saved images and then adding a soundtrack. You can also add text slides to the presentation. I have included three examples of Animoto introductions that I found on Melissa's post. Below the Animotos, I included examples from others who used additional tools for creating introductions.

I thank Melissa for this excellent suggestion and encourage following her on Twitter, where her user name is @mseideman.

Mrs. Seidman, High School Social Studies Teacher



Here is Mrs. Jee’s Video



Here is Mrs. Lindinger’s video



Here is another created with Animoto, but then uploaded to YouTube.

Meet Mr. Lee:


Here is one that was created with VoiceThread. (Excuse the comments on the first slide, which still need to be deleted.) Just go through the full VoiceThread, using the arrows as needed, or just letting the show proceed on its own.

Introduction to Jamme Freitag, Elementary School Teacher


This one was created with PhotoStory but then uploaded to Google to be placed in a Google Site. You will need to access it from a Google Site web page: Introduction to Colin Murray

Now that you have seen how teachers are using Web 2.0 and multimedia to introduce themselves, what are your thoughts on the idea? Would you consider introducing yourself to your class in this way?

On another note, I found out that Melissa uses Animoto for her students to create projects for their  history course. Check this blog post, which has a link to the assignment directions and an example  of one student's response to the project. Animoto: Video Slideshows. The text slides in this student example were created with PowerPoint, and the PowerPoint was saved as a jpeg file, so the slides could be uploaded to Animoto similar to how images (or photos) would be.

How can you see yourself using a tool like Animoto for student projects? What kinds of projects might you integrate into your own teaching?

Learning a Little More About You

I came across a high school social studies teacher's blog, Sites and Apps for Students, in which she learned about her students by asking them about websites they use. Check her post and the student responses at: Learning a Bit More About You.

Leaving a Digital Legacy by Corey Dahl, via Flickr www.flickr.com/...

Basically, the assignment asked to select 3 or 4 websites or apps they use regularly and to think about what information an historian in 50 years might learn about them based on the kinds of site or apps they were using.

Because I liked the assignment, I have duplicated her questions below. Use the comment section to indicate your responses to these two questions:

1) What websites or apps do you use regularly?
2) What might an historian looking at your response learn about you?

As the teacher did the assignment herself, I thought I would do same by way of also introducing myself to you.

The websites and apps I use the most are Gmail, Google Apps (including Google Doc and Google Sites), Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Diigo, Pinterest, and Flickr.

The use of the Gmail and Google Apps speaks to my interest in keeping frequently used tools all in one place. I can access email through Gmail and immediately see toolbars to access Google Doc (Drive), Google Search, and other Google apps. An historian would see that I like convenience, sharing, and organization.

Twitter has been an excellent tool for professional development and finding information for my teaching. I follow enough educators and others to have available to me daily a wealth of information. I have connected my Twitter account to Buffer and Shareholic, but prefer Buffer because it allows me to repost others' tweets and add to the tweets and to tweet easily any information I find online including shortening the URL for the information. Once a URL is included in a tweet, another follower can click on it to access the information. My use of Twitter would show an historian I like to keep current of educational trends and to share information with others.

My use of Diigo and Pinterest helps me archive website and other information. An historian would see that I a good curator, who organizes and saves resources. Diigo is text based whereas as Pinterest is visually based. I enjoy having information in both a text and visual format.

Dropbox is used like Google Doc to archive files as backups and so I can access my files from any computer. I tend to use Google Doc more so for collaboration and Dropbox for storing my own files, including word processed documents, spreadsheets, and pictures. Flickr is another site I use to archive photos, but I also like to use this site to find pictures that people have stored there that others can freely use. This is convenient for finding free images that the user grants others permission to use.

As for Facebook, a historiam would see I like to keep in touch with friends, but would also see that I follow sites that have professional information and post photographs. I have a strong interest in photography and wonder where this art form will be in 50 years from now. I also wonder what an historian will need to do to access electronic files we created in 2012.

What about you? What are your favorite websites and apps that you use regularly? What will an historian looking back on what you list learn about you as a person.