Animation

Today Greg introduced us to the a whole new world involving Animation. There are so many websites out there, it's unbelieveable. I have to say i wouldn't even know where to begin with it!

Some of these websites are suitable for kids and others not so it is important to use them and learn which ones are best suited for us when we are working with our students.

ZIMMERTWINS.com

The first website was http://www.zimmertwins.com/ which apparently kids absolutely love. Kids can create their own movies from scratch. This is a good website to incorporate into our lessons by having the students so some storyboarding and then have them transfer this into animation. This can be useful in language classes because students have to fill the talking circles in the language they are learning, so this is an effective teaching tool.

The next website we visited was http://www.xtranormal.com/. This is more for adults than children and is apparently brilliant for lipsinking. It can also be used for anything else you like.
The lipsinking technology has been made available and with such improvements because of web two techologies.

Swap Sketch (http://www.swapsketch.com/) was our next website. As you can see above, here is an example of a picture I have drawn. When I send this picture it will go randomly to another person around the world who is on the program, and I will receive a random picture from someone else. Some of the pictures I received were very good and others were rather average but it is a bit of fun. One of the problems is not having the control of what pictures the kids may receive but it opens up communication and sharing of ideas between each other at school and around the world.

INSPIRE, PLAN and CREATE (http://www.rollermache.com/), this is great for your students. It shows real world things to students, and can be used to cater to male or female students. This can give you a good balance within your classroom. Rollermache is a digital initiative aimed especially towards kids aged 8-15 living outside of metropolitan areas. It is focused towards showing this audience as well as children in city areas how to make their own content. The Rollermache website site also provides them with a safe space to showcase their creations that is both free and accessible to school and home computers.

Microsoft Photo story 3, this can be used to put your photo's on. Like our parents used to do photo albums this is great to place your photo's.

Other websites included, http://www.reasonablyclever.com/ and http://www.storygames.com/. The story games website is great for Reba stories. This is great for students like boys in grade 4, 5 or 6 who may be reluctant writers. This is creative and keeps them engaged and motivated.

Today has shown me that there are so many ways we can used animation in our classrooms and that it keeps the students motivated and engaged so it would be stupid not to use this tool.

Dust Echoes

DUST ECHOES (http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes)

Dust echoes is a series of 12 beautifully animated dreamtime stories from Central Arnhem land, telling stories of love, loyalty, duty to country and aboriginal custom and law. They also show different images and selected classroom activities associated for each, for the teacher to use and provide to the students to obtain a greater understanding of what the story is actually about.

Today our job was to retell one of the stories from the Dust Echoes website by cutting and pasting pictures into Inspiration 8.0 IE program.

Each picture should have a description outlining the story.

I read the teachers study guide and one of the worsheets which required the sequence of the story being put in order. I was able to watch the video and copy clips once I knew the sequence of the story which I thought were relevant. I was then able to cut and paste in 'Paint' and then into inspiration as part of my story retelling exercise.

The story of the spear to me is about power and how it cannot be stolen, it can only be used when it is rightfully given. It is also about how a person who has served their punishment they should be forgiven.

GRAPHING

In this next session Greg covered the importance of allergies with students and first aid. Our aim in this exercise was to determine how many of the different colours are in each packet of M&M's. We then represented this in an excel spreadsheet and then graphed it on excel. The M&M website www.m-ms.com.au has some interesting resources as well. It was great to see how excel can be used for math, science and humanity lessons.

We then compared our graphs to data shown on an electric whiteboard to data completed on a handout.

Our group opened our packet of M&M's and started to seperate them into their colours. We then added them onto our colour chart. Below are the results:

Red 12

Blue 13
Yellow 6

Green 10
Brown 7
Orange 7

Working with Excel was quite simple having used it in the past but it was also great to learn about some new features like adding pictures to my background and data labels. Excel is a great program and can be used for so many activities in the math domain, everything from budgeting, planning a party, sorting from A-Z, highest to lowest. Also running a sports competition, class certificates and teaching formulas, excels possibilities are endless.

