Letter to Parents & Guardians

Surface archaeology at the mouth of Moonlit Brook

Dear Parents and Guardians of the Class of 2019 -

    As you may already know from your student, those of us not going on the trip to Washington, D.C. will be spending three exciting days exploring the town and environment of Newmarket. Most of our time will be spent outside, and we have an impressive range of activities planned. We'll be doing science at Moonlight Brook and down at the Lamprey River, exploring local history with a visit to the New Market Historical Society, dropping in at the Newmarket Mills for more history (and ice cream!), and looking into the area's natural history during a stroll in the Heron Point Woods.

    Some things that you should know:

• In order for your student to participate, they will need to bring in their copy of the permission form, signed by you, WHICH THEY ALREADY HAVE. If, perchance, you haven't seen this yet you might want to ask them. In case your student has misplaced it, you can download a copy here. 

• We will be outside much of each day. Students should wear comfortable walking shoes and weather appropriate clothing,  Having a water bottle and sunscreen will be important.

• Should you need to contact your child during the day, please call the front office as usual (793-4455). They will be able to relay any messages to us.

Academics: 

• Even though we'll be out and about most of these three days, it IS still school, and students will be responsible for completing a number of assignments for their LA, Social Studies, and Science classes. Assignments not finished during the day should be worked on as homework, and can be accessed through our class website. 

• All of our academic assignments during Newmarket Days are set up as a series of WebQuests. A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented learning format where much of the information we'll be using is found in various formats on-line. Assignments will also be completed and turned in on-line. This works perfectly for Newmarket Days, since we will be out and about.Additionally, parents and guardians will be able to access our site and follow along with what we're doing and learning. YOUR CHILD IS ENCOURAGED TO BRING THEIR PHONE, TABLET, OR OTHER INTERNET-LINKING DEVICE. We'll also have school tablets available, of course.

• You can find all the information your student will be working with at our class web site, or skip to the main web-quest instructions, which are posted using an innovative application called Prezi. That link is here. You'll find all sorts of interesting information about our town's life and history, and I believe you'll be impressed with the kinds of things your student is up to. If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to e-mail me here.

Educational Value of (Animoto or VoiceThread)

Well, this was an interesting project. I continue to be frustrated by how difficult it is to find and collate all the information about specific assignments in our class using Blackboard. That took quite a while:

Open mysnhu

Open Blackboard

Open class: “Learning Through Technology”

            Open “Module 3 announcements” and watch

Open “Modules”

Open “Module 3”

            Open “3-2 Discussion: Link to Blog”

            Read “3-3 Blog: Picture Project”

Look for “Assignment Guidelines and Rubrics”

            Open “Class Tools” – not there

            Open “Research & Writing” – not there

            Open “Course Information” – there it is.

                        Open “Assignment Guidelines and Rubrics”

                                    Download “Blog Rubric”

                                                Open “Blog Rubric” & read

* Discover later that this is also posted at the very bottom of “Module 3”

Open “Animoto”

Sign up by giving personal details, proceed with learning program and building assignment.

                        Review “3-3 Blog: Picture Project” for details and title, etc.

                        Review “module 3” – what am I posting where?

Confusion: I am linking to my Blog in the 3-2 discussion, and using the links in other peoples’ discussion posts to go to their blogs, and then going back to the discussion page to comment on those blogs?

However, I don’t have to actually post or link to the Animoto project I created? In my blog I just talk about using the app.?

Be that as it may, I found Animoto relatively easy to use. I was disappointed by the amount of bait-and-switch clicks designed to get you to sign up for a paying accound, but I suppose that's business.  At the basic/free level, it works pretty well. Text is limited - there seemed to be a really small amount of text I could add as captions - but being able to upload a soundtrack, change fonts  and styles, etc., was interesting. It wouldn't work with some of the image formatting I wanted to use, but there are work-arounds for that.

I would use this application in the classroom as an assessment tool, rather than a teacher aid. There are easier ways for me to create a slideshow, if I want to summarize information this way for my students (Windows picture and fax viewer being the simplest, or Imgur, or the slideshow function on Weebly).
As a way for students to present a report this is a neat tool. I would use this in a setting where I had asked the class to do individual or group reports on different aspects of a single topic: for example, Notable People of the Harlem Renaissance, or Battles of the Revolutionary War. Animoto could be used as a way for them to present their finding to me and to the rest of the class. As usual with tech in the classroom, I would rig the procedures and  rubric to de-emphasize the "glitter & bubble-letters" effect, where a student spends all her time on making the presentation pop, and not enough time on actual research and the presentation of relevant information. I can also see this being a useful tool to embed in a parent accessible blog, as a light and feel-good way of showcasing elements of class in general or some specific project the kids had been working on.

* With that usage, it is very important to remain within your districts rules about showing student faces or personal information in publicly accessible formats.

As you can see, I figured out a way to embed the Animoto work into the blog here, and also how to embed it onto the Google Sites page I created for class. That was a useful and new learning experience, and something I will use in the future.

My Google Sites Webquest with embedded Animoto