Elluminate with On-Campus Class ~ Brilliant!

For the last two weeks in my ED410 course (Foundations of Literacy), we have been talking about writing with students. The first week, I used Google Docs to post the pictures of the students teaching in class and a group shot of each group up on Blackboard for the students to reference. I included them in the session powerpoint so that students could review the highlighted discussion topics if they needed AND see themselves in action. I used Photobooth and the camera on my laptop to take the photos.(I wrote more about the slide show below on wordpress. You can click here to read about it.)


(Ahhh, look at that! You can see the slides now! Thank you, Blogger!)

Tonight, I also utlized Elluminate Live! in this on-campus class. I did a model lesson of the writing process with students and used Elluminate for them to participate. This worked out so well - it kept the students interested and active in the activity. Look particularly at these slides in the show below:

Slides 2, 3, 4: In these slides the students were brainstorming vocabulary. Instead of students having to wait for me to write up their ideas on the board, they could add them immediately.

Slides 6 through 23: These slides show the student work.

Each student created a crayon monster during the brainstorming session. They used tape to post them up on the white board at the front of the room. I added numbers to them for identification without names.

After we brainstormed the vocab looking at their drawings, each student went to a blank screen on Elluminate to write a Cinquain poem (the directions are on slide 5). They were to be "secretive" and not let out on which slide they were working. The class would be trying to match the poems with the drawings later.

After the poems were done, I took over Elluminate and read aloud each poem one by one. After each reading, the students would use their computers to put up the number of the drawing they thought matched the poem I just read. In the past, I have done this all orally - for the students to add numbers to the poems screens added another layer of interactivity and color.

After about 20 seconds of the class making guesses, the author came up and put the screen number, circled, on the drawing. The class then saw if their guesses were correct.

The interactivity of Elluminate really made this lesson go smoothly with excellent student participation.

The circled numbers also helped me match up the poems and the drawings after class. I used my laptop camera again to photograph each drawing. I used skitch to take a shot of the Elluminate poem screens. Then I put those two image together to make the slides you see here. Very cool! I like having this record - before everything went in the trash afterwards.

The last slides show some problems I had with students "goofing around." While I was talking, some student just couldn't resist adding their own "graffiti." I had to ask all the students to close their machines while I was talking to keep some on task. I could definitely imagine the same thing happening in a classroom of elementary students.


I know that elementary schools don't have access to Elluminate. Is there another way a class set of laptops could be connected to all be enabled to input onto a classroom screen or smartboard??