We created voki avators that describe a new word we learned in one of your classes. We had a few minutes to quickly come up with a word and figure out how voki works on our own. Our goal was to manage our time wisely and not waste a lot of time on deciding what our avator would look like. We also paid attention to making sure the avator spoke clearly, providing correct spellings and choosing an appropriate computer generated voice to describe our new word and how we learned about it. We shared our avators with our class teachers by sending them a link via e-mail. Press the play button on each avator below to hear about some of our new words. We are looking forward to seeing more voki avators used to reflect on learning across other subjects. You can create your own avator for free at the voki website.
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Students in grade 6 learned how to make quick animations as short videos. We learned how to use Go!Animate to create videos that helped us reflect on at least one of our school dispositions. As members of our school community we are expected to be;
First, we created storyboards on paper to help us make sure our videos would teach someone about our dispositions. Then the fun began – creating our videos. We hope you learn something from us.
From my guest authors - two 9th grade students showing what they have learned about on-line image editors. "We made a brochure to promote an online image editing website called Aviary. Our brochure tells readers how useful the website can be by emphasizing it’s features. We learned that Aviary is a very useful tool that can change images and edit them just the way we want. We liked how this website is easy to manage and has various tools. Aviary is an image editing website we can use both on the computer and on a mobile device that has an option of JAVAscript and HTML5 of Flash. It’s features are very useful and varied. Their tools are easy to use. It is also free and the integration takes no more than 15 minutes." Their brochure's cover. Their brochure. 7th grade science students created digital books as an assessment task after learning about fossil fuels. They used props, backgrounds and images in storyjumper to creatively illustrate their ideas. They shared their books online with friends and teachers allowing them to flip through, read and learn about fossil fuels. Storyjumper allows you to use your own illustrations to create digital story books. It promotes creative writing and encourages students to take ownership and be proud of their writing. A hard cover copy of your book can be ordered online, printed and mailed. This was not a requirement for our project. Read one of our books here. In 9th Grade, we learned how to record quick screen cast tutorials using screenr. Their tutorials show how to use an online tool such as pixlr to quickly resize an image. We are exploring a number of on-line tools as they can be used on any platform, whether Windows or Macintosh. Most on-line image editing tools are free and can be useful where one does not have an image editing program installed or they simply don't own a licenced program like Photoshop. Screen-casts eliminate the need for someone to be present to help do something on the computer. They can easily be shared on websites, blogs or via e-mail. Below is an example of our tutorials, feel free to view on 'HD full screen'. I am holding a video contest where students can submit videos or animations created during their Advisory Block or from their classes. The main idea is to inspire young learners to teach us something using technology in a creative manner. Videos will be submitted to me for checking before being uploaded to the school Google Apps service, a secure location only visible to our students. Closing date for submissions is May 23rd 2012 and the winner will be announced on the May 30th 2012. I am buying the winner(s) a Pizza. An example video can be played on the poster below. Any questions, please don't hesitate to ask me. Does your child have an i-pad or i-pod? SmarTots helps parents get reports on what their child is learning. It enhances learning with fun activities. SmarTots recieves insightful reviews from teachers all over the world so you can find out what teachers are saying about an app before you install it or buy. Apps range in variety from FREE to paid, Age 2 to 7, Language, Math and Logic, Social, art, Music, Science and Body. "When your kids play with these apps, you can receive tracking and progress reports, as well as relevant app recommendations based on your children’s activity." I came across something that may be useful to students at home (or to you) Snapanda, the 21 Century Dictionary. Just touch any written English word as you see it on a page, poster, anywhere through your smartphone camera and Snapanda will give you the definition. Watch this user guide video that answers some common questions about how the app works. Users can create custom lists of words to build their own vocabulary for easy access later. Looking to go to college soon? Snappanda boasts of "free access to their TOEIC® and TOEFL® high-frequency word lists."
Want to give it a try? It is FREE for Android and may be available for iOS soon. An iPhone beta version of SnaPanda is already under way. WOW! Grade 7 students learned about creative commons and created posters discouraging piracy. We learned how to use picnik and all it's creative fonts, stickers and much more while creating our posters. Below are a few posters, be sure to flip through the pages to see a few of our posters. If you walk around the school campus you will see even more posters to ensure we reach a wider audience within our school. You can learn more about licences when using other people's work or protecting your creations from the creative commons website. Please note: Content on the right hand side of the full screen view does not belong to us it is other issuu users' contributions under the same subject.
Here is something I came across and found interesting about being safe on the internet. You may wish to share and discuss with your children to reinforce internet safety. Thanks to Vicky Davis for the poster.
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AuthorKahlil Danai Maramba, Categories
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April 2012
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