For the last couple weeks the third grade students have been working on a project in class and in technology called the 2014 Holiday Card Exchange. We have been paired with 29 other classrooms from all over. Most are from the U.S. but we have one classroom from Canada and one from Australia. The children made cards in both classes. They also created an "All About Me" fact sheet using Microsoft Word. We have been opening cards for the last week and a half, and have received less than half of our group. We also watched video cards from our penpals in Australia. This really inspired us! We wrote scripts about where we live, what we might see out our windows in December in Michigan, how we dress for recess and a family holiday tradition. Then each child was recorded reading their script. The videos were posted on a private, password protected site which was shared just with the teachers from our exchange group. It's been a great project! We are hoping our cards all make it in before the holiday, and our Australian friends are hoping their cards arrive before their summer vacation begins!
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The middle school students have been learning about Egypt in their Humanities class. As an extension of that unit, the students created postcards from Egypt. Students took self-portraits and removed the background. Then they added their portrait as another layer on top of an icon Egyptian photograph. Next, the students added additional layers where they traced the outlines of the monument and of themselves and used the paint tools in Adobe to color them in. It was a complicated and difficult project, but they did a nice job following the complex directions.
The fourth and fifth grade students have been learning how to embed code into their websites. Today, they used www.elfyourself.com to create fun music videos and learned how to embed the code on their website. This is always a favorite activity!
This week the middle school students worked on removing part of a photograph and then layering it on top of another photograph. We started with animals on white backgrounds and then students choose a background to go with their silhouette. Once they mastered that skill, they moved to finding a photograph and removing just a piece and laying that over a background, such as Chanel's example of the dress below.
The fourth and fifth grade students have started to work on their personal (password protected) website/blogs. They are just getting familiar with the differences between the formats of a website page and a blog page.
Our middle school students are familiarizing themselves with Scratch, which is an educational programming language developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The students program in Scratch by dragging blocks from the block palette and attaching them to other blocks like a jigsaw puzzle. Structures of multiple blocks are called scripts. This method of programming (building code with blocks) is referred to as "drag-and-drop programming". The students worked individually or in pairs to create a program that they are presenting to their peers. As they become "experts" they can help support and challenge each other as they make further creations for school or leisure.
The fourth and fifth graders are learning how to use Adobe Photoshop. We're starting with the Quick menu features and focusing on skills like cropping, fixing red eye and quick lighting fixes. Then students are working on saving editing images and finding them to place on a Word document.
The middle schoolers have been working on understanding email etiquette and safety. The students worked in small groups to learn about the different aspects of email that could potentially lead to problems. Then they created a PowerPoint and presented their findings to their peers. They are a very conscientious and cautious group and were very interested in learning how to be careful and kind in their digital communication.
Before Halloween, the 4th and 5th graders created a Trick or Treat Candy tally chart in Microsoft Word. Then they had the opportunity to graph their candy and return the data in any form or graph they wanted . It was fun to see what the students created using the skills they are becoming proficient in!
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AuthorI'm Mrs. G the tech teacher and I hope to share some of the integrated activities we are working on in the lab. Categories
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October 2015
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