Blogs in Plain English

This is an easy to understand video that could be used to introduce children to the idea of blogging. This video comes from Common Craft, a company that makes "complex ideas easy to understand using short and simple videos." The videos use simple pictures and plain English which could be used as a model for children to create their own videos. The process relies on putting together a number of still images and is time consuming, but the results are great. To see how they do it take a look at this page which shows how they made an election video.

Thanksgiving Lesson

Kyle wrote a blog about Thanksgiving. I set forth three teaching points for the blog: to progress from general to specific, to use a colon for a series, and to understand the difference a past and present tense in a paragraph. I also ended up teaching him how to use time transitions. We started with three questions

1. What is Thanksgiving?
   
2. What did we do for Thanksgiving this year? What did we eat?
   
3. What are you thankful for?

Past and Present
Questions 1 and 3 require him to use present tense, while question 2 requires him to use past tense. He wrote the paragraph in the proper tense without any further guidance. I just pointed out after he wrote the entry the uses of the two tenses.

Colons
The entry required him to list things. I showed him how to use a colon with a series. He writes like he talks, so he originally wrote: We had three pies, cherry, sweet potato, and lemon. I showed him how to use a colon in place of the initial coma. I likes learning new things and wanted to incorporate the colon for his list of things he is thankful for.

General to Specific
The questions guide him to a general to specific construction. He started with a general statement about Thanksgiving. Then, he described what we as a family do for Thanksgiving. This was exactly what I wanted him to do and he did it with no guidance. Then, he jumped to "I ate.." This was not what I wanted. I guided him with questions about the whole group: What did we eat? He did not want to write everything we ate, so he came up with "a lot of food." This was perfect and allowed him to transition from the general (we/food) to the specific (I/turkey).

Time Transitions
I used this as a time to teach him time transitions. I guided him to the transitions with when questions like: When was Thanksgiving? He used responses (yesterday, after we ate) to progress through the paragraph.

Technology
Then came the fun part. We did not take pictures for Thanksgiving, so we had to improvise. We searched Google Images for a "thanksgiving dinner." He choose an image and we went about the task of personalizing it. We used Adobe Fireworks (Paint.net is a freeware version) to edit the image. First, we had to find a picture with a close up of Kyle's face. Next, we had to cut out his face by removing the background. Then, we had to merge the images. These steps required my help. Once his head was on the image, Kyle could make adjustments to the new merged image. He used the select tool and paint bucket to change the color of the clothes and to change the peas into cranberries.

This project took longer than expected, but in the end we was satisfied. I rewarded him by buying him his own domain name: www.kylegonzales.com.

Presidential Election

Political Choices
Kyle wrote a blog about the recent presidential election, Obama vs. McCain. He has been following the election since the primaries. Kyle has held preferences for who he wanted to win the election throughout the primaries. He was naturally more attracted to the Democratic primary, because it was a close race. He initially wanted Hillary Clinton to win. Why? I can only speculate. I am rather objective and try to impart that on him, so I don't give him many indications to my preferences. His preference for Hillary might have something to do with her being a woman and his wanting to see an American female president. He knows the Philippines has a female president and asked why America has not had one. He is also familiar with the Clinton name, from President Bill Clinton. Once, Hillary lost he switched allegiance to Obama. Why? Again, I am not sure. It could be the familiarity with him from the primary. It could be that he identified with him better. Maybe because of his age or his mixed heritage. I am not sure, but do know that he never really said much about McCain and never chose him when playing video games on miniclip.com (see below). Hillary or Barrack were his choices.

Guiding Kyle's Writing
In his blog, Kyle mentioned that he would help the environment if he were president. This is something he came up with on his own and must be a result of the push for environmental issues at his school and in the U.A.E. as a whole. I guided him in writing his blog by asking him 3 very general questions:

1. What happened?
2. What is his job?
3. What do you think?

I also gave him a list of useful words.

1. election
2. vote
3. president
4. Barrack Obama
5. John McCain
6. African-American
7. Asian-American

He chose not to use all of the words. I added the term Asian-American, because he had mentioned that he could be the first Asian-American president. He chose not to write about that.

Election Video Games
He has played a few election-based games on Miniclip.com, which he found enjoyable and educational. The game linked below, McCain vs. Obama, was perhaps the most educational of the bunch. It allows you to choose a candidate and make moves with the purpose of acquiring states. It allowed him to see that the election is a strategic game and to better understand Americas electoral college. Beware, other games on the site are more confrontational.

McCain Vs Obama Risk it all and use superior tactics to win the Presidential Election

Play this free game now!!

Del's Video Blog

Delbert now has a blog, Del Reports. He is 5 years old and cannot write sentences yet, but he can talk. I have decided to have him do a video blog, until he can write. Kyle's blog has become more video orientated, but I now require him to write about the videos.

What do you need to make web videos and post them to blogger?

• RCA EZ205 Small Wonder Digital Camcorder : This very small camera is useful and simple to use. The kids can operate it themselves and you don't have to worry about external media, like tapes or DVDs.
• Windows Movie Maker: Useful for editing a video or putting clips together.
  
• Moyea Flash Video MX (or the free version, Moyea Video4Web Convertor): Converting the video to flash allows easier viewing within the website.
  
• Space on the Internet: As of now you can not store the videos on blogger, so I put them on another server and link to them. Google and YouTube accounts are free, and allow you to upload and store flash files.

These are the steps we follow.

1. We shoot the video.
2. We plug the camera into the usb port and copy the video onto the computer.
3. We check the video to see if we want to trim it or edit something out of it.
4. If we need to edit the video, we open it in windows movie maker.
5. Once we are happy with the video, we convert it to flash with the Moyea program. The video is originally saved as an avi file, but flash is more web friendly.
   
6. The program produces an html file and a .swf file. We load the .swf file on the server.
7. We open the html file, change the location of the .swf file (since we moved it to a different location), and then we copy all of the code in the html file.
8. We Create a new post on blogger.
   
9. We paste the code we copied from the html file into the new post.
10. We write something below the code.
    
11. We publish the post.