Falling into place May 8

Well, I am getting a little closer to understanding how to get my things up on Voice Thread. I created a Power Point with the images selected by Mr. Purdy's 5th grade students to tell the story of John Fishback's visit. I thought one way to manage the voices and what would be said was to run off the presentation and leave the lines for notes. My plan was to show the Power Point and have them write notes next to the pictures they wanted to comment on. Only positive comments would be allowed. This was one way I could get 30 students to comment on 25 photos. I thought I could get it all done on Friday of this week.

HA! Silly me! I forgot that they had MSA Science testing during my media time with them. I also found that when I tried to upload this really large file, it did nothing on Voice Thread's side of things. I had compressed the file and I had compressed the photos. John had earlier suggested that I shrink the photos so I went through and shrunk them all. When I looked at what the product was on the Power Point, the photo was quite small in the space it was given on the slide. Forget that. So I asked Susan and Wendy what they did and they said that they broke their slide show up into smaller chunks with new names and sent it through. It took time, but they did it.

So I tried several times to do that, I couldn't figure out how to do that. Joie showed me how to copy the slides and now it sits on this computer in nine separate pieces waiting to be uploaded onto Voice Thread.

As to the plan about using the Power Point and students writing notes...there was some grumbling..."Do we have to?" "I can't think of anything to say." "I have nothing to say. I hated it all."...Yeah, positive thinking. I showed them the presentation. I showed them what a Voice Thread was. I gave out the papers. One wrote "good" on a few slides. Others wrote a lot. I am waiting until after Camp Schmidt next week to have them record anything. I will go through the papers and select who comments on what picture. Wish me luck on the enthusiasm bit...