Voki

Leave a comment Posted on by Dominic Salvucci Class Updates, Cool Stuff, Lessons and Teacher Things, PAECT Pod, Random Musings, Student Projects

Old Guy Moments…Argh!

So, AI is all the RAGE or FEAR depending on your view of the future…of education…of the world…of humanity. I believe it is here to stay, at least in some form, just like the Internet, Google, Wikipedia, Web 2.0, and other forms of technology. I have been playing/experimenting with it for a while now, I want to learn more so I can address it APPROPRIATELY with my students. There will be other posts on that later, or you can listen to our discussions on the PAECT Pod. I am off-topic from the start of this post…let’s redirect…

For my classes Civil Rights/Black History Month Projects we once again were creating video projects, this time using Canva.  I have some students who are a bit shy and do not like recording their voices for projects.  The idea was to find a TEXT TO SPEECH TOOL my students could use for their projects, like VOKI. I went through my lists of resources from my PLN and Google and played with other free AI tools.  Some worked, but some were not really free if you wanted to download and use the text-to-voice file elsewhere.  Students used several of the free tools, one that worked well, we broke when it read every student using it in our building as the same user.  It found us “SUS” and shut down our attempts.  I have to reach out to them and see if I can correct that issue.

Anyways, yesterday I had a student who had been absent finishing up their project, but could not record audio due to losing their voice from illness,  Instead of going to Wakelet to look over my curated resources, I had the student open up the apps tab in Canva…THERE IT WAS THE ENTIRE TIME!!!! A TEXT-TO-VOICE app right within the tool we were using!!!!  ARGH!!!!  In the immortal words of Mr. Dierks Bentley, “What was I thinking!” Murf.AI was right there.  We connected through Google, and the student copied and pasted their script from Google Docs into the Canva-connected app which automatically pushed the audio into their project.  No downloading MP3s uploading MP3s then dropping them in to the projects, which is easy enough, but this is integrated right in the same program.

Why I did not check on this first, I have not a clue, but alas and alack, I now know better. I learned from my error, which I attribute to my age…yes, it is a low-hanging fruit of an excuse, but it works today.

Below are screen shots of Canva and Murf.AI along with an embedded video made with that app.

Search for Murf.AI in apps.


Create or log into your account, we used our school Googler Signins.

You can choose which voice to use, some are PRO Account only.

Choose tone of voice and type in or copy and paste what you want the app to say.

You can test the voice and adjust as you feel is necessary. When you are satisfied, click “Add to design.” Once you add the audio, you may need to adjust the length of your clip to get the audio and image to match up.

Granted, there are limitations to what AI can accomplish at this time.

 

Leave a comment Posted on by Dominic Salvucci class work, Lessons and Teacher Things, Student Projects

Josh Gibson Reflection

Jackie WeaverCreative Commons License Thomas via Compfight

I created a sample project to model an assignment for my Honors classes this past week.  The topic for my project was Josh Gibson; the assignment was to research a person or event for Black History Month and then post the research on a web page.  Students are to follow up their project with a reflective blog post on what they learned from the project, what they liked about the project, and anything they would change about the project.  Here is my sample reflection…

I researched Josh Gibson, one of the best power hitters in the history of baseball, why do many people not know of him…he played in the Negro Leagues.  He has been called “The Black Babe Ruth” others have gone as far as as calling Babe Ruth, The White Josh Gibson,” that is how good he was.  He was finally voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972, the second of the Negro League Players to make it there.

I learned many things during this project, some were about Josh Gibson.  I admit I knew of him before the project, I am 51 years old, a history teacher, and love to focus on the Mon Valley, a place that is still dear to me.  I did come across an interesting fact about Josh Gibson and several other Pittsburgh Crawford players; I am not sure of the veracity of the story, but it was found on several sites that attest to varying degrees of truthfulness to the events.  They played one season in the Dominican Republic for Ciudad Trujillo, the team of Dominican Dictator Raphael Trujillo.  Players were followed by gunmen the entire season, including while in stadiums, with gunmen lining the field during play.  You can find my sample project by clicking here.

