November's Task

[Sharon Tonner]

Do you have an idea what you would like November's task to be?

If you do it must meet the following criteria:

1. Use an online tool to display task incorporating audio and images;

2. Be simple enough that it will be understood by all - eg, days of the week, months, rhyme, song...

3. Be manageable by other members without taking up too much time.

You do not need to put up full instructions just your idea, tools to use and know it will work.

All ideas to be placed in this forum by 24th October giving two days for members to vote for the one they like the best.

Monday 27th the chosen task will be announced giving the member time to create the instructions and example before the release date on the 1st December.

If your idea is chosen then you are in charge of delivering it and answering questions.

The embedded code will still come to me to place on the wikispace.

Look forward to reading all your ideas.

Sharon

[Terry Smith]

Use wordle.net

From the web site:
"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes."


Have your kids answer these 2 questions:

What is one of the biggest problems in the world today that you would like to fix?
What is one thing you could do right now to help make that happen?


Kids would write these in a word processor (or for young one ones teachers type in what kids say). Teacher collects all of the text together in one document. Then the teacher submits this text to wordle.net and a word cloud graphic is created. When we share the cloud, we'll see a visual of the major ideas from kids on these questions.

Then classrooms can discuss what we think of each others ideas.

Terry

[Sharon Tonner]

Terry this is a good piece of software however it does not fit the criteria where we have to say the same words otherwise VOTW will not work. The only way this project has been a success is through all saying or singing the same thing so we can at least try to understand one another.

Also, how is the voice incorporated into this?

If this is an example of a web 2.0 tool that you want to share, which I think is great, then I think a different discussion forum needs to be set up for just sharing ideas rather than actually pertaining to the task.

Hope this all makes sense.

Sharon

[Terry Smith]

OK - I was seeing voice as interpreted as in the visual representation, not thinking that audio was the only tool to be used. Gives kids a new look, literally, at the words of the language.

[Sharon Tonner]

Good idea Terry. Why not create another project called Words of The World? What do you think?

[Katarzyna Wizgacz]

I have a question if this is the task that has to be done by everyone - I mean do I have to give my idea? I'm just asking because as I've answered earlier to Sharon being a completely new member and not too well - equipped at school I would feel more secure if I could just perform the tasks. I'm not too well informed about various online tools and working with them in general is something very new for me. But if this is ,,a must" to present some ideas I can try to find something online. It's just my question to Sharon as a ,,captain" here ;)

[Sharon Tonner]

No you do not have to do this as you can simply take what others are giving or what I give if no one else adds to this. Learn from us and become confident that is what we want you to do.

take care

Sharon

[Vicky Sedgwick]

This may not quite fit the criteria either and I haven't explored enough to know whether the content is all appropriate or not. Anyway the site is http://woices.com/ and it's unique in that you associate your recording with a specific location.

So my thought was pinpointing our schools and recording our school songs using this tool. We could actually make a group for Voices of the World on that site too so that all our recordings were grouped on that site as well as on the wiki.

Some potential problems I see with this one could be:
Maybe not everyone has a school song?
Does everyone want to pinpoint their school on a map?

[Jesse]

I love this idea, but we are one of those schools that lack a school song. But I would love to see a project where we place ourselves on the map.

[Vicky Sedgwick]

One other thought I had was to do something autumn related though I know for some of us it's not autumn. I can't think of a traditional fall song but we could have the children draw pictures of pumpkins or use a picture taken of the class at a pumpkin patch if people want to share photos of their class and then record a "10 Little Pumpkins" song (sung to the tune of 10 Little Indians) - lyrics are at: http://www.theteachersroom.com/pumpkinpatch.htm.

The pictures and audio could then be uploaded to One True Media.

[Sharon Tonner]

The second option sounds like it fits the criteria as we are all singing the same song rather than our own songs. I know from the national anthem task last year that is was not as sucessfull as everyone was singing different things. The map aspect is on the wiki already which John Johnston updates when people send him the correct information so we can see where we are all from. Ten little pumpkins it could be as long as it does not offend some schools who do not celebrate Halloween.

Thanks for this Vicky :)

[Vicky Sedgwick]

I really enjoyed listening to the National Anthem task last year. I'm sorry to hear it wasn't as successful. I can understand why people from the US might not want to do it only because our anthem is hard to sing.

Is there information on contacting John somewhere? And is the one on the site from last year or this year? I created a project using MSN Live Search Maps to introduce some of the schools to my students. I used this instead of Google Earth because Google Earth won't run on our computers. I would have used the map on the site but didn't know if it was correct for this year.

I would hope 10 little pumpkins wouldn't offend. I purposely went with "pumpkins" rather than something more Halloween specific so it might be more inclusive and mean fall or autumn as much as it does Halloween.

[Anna Karidi Pirounaki]

Hi everyone.. here is my suggestion for Nov. task:

Make a Proverb alive..

Each partner say/record the same proverb in his own language and pupils try to present it in various ways of handicrafts or just drawings.
Then they use myPlick.com for the final synthesis..
They send to Sharon the code..

Here is 4 proverbs… please vote and choose the One you like..

1./ Better late than never.
2./ A friend in need is a friend indeed
3./ A picture is worth a thousand words
4./ All for one and one for all

greetings all..