Jack Sloan's Blog

Sorted out bugs with PPT so the kids could use it for live video projection. I tried many other options including really fun VJ software suggested here, but nothing was simple enough for my 7 year olds! Please check out the video (which is not very high quality, but will give you an idea.) The video projection is onto the Viking sail in the centre of the screen. Grace was the VJ.

I’m doing a class assembly in a couple of weeks. The kids want some video projection in the background – stormy seas, animals which feature in the assembly etc. Some of it will need sound, but some won’t. As this is the kids’ idea, I am keen that they should operate the computer and projection. How could we do this? I’ve tried embedding video into Powerpoint which would be familiar and easy to make, but it is really unstable – not pre-buffering means it crashes and loses sound etc.

What else could they use? It needs to be possible to repeat the video to sync it with the live action, and I don’t want to see taskbars or anything (it should be full screen all of the time). It also needs to be PC based.

Please help!

Really pleased with how my introduction to Voicethread went today. All children in my class registered and left comments: Look at the transformation!

They all know how to log into Voicethread now, and seemed excited about the idea. They especially enjoyed recording (surprise surprise…) and were keen to try webcam commenting. I have ordered a webcam for the classroom.

Our next project using Voicethread will be to develop a class assembly collaboratively online. Check it out here.

Contributions from outside the classroom are also welcome!

Just been to NCSL and heard Tom Barrett talking about Voicethread. Really inspiring and got me thinking. I’ve just set up our first Voicethread which looks like this:

Some interest already, and will encourage kids to use it on Monday. Think I might also use Voicethread to develop a class assembly over the coming weeks. I have been reading Eric the Viking which my class have really enjoyed. Going to try to use Voicethread to develop their own chapter which we can all produce and perform. Any ideas on how to manage this?