The Winter Wonderland Project is now open for registration!
The Winter Wonderland Project is an online project for grades K-3 that includes winter-themed technology activities with reading, writing, and math components. Registration will open on November 17th. The Project will begin December 1st and end February 29th. Teachers who participate will share student work on their own personal page(s) on the wiki. If you aren't able to participate during one of the months don't let that stop you from signing up! Go ahead and join now and then participate when you are able. Suggested thematic activities and resources for each month will be provided. We will have a Featured Activity each month that we hope all classes will be able to complete. We have chosen our Featured Activity to introduce you to some new tools or websites or new uses for tools you already use. We do realize that there may be times when sites are blocked at schools or schools do not have access to the programs or tools used. If you can not participate in the Featured Activity, or if you're doing some other winter related technology project in your room, go ahead and post that to your wiki page instead. We would still love your participation in the Winter Wonderland Project, because our goal is to get teachers trying new tools and to share the results with others.
Please visit the Winter Wonderland Wiki at http://winterwonderland.wikispaces.com to register, learn about the planned activities, or to get more information about the project.
I'll be joining for at least one grade level. This sounds like a lot of fun for the kids... ok, ME, too!
Thanks to the creators for putting it together.
Question for you....what are or is Audacity or GarageBand...we don't have microphones and I don't know much about voice thread...so I'm going to learn a lot! How will this work, we pick the activity and do it?
Jennifer, GarageBand is a Macintosh application for--simplest mode-- recording and/or producing audio.
Audacity is a multiplatform application that will do basic recording with a computer.
You can do recording with a tape-recorder then (with some help) connect it to your computer and put it in digital format.
Jennifer, I'll be learning right along with you! I like these types of projects because they do push me to learn new things. In addition to what Bob said about Audacity, it is a free download. I haven't really used it before. We're getting a Mac laptop for our school so I'm hoping to do the projects with GarageBand. As far as activities go-yes just pick an activity and do it! We're hoping everyone will do at least one a month but if you can't do something one month that's ok and if you want to do several activities in one month that would be great too! We have some really cheap microphones at school and they work for the Voicethread.
When I've used Audacity, I export the file as an mp3. Then it'll play on just about anything. Something I learned (the hard way) last year, is to name it as teachername+studentfirstname+lastinitial (or other identifier). It'll make it easier if you have a lot of files to find the correct ones. (I had 16 classes of 20 names I was trying to separate into classes without a teacher's name!)
The great thing about VoiceThread is that you can add text comments, not just voice. So whatever works for your situation. If you could just get one headset with a mic attached that's probably all you would need. I only let one person record at a time anyway (they just rotate).
Amber, Nedra, and Vicky,
Wow!! You all have done a lot of great work. I signed up for my k-2 classes. Thanks for all of the info and organization!
JoNelle