6. Plan an audio project

Combining ICTs with other subjects has become way easier than never. In today's post I will show you how to teach Spanish painters through the creation of a podcast with the students. 

This is the didactic unit I designed for 5th grade of Primary Education for Arts and Crafts

The introductory podcast was created using Session Town and Audacity to join the two music files and my voice. Then, it was uploaded to Soundcloud. You can find the introduction and the playlist where all the podcasts will be stored once recorded and uploaded below.

Marty Teaching Learning · Talking About Famous Painters: Intro

Marty Teaching Learning · Talking About Famous Painters

Critical questions and problems encountered

Uploading content to Soundcloud is very easy, the only requirement is to create a profile. Then, you can upload audio files filling in the required information.

Once the files are uploaded, you can create a playlist and add them there. I tried to create the playlist beforehand but I couldn't, so keep that in mind. 

I also had some trouble recording the initial music, having to screen capture my music and then uploading the video to a mp3 converter. However, Audacity was easy to use as I learned how to use it during the degree. 

Discoveries

Soundcloud was a discovery for me, as it sounded familiar but I had never used it before. Moreover, the webpage I used to create the music, Session Town, was completely new for me as well, it is a great resource for music teachers!

Uses or connections

Soundcloud provides an opportunity to teach students through a different method. The first thing that came to my mind is creating podcasts that students could listen to while studying for an exam. It has a lot of potential to be used for flipped classrooms, or in regular ones like the example I provided.

Martyrating

🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙

Pros: 

• Creating playlists
• Library option with overview, likes, playlists, albums, stations, following and history
• Tags in tracks and playlists
• Easy to embed and share

Cons: 

• Only 180 minutes can be uploaded for free users.

I hope you liked it!

5. Design and present support slideshows

There are many tools to create presentations: Genially, Google Slides, Prezi, Powtoon, PowerPoint... (those are the ones I have personally tried). And the question always is: "Which one should I use?". That always depends on what you want to create. If it is something simple, PowerPoint is a safe bet. If you want people to get a mindmap of the parts of your presentation Prezi is the one you should use. For simultaneous collaborative work I always reccomend Google Slides. For fun videos, Powtoon is the right one. However, the best one I have found so far is Genially. 

The task I was assigned was creating a presentation. However, I wanted it to be interactive, so I created a double functioning presentation: it can be used both by the teacher to present in the classroom or as an interactive presentation so that students can study and review at home. It is designed for 6th year of Primary Education, in the subject of Natural Sciences.

Critical questions and problems encountered

My first struggle was related to the template to choose. I did not want to start from scratch, as it is very hard to do so. Nevertheless, I did not want to leave it as it was. Something I did to give it a nice detail was to personalise the icons shown in the background, using only science-related ones. 

Then I also had to choose how I wanted to navigate through the document. As I wanted it to be also used as a tool to study at home, I added questions at the end and made it a microsite. The information said by me as a teacher is added as windows so that students can learn with them, trying to remember and then clicking to check. At the end, it has an option to play with the information: by answering 4 questions you get 4 digits of a code, and if done correctly you can download the following badge:

Discoveries

As I had used it before, there was not much about the way it works for me to discover. Something I really like is that they have added new templates. Moreover, it seems they have added new scenes and illustrations. This is perfect for me, as I am a very visual person. 

They also added the option to create links to "go back", "first page", "previous page" "next page" and "last page". This facilitates creating microsites and games.

Uses or connections

I believe that the best summary for this section is the following screenshot. It belongs to the Genially webpage, and it appears when you click on "create Genially". These are all the options provided by them. However, the way you apply them is up to you! 

Martyrating

🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙

Pros: 

• You can share with others and work collaboratively.
• Free templates are varied and appealing.
• There is an option for proposing templates (it is very nice from them, to be honest).
• There are sources for free images: Unsplash, Pixabay and Giphy. 
• All the elements can be animated.
• Navigation can be changed to fit a regular presentation, a video or a microsite.

Cons: 

• You can work collaboratively but not simultaneously, you need to take turns.
• Premium templates look very engaging, some even more than the free ones. 

I hope you enjoyed this post!