We’re getting an iSight camera into the office soon (well, Christian is getting one), and I was looking at what it takes to mount it on a tripod (although these flexi stand things might be better). What was cooler was I found software for creating stop-motion movies with an iSight.
That’s so cool. I just watched a half-dozen movies linked in from the site, and people did some really neat things. It would be so cool to have a couple iBooks on carts in a school with iSights, and have an art teacher be able to do a unit that ties into the curriculum by having students make stop-motion claymation movies (or cut-paper a la South Park, or with pipe-cleaners, or any number of media) using this kind of software.
This ties into another thought I had this morning while speaking with a colleague; I wondered if the spread of voice-over-IP will find it’s way into language classrooms. Instead of having pen-pals (or, probably, email-pals) in other countries, I wonder if schools around the world will start connecting their students up and have them spend a half-hour twice-a-week as part of their language instruction speaking with peers on the other side of the globe. This strikes me as such a powerful use of a free, enabling, and (in some ways) disruptive technology.
I mean, how cool would that be? You’re taking intro Spanish in Iowa, and you chat on Skype to a peer taking intro English in Mexico, or you’re taking intro German in Scotland and you chat with a peer in Vienna. Instead of memorizing dialogues (which have their use in terms of language learning), you get to practice conversational skills practically, and visa-versa (each student takes turns conversing in their native tongue and the learned tongue).
Anyway. I’m not getting much work done this morning, it looks like…