Chroma is coming!

Hello TwoTwonians!

How are you? I am quite excited, as usual. Do you remember my last post about podcasts? I told you that I will increase my playlists; I created a new Soundcloud account for my school and a blog! So proud of my two neurons and my twenty-four students 😍 The idea is to create a radio school with podcasts. This is our first programme! If you have got any suggestion, tell us! We want to improve it and overall having fun! 😄

Today we want to take a step forward. Podcasts are an amazing resource, but we want more. What about to create a video/short movie? 😱 Yes! It's insane with a lot of work to do, but we are all mad here! 

Image by: tookapic CC0 Creative Commons 

The first thing that we need to do is to split the work. Working in groups is not easy, but if each member knows what is his/her job, it will be better. In my work team we are 5 people and the main roles are: drafter, recorder, community manager and editor (in the draft that you can find at the end of this post, there is all the information). 

Our group decided to create a news programme. Its name is Channel 4. The objectives that we want to achieve are several; to work cooperatively, to improve students' listening and reading comprehension skills, to learn subject contents through a visual format and so on. This activity is a good one with future purposes; a lot of schools have got newspapers, but having a TV programme is playing in a different league 😏

Channel 4 will have different sections:

• TV presenter (yeah! It's our creator; Soraya 👏👏)
• Natural Science news: earthquake
• Social Science news: Brexit
• Cultural news, linked with Arts and Crafts: Saint George
• Physical Education news: new sports.

The students will split in groups; the idea is that each group takes a news and develop an investigation activity. They will present their works with the tools that they will decided: Genialy, lap books, videos. I, sorry we, believe in creativity and originality and for this reason we want that our students explore different ways to create a final project. 

At the end of each news, the groups will have to answer the questions that each reporter has asked. 

And now, we talk about the video 🙈 The video will be available in our next post (maybe yes, maybe no). But, don't be impatient. I can tell you which apps we are going to use:

• iMovie: I will explain how to use this app in the next post. We will use Chroma; a technique to change your background. Chroma for dummies: you record yourself with a green background and later you add your own background.
• GarageBand: I told you about this app in my previous post. It has got lots of sounds that you can use in your videos. 
• My own brain and my two neurons: the most important part (my two neurons agree). Digital technologies can be amazing, but you need to know how to use them 😉

The background photos that we used are from Pixabay. They are all under Creative Commons license. The sounds that we introduced are available in GarageBand. The draft of the plot was created in GoogleDrive with a GoogleDoc as in my previous post (here you can see it):

I hope you like my new idea! I can't wait to show you it!

TwoTwo

To be or not to be

Hello my friends!

How are you? I have to say that I am quite excited with this post, as usual! Today I want to share with you what a Podcast is and how to create it to teach in your lessons (I am going to do it next week with my 6th graders! I'm so excited 💪 Wish me luck 🍀). 

A Podcast is an audio file with a lot of possibilities, it can improve the confidence of your students, their pronunciation, their fluency and accuracy. I will answer you the following questions and you will understand it better.

How can I create a podcast? I use GarageBand, it's an app for Apple devices but let me say that it's wonderful. You can add loops, change your voice, add more loops and even add music. Do you want to play the guitar with this app? You can! If you haven't got an Apple device, Audacity is other alternative, different neurons have told me that it's easy, but my right neuron doesn't' agree!

Where can I storage my podcast? Once you've created your podcast, you need a room to keep it. My option is SoundCloud; it's free and very easy to use. From GarageBand you can share your podcasts and creations directly with SoundCloud. It's a piece of cake.

Why do you have to create a podcast and you can't continue with my boring and useless lessons? Are you sure that you need an answer? Think it twice 😏

I created a podcast as a welcome in my audio project called To be or not to be. We are in April, April celebrates Saint George (in some regions in Spain the 23rd of April people gift books and roses) and Shakespeare death and birth. For this reason, I though that it will be a good idea to start a new project with Shakespeare. Ready? Steady? Go?

The first that I did it was to create a lesson plan. The draft is in Google Drive and I created a Google doc. You can create documents, presentations, questionnaire and spreadsheet. The best thing is that you are working online and the document is saved in the cloud.

Then, I created the podcast with GarageBand, I added to my channel in SoundCloud and I wrote some hashtags. Here you can listen to the voices of  Romeo, Juliet and my creator. She mixed some voices and music. I really love it!

You should be familiar with different concepts when you create an audio channel. The audio channel is the main page, your profile and, the playlists are the different folders with different music. This is my audio channel (yes, I've only created a podcast, but wait a couple of weeks):



Do you study with music? And what about your students? This is my favourite playlist; it's called Study and I play it when I am doing projects, planning lessons or thinking about my final thesis 😅 

Explore the many posibilites that these apps have got and share your projects!

TwoTwo