Myst | Steps in Teaching and Learning

Myst V – first week finished

May 20, 2009 in Myst

I thought it would be of interest to post my thoughts, conclusions and also comments from my class after our first week of exploring and using Myst in our classroom.

I had my initial doubts whether the use of the game as a teaching and learning tool would be suitable for a class of children who have Spanish as a first language but after playing with the game I decided it would be a wonderful opportunity for developing speaking and listening skills. My thoughts were proved correct as the game has brought so much conversation into the class and with it more descriptive and interesting language. Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: activities, animoto, audacity, edmodo, Myst, prezi, resource
No Comments »

Myst V – Day 5 The first Trailer

May 14, 2009 in Myst

Today’s lesson was fantastic. The children knew, just as I did, that it was going to be a good one. They had finished writing their voice over scripts yesterday so they only had to edit them, tweak them into 30 seconds and rehearse performing them. It was an intensive lesson with lots of speaking and listening, probably more speaking come to think of it! But the end product was worth the extra work that they put in. They also had time to write their first rough draft for a descriptive poem based on Tim Ryland’s brilliant work.

This is the first trailer so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The other trailers can be viewed on my blip.tv page

Tools used to create the trailer

Audacity for the voice over
Animoto for the initial video
GarageBand (Mac only) for editing video and audio into a trailer

Tags: Inspirational, listening, literacy, Myst, recording, speaking, Tim Ryland
No Comments »

Myst V – Day 4

May 13, 2009 in Myst

I’ve been looking forward to this day since first reading about using Myst in the classroom from Mark Warner’s site. I wanted the class to write and perform their own voice over scripts for use with the trailer I created yesterday. I uploaded the trailer last night onto our Edmodo area and after a few minutes responses to it came from some children in my class. They were all looking forward to script writing. Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: persuasion, recording, script
4 Comments »

Our Myst V Trailer

May 12, 2009 in Myst

[clearspring_widget title="Animoto.com" wid="46928cc51133af17" pid="4a09d228814b9495" width="432" height="240" domain="widgets.clearspring.com"]

This is the trailer the children will use in class tomorrow to begin their voice over work. I used animoto to piece it together and I cut up the soundtrack with Audacity to a 30 second fit for the video.