I also learned some new skills and tools, some out of necessity.  My preferred platform, Wikispaces, is closing, our district’s Google domain is a walled and locked garden, and time is the ultimate scarcity, so I had to adjust quickly and bounce ideas off of my PLN on which platform I should host my students’ projects.   By the way, PLN refers to Personal Learning Network or Professional Learning Network, your choice.  I ended up going with Google Sites, the old version, because it still allowed me to share the student sites with the world.

I liked a good number of things about this project, but most importantly for me, I liked that what I believed about my students was true, even my students who shy away from technology can grasp its use and run with it in a creative fashion WHEN THEY CHOOSE!  (Yes, I just dropped all caps, but they deserve that.)  They handled the uncertainty of trying something new, along with the malleable nature of the project due to conditions mentioned above and rose to the occasion.  With a bit of prodding I got a number of them to open up with their concerns and questions towards the project and we were able to adjust due dates

There are plenty of things I will adapt as I move forward with my class and this project.  My students, or at least some of them may not be happy with this section, but they were very influential to my thoughts.  I believed, incorrectly so, that giving the students a brief introduction to the project and turning them loose on research would not cause stress. Students were charged with researching a topic and when I returned from the conference we would work on building their websites on the chosen platform.  I explained that I wanted to test a few websites before declaring a definitive project landing space. I was leaning towards using Wikispaces.com as the home for the project and when I discovered the site was closing down I was thankful for my hesitation.  Over the next several days at a conference, PETE and C, I polled my PLN on possible replacements, attempted a weak and unsuccessful Twitter campaign to change Wikispaces mind.

When I returned from PETE and C, I discovered how wrong  I was about student stress.  It took a bit of time upon my return from a conference to calm the frayed nerves, but things settled down with the extra effort.  Eventually students opened up with their concerns and questions and we worked through the process to clear any confusion, or at least I think we did.

This showed that I still need to work on lines of communication. I try to encourage student feedback and input, the attempt is there for them to feel comfortable offering their opinions.  That being said, a number of students were not very willing to open up about their concerns.  Even after I witnessed a number of eye rolls, heard some huffs of frustration, it still took a bit of cajoling to get some to share their thoughts.  I have no issues with giving students a voice and ownership in class activities, it is a good practice for all involved.  It is just an ongoing process we all have to adjust to and this project showed that I still have a ways to go to keep a comfortable setting for open communication.

The projects have not been turned in for yet review, but watching the students work and talking with them as they turn their research into online presentations has made me confident that the projects will be successful.  Students are purposefully trying out new tools such as Smore and Voki to add depth to the content of their presentations.  they seem to understand the concept of adding technology or new tools just for superficial reasons will not benefit their work.

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on by Dominic Salvucci Lessons and Teacher Things, Random Musings, Student Projects, Uncategorized

Voki and Wix

Today a learning opportunity arose with a student who was working towards completing a project for my Honors Civics class. The student had embedded a Voki into his Wix website. The Voki was showing on the page, but no audio would play.

Several quick tests eliminated browser compatibility issues, java and/or flash issues, and web filter issues. Other students who were in my room from their study hall soon joined in. We experimented a bit, re-recording another Voki, checking the audio in the original, we even looked at the html code, though neither of us know code. None of the experiments turned up a solution, although I noticed that the Voki was being cut off at the bottom on the webpage. Wix does state that html is in beta and not fully supported, but I did not believe that was an issue.

One last trial turned out to be the solution and it was so easy, even an old teacher like myself could do it. We simply clicked on the html widget box,on the edit view of the Wix page, and dragged a corner of the box to resize the widget. We republished the site and found that Voki now had the “Play” button partially showing on the webpage. The student repeated the process and realigned the widget on the page. There were several more alterations needed on the site, but the lesson worked across the pages.

It was nice to see an easy fix to a unique situation. All students involved learned more than just a quick fix to a simple issue. They learned to not stress when things go wrong and sometimes it takes more than one try to fix a problem; even for someone who seems to usually know what he doing with classroom technology.