Ah... Good Times..The Case of the Phantom Essay

Love it when former students remind you that they you are not an oblivious lost thought- yeah people might like me..

I got en email from a former student today who, now as an adult, is appreciating quality email banter. 

Vocab Vines...

I like vocabulary... I don't like stuffy vocabulary resources... I've been creating a plethora of vocab activities and methods of delivery which makes me laugh and the kids a bit more interested. Here's one... Vocab Vines. They know vines, they love vines and it supports a ton of learning objectives.

My name is Troy White, and I have Adult Attention Disor... 

I do get easily distracted when grading. I also have a history of mashing students' orals with some sort of silly tunes. In a recent IOC prep marking marathon, I got antsy and had to take an extended break and make these two. And no, I did not spend hours on them. And yes, there is a lot of potential integration to be had with these as far as future assignments go. They incorporate a lot of business...
1) Using iShowu "borrowed" a few tracks from the interwebs
 - When you set the recording to "system" it will grab the audio of anything playing
 - open up the screen casting in Any Video Converter and convert to mp3 
2) Garageband 
   a) import student oral 
   b) add a few effects to the audio (the kids might call it autotune) 
     - amplifier (British Clean), Voice wa, Theatre, etc. There are a ton of 3 minute tutorials on this 
  c) import borrowed track d) cut up both student oral and track - can't really go wrong here... 
  e) Export my track as Mp3
3) Photoshop - Find a decent Joseph Conrad image from the web a) and one of a dude named Skillet?      
    b) some blonde lady's hair
 ***Note, copying from the web and pasting into Photoshop is very easy with your command+ctrl+shift+4 
 *** good opportunity for students to play with layers and filters 
  c) Export image 
5) Blabberize 
   a) set up image for the mouth moving business 
 6) iShowu again 
  *** set this to "record system audio" 
  a) set the capture parameters to Blabberize 
  b) record the screencast 
  c) Hit play on the song 
7) On the second song, I did not want Joseph's mouth to move the entire time, so I 
   a) first screencasted the Blabberize  while I stated the lyrics 
   b) then aligned the chronology of the Blabberized screencasting to the audio track and 
   c) ONE LAST Screen cast.... it is a little off. 

Voila! I swear this only took a few minutes... 

Awesome bits... 
1) Screencasting + Blabberize 
 a) Poetry recital with author's image 
 b) Parody and focus on diction - Analyze your teachers... use their image, use their language, why are they so repetitive with their catch phrases, etc.?
 c) History - sooo much, autobiographical prior knowledge 
 d) Create a Monologue - characters in context - out of context 

There is something to be done with the mashup audio as well... 
   - Much like a word, cloud they can extract the principal language - inherent themes, key phrases, etc.... just a thought. 

 **FUN - they like the mouth to move... and 
   
***Motivation - lot's of students prefer to be dramatic than expository. When they can be a character, they are less inhibited