The M&M's at the end of the class were an added bonus as well!

Design Briefs

Week 3 - 11th August, 2010

HOW TO MAKE A FROG JUMP?

Design briefs are used to encourage higher order thinking skills in students. It's great for collaboration, co-operation and competition. It's great for engaging your students.

The task for today is how to make a frog jump. The materials will be provided and from that the students in pairs will write up a design brief of the steps they took to make the frog jump. This is helpful because if the frog doesn't jump then they are able to refer back to the design brief and make changes to it.

Once they have figured out how to make the frog jump the students can design a poster with their design brief on it so everyone can see how they made their frog jump.

Materials

• Cardboard


• Picture of a frog


• Rubber band


• Sticky tape


• Glue stick


• Scissors

Important Note: Some students have never been taught how to use scissors so it is important to review this with the students. Most importantly we must show students how to walk when holding scissors and remind them of the danges of flicking rubber bands.

Our next activity we signed into http://www.quia.com/ and we signed up for a 30 days free trial
The process was pretty simple with username and password. Then we just added our name and email address. Once we did this we went into the quizzes pages and came up with our own five question quizzes. It's simple to start quizzes just by clicking on new quiz. Just add a title and desciption of the quiz, then start asking the questions and filling in the anwers. Put them on random so the program will mix the questions and answers up for you.

It's important that the students don't ask questions related to any of their classmates or teachers.

My German quiz url is: http://www.quia.com/quiz/2514030.html

My profile url is: http://www.quia.com/profiles/khibber22

This is a great way to find out what different things your students might be interested and you can also find out who can and can't spell.

Next I did an activity on jumbled words. I did the names of WNBL teams, which not many people had any clue about. I guess my interests vary greatly from others in my class.

Below is an example of some of the words that were jumbled. Do you think you can get the names?

Rief
Felmsa
Rmobseo
Raesrgn
Sacailtp

Job Applications and e-portfolios

PUBLISHER

Today Greg discussed the many aspects we need to be prepared for when we go through the job application. There is an abundance of questions we need to have answers for, including knowing the blueprint, having our e-portfolios ready and writing enough answers and information on the question sheet we are given ten minutes to prepare for when waiting for our interview. It was interesting and somewhat daunting to hear about everything we have to prepare for.

We then moved on to using Microsoft publisher to design brochures which is something we can use with our students in the classroom. It's a great way for students to promote a message they have been working on (e.g recycling, gardening, sporting activity). Using publisher students can create and run a class or year level newsletter that acknowledges birthdays and publishes students work. It is also something that can be used as an assessment. Publisher is a great way to display students work, like in the brochure shown below. Although I have to say the brochure I put together on Italy was not a masterpiece and this is clearly something I need to work on.

Bloggers and Mind Mapping

Wow....I have to say todays class was very unexpected. I wasn't aware we had this subject, I just assumed it was a continuation of Integrated Studies and another opportunity to work on our webquests. How wrong was I!!

Anyway after a confusing start to the class, things were well on their way with pictures and mind mapping and go here and there and do this and that. What a whirl wind of information!Fortunately Greg allowed us plenty of time to play with the site and slowly navigate and fumble our way through. Really the only way for us to learn was to throw us in the deep end. Thankfully I was surrounded with classmates who could gently nudge me in the right direction when needed.

Above is a mind map that I quickly threw together based on Cultural Diversity. This is a great tool to be able to use as a teacher and a student. It''s much easier to organise and to be able to add or delete from. I really like this part of the program. The uses for mind mapping in the classroom is endless and when i was on my teaching rounds the kids used it to collaborate their information. They seemed to really enjoy it and respond to their tasks positively.

To the left is my first attempt at using Inspiration 8 IE. I have to say I wasn't very good at it but again by just playing with it I improved. I can imagine how children would love this program and could really come up with some fantastic ideas. Probably much better than my pathetic attmept to the left.

I can see Inspiration being used for storyboarding, ESL and LBOTE students. It allows students to tell their story without having to use language, just pictures.