Digital Dewey

Learning CAN be fun!

We want children to be engaged, enjoy what they are doing and be learning at the same time.

With my blog down for maintenance over the weekend, I decided to explore a few more media tools, and found a couple of ways to get the kids laughing AND learning.

‘Blabberize’.

Blabberize is free and easy to use.

1. Upload your photo. You need to choose a photo where the mouth is large enough to be seen clearly. Crop if necessary.
2. Position and shape a mouth onto the mouth of the photo you uploaded.  This is the part that will move when the mouth opens and closes with the voice you record later on.
3. Record your own voice or add a sound file you have already made.
4. Convert to a video or just grab the HTML code.
5. Sit back and have a good laugh.

Too much fun to be educational, you say?

Because it was my first attempt, I just experimented and had fun with it, but how could you use Blabberize in the classroom?

Here are a few suggestions for classroom use:

An endangered animal making a plea for help; sing a rap about something you’ve done; advertise a product you have developed; explain how something works; Blabberize a cartoon; or for LOTE, speak in a foreign language; read a poem; present a short argument or a deliver a speech; be a person in history and talk about what you did; Blabberize your blog with information about it; draw your own picture; write a script for the image and read it aloud; make a book character come alive; present a maths problem for students to solve.

Fotobabble.

Fotobabble is similar to Blabberize but without the talking mouth. Although this was very simple, the on-line recording was a bit limiting.

All you have to do is -

1. Upload a photo.
2. Record a message online.
3. Save and embed Fotobabble or share.

Suggested Classroom Uses:

• Sing a jingle.
• Present a point of view.
• Describe what’s happening in the photo.
• Make up a story about the photo.
• Use a news photos and report on the news.
• Review a book.

I’m sure there are lots of applications in the classroom for both Blabberize and Fotobabble.

Please post your ideas on a sticky note on this Wallwisher.

You can also see what other people have added.  Click on the image link below.

Hidden benefits –

• Learning how to record a sound file. (plus uploading it in Blabberize)
• Emphasis on using expression and speaking clearly when recording.
• Keeping the text brief but informative.

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