Google Slides to Stop Animation

• You can use Google Slides to create stop animation. 
• Open a slides file
• Create a beginning slide
• Duplicate and change it slightly to tell your story
• Do this many more times

• When finished, choose File, Publish to the Web
• you will set the file to auto-advance every second
• set to start as soon as the player loads
• choose restart the slideshow if you want it to loop

• Press Publish and copy the code
• Open a new tab and enter the url in the address bar
• You will see in the url a portion that says delayms=1000, this means that that each slide shows for 1000 milliseconds or 1 second. You want it to move faster for the animation. So before you hit enter, change this number to something smaller. Half a second would be 500 milliseconds. We used 200 for most of our stop animation.
• Press enter and check
• Adjust as needed
• You may need to make more copies of images where you want that image to be on the screen a little longer.

Once you get it the way you want it, copy the link again from the Publish to web, add it to a new tab, change the timing to what you feel is right, then copy that address to use where you want it to go.

Once you get it the way you want it, you can take the url and create a QR code. This makes a fun way for families to access the stop animation projects that students create. 

We used the QR codes in ornaments as a holiday gift for families. 

  

  

Interesting to Note: When we were adjusting the timing of the slides, the 3rd grade students seemed to easily make sense of how 1000ms is 1 second, so if they want the slides to go faster then 500ms would be half a second. When I asked how fast 200ms would be they worked it out quickly that it would be 5 slides a second.
Happy Happy Teacher!
Maybe this will lay some foundation into how fractions work.

First Day of School Forms

We all have information we really need to get that first day of school to help everything run smoothly. Primary teachers especially, like to have lunch and dismissal info at the very beginning of the day. But the reality is, with 30 or more kids and families all coming in at the same time, you may miss someone. They might not see the form, the sign up list, or whatever it is you have out. Then you need to somehow make contact on the busiest of all days, the first day of school.

I decided to put my Google Geekiness into this and try to lessen the need for me to interrogate make contact with every single person. Using a Google form means many of my families can get me this info prior to school starting (we don't have "Meet the Teacher" events at our school.) And if they missed the link that I will put up on the class list, and on my website, I will have it on the front door both with the link and a QR code. Then I can concentrate on greeting my new kids and families and calming the criers helping everyone feel welcome.

Google Forms are awesome for this task. I created this one with just the info I needed to get through the day - student and parent name, quick contact info, lunch info and dismissal info. I'll save all of the "How can I help your child be more successful this year" questions for a follow up form. 

Here is what it looks like when accessed from a smart phone:

Creating a Google Form is very easy if you haven't tried it before. Here is the Google Forms Tutorial:  https://support.google.com/drive/answer/87809?hl=en

Then, if you want to make it into a QR code, go to a QR creating site like http://www.qrstuff.com/, add the link to the Live Form, and save your QR code. It's that simple.

Edited to add: Of course I will print out several forms for those who do not have internet access or a smart phone. Google Forms has upgraded recently to make printing out the created form just as easy so you don't have to create the form twice.

Students as Authors

Student Created Audio Books

You know how kids love to be read to? And they love to draw? And they love technology? Well, here is a combination of all three that inspired my kids to add more detail to their own writing and keep writing!

Students wrote their revised and edited stories into these cute little booklets. And you're thinking - "So what? Everyone does that."  "That's nice. I never thought of that before."

After writing, they illustrated their stories. Then, it got interesting! The students read and recorded their stories on a web based audio program called Vocaroo.com. It's a free, very simple website with one button "click to record" and "stop". Then save. The site has a link when you save which will automatically create a QR Code. We printed the QR Code, glued it into the book and now had a new audio book for our listening center. 

The amazing thing was that, while listening to each others stories in the listening center, even my reluctant writers wanted to write more and more. 

Next year, I will have the kids branch out to writing and recording  non-fiction and much more!

If you'd like a copy of my booklet pages, you can get them from TPT.

Booklet with Primary Lines

Booklet with Upper Grade Solid Lines

Here is a post from Teresa at Fun in K/1 who uses Vocaroo and has a great graphic with instructions for students in creating the recording and QR code. 
http://www.funink1.com/2013/07/qr-codes-with-audio.html