Blabberize
1. What standard(s)/outcome(s) are being met?
1 A. Identification, selection, installation and maintenance of technology infrastructure, and hardware and software applications for school administration and instruction.
1 B. Integrating technology into curricular planning and instructional design.
2. Identify 1-3 elements of the artifact and explain why/how they demonstrate mastery.
Blabberize is another Web 2.0 application that allows students to showcase their creativity and integrate technology with language arts or any other curricular area. In this artifact I taught my students how to write descriptive paragraphs. As a choice for publication, the students were allowed to color a portrait of themselves, shoot a still photo of it with the webcam, and then animate it with Blabberize. This application brings the self portraits the children draw, or any other photograph or drawing to life. Once photographed and run through the animation process, students record their own voices reading their stories, and the application matches the animation to their digital recordings. The end result is a fun, 21st Century example of digital learning! These are then shareable with family, friends, and colleagues via links and HTML.
3. How does, will, or could the content of this artifact benefit your instructional audience or professional community?
This artifact benefits my instructional audience. Writing is often not a child's favorite task. In order to encourage hem to do their best and finish their writings, offering choices for publishing goes a long way. When I say that Blabberize is a choice for publishing writing, children become very excited! They love to share their work with other students and heir families in the funny and creative way that the animated picture offers. This motivation is not only beneficial to my instructional audience but to my colleagues as well.
4. Reflection: What did you learn from the experience when you created the artifact or took the course?
The biggest thing I learned about working with Blabberize besides what I mentioned above is that it is a graphics intense application. It can slow down browsers and devices. I have completed dozens of Blabbers with my students and loaded them onto my class web page for viewing. I noticed that they do produce a certain amount of lag. I have also heard some students complain that that can not view them from home. They do use a Shockwave Flash plug in, and some older devices are not up to date or capable of playing them. I have also noticed that Shockwave Flash can be temperamental when embedding in HTML. This artifact, for example, would install, but not play back. For that reason, I chose to convert the media to a video, then upload to Youtube for a more stable playback.