I don't know how much collaboration I will be able to do due to our filter. All chat, blog, and social networks are blocked. You all have great Ideas though!!! Thank you so much.
Clay animation is easy and fun to do with webcams and won't require any collaboration so no problems with your filter. Here are some examples that my students have done:
A webcam is all you need to start making stop motion videos. They're not super high quality, but my students have had some interesting results with the free Stop Motion Animator (at http://www.clayanimator.com/english/stop_motion_animator.html) and a few webcams.
I like to use webcams to do collaborations with other schools/classrooms. We can frequently use all sorts of distance collaboration tools, but my new favorite has to be xmeeting! (maybe it's just new to me). It works across platforms and you don't need to worry about blocks!
We let kids across schools meet socially via webcams, and let them get to know one another. It's weird and awkward at first, but soon, with some teacher encouragement and patience, the distance relationships develop! About that time, the teachers are able to put some projects together such as wikis for specific content areas or other ideas for collaboration.
I am in the process of purchasing a webcam for use next year. I love the idea of collaborating with other classes. Does anyone know of a place I can find all these classes?
YES! I work in a charter school with grades 5-8 and we've got some real potential to be mentors for younger children and bright mentees for older students. We are in the East Central Kansas and collaborate currently on/off with one other school, but are actively looking for others! I think we're even going to try to sign up for the Global Nomads Group to collaborate with children overseas.
Please contact me if you're interested with collaborating with us on ANY type of project. We'll make it work because I'm just game for exposing my students to all sorts of environments! Anyone can feel free to email me if you're interested in chipping in during the remainder of this year or going into next school year. I also plan to have my students working on films this summer, so that may be another opportunity.
I do find, though, that they need some "dog-sniffing" social time (if you know what I mean) to check each other out before we jump right into a project... ;-)
I teach 4th grade in Selma, Alabama. This year I received a digital whiteboard in my classroom. I will also be receiving a webcam. I would love to do some collaborating on any type of project. I love your attitude. I do think we can make it work. Please email me and let me know what you think we can do.
Hi there:
I am a tech coordinator at a small elementary school in southern South Dakota. We have some mini hp notebooks with built-in web cams. I would love to get our 4th grade class of 22 involved with another class across the country on a project. I however am just starting this type of thing and would love some ideas and a classroom to collaborate with. If you would be interested and have some ideas, please let me know. Thanks!
Hi Nate
I'm jealous of your free webcams! Here's some ideas you could try.
Create short news programmes based on current affairs. There is a great BBC website called newsround that the students can use for ideas. I've written some lesson plans that anyone can use.
I recently found another school's blog in which the students took photos of what they were wearing and recorded phrases in French. They then put up the images as a bubbleshare album and uploaded the audio files as a mix and match exercise.
Something that I'd like to try sometime is adding audio and/or video to images on bubbleshare.com.
If you'd like to do some basic and safe video conferencing, have a look at flashmeeting. I've written an article about it on my blog. You can have up to 20 users on at the same time. If any teachers would like a free account, email me and I'll contact them for you.
Hope this helps
Alex