Six More Weeks & Making It Count!

One of the best aspects of my job is that I have flexibility in my curriculum. Depending on the group of students, I am able to shorten or extend projects based on student engagement, try new projects depending on what students are learning about or experiment with new digital tools in my Encore Tech class.  In previous years I had piggybacked off of the 2nd grade unit and taught more advanced Scratch skills to 4th graders over the course of a month or so. We always moved on without much push back. This year every fourth grader was so engaged and motivated by Scratch programming that each time I mentioned moving on, I heard grumbles and saw looks of disappointment. Because of that, I extended this particular Scratch unit to include a nursery rhyme challenge, which turned out to be a lot of fun but also took significantly more time than I had originally planned for Scratch.

But, a few weeks ago we were finally ready to move on. 4th grade students recently learned about Greek myths and after meeting with the 4th grade team to discuss possible culminating projects, they mentioned that the unit on Greek myths came to an abrupt end without much wrap-up.  So, two weeks ago we began a new unit on digital storytelling using Greek myths. This unit will cover the skills that students will need for 5th grade. Students used Google Docs to script a favorite Greek myth that they found in a book or on the Internet. They printed their scripts and pasted them into a storyboard, sketched their drawings and then switched to Tux Paint to begin illustrating. After they are finished with their illustrations, they will record their myth in Garageband, and add their pictures to match their narration. Finally, they will add sound effects or music and then export their projects. In the midst of this unit we will be taking spring photos. As you can see, we are in major crunch time and I’m hoping we will have time to tackle everything!

The 5th grade students have been waiting patiently for a stop motion animation unit and after the hard work they put in for invention convention, they definitely deserved it. Because students were immersed in a poetry unit and just had their poetry slam, I challenged them to create a stop motion animation based on their partner poem or an individual poem that they wrote. We have some very creative stop motion poems cooking in the animation kitchen right now and I’m looking forward to seeing how these turn out. The students did not realize how much math was involved in stop motion but when dealing with a script and trying to calculate how many pictures need to be taken for each scene, it is important to plan! Over the past two weeks, students timed out their poems and using the ration of 10 pictures per second, they multiplied the number 10 by how many seconds their poem took to read. Most students are somewhere in the 30 second range meaning they will be taking 300 pictures so their is enough video to fill the length of their poem.

In 1st grade we are wrapping up the year with an “All About Me” graphic organizer using pictures and text with an application called, Kidspiration. These projects will be shared with the 2nd grade teachers so they can learn a bit about the students prior to the start of the school year. We are also gearing up for the fairy tale musical and 1st grade students will be creating invitations to that evening for their parents using Pages.

We have a busy six weeks ahead of us and time is going to fly. It’s hard to believe that May is right around the corner already and I’m looking forward to wrapping up my 5th year at Avoca West with a bang!

Invention Convention Recap, SXSW Edu & More!

The past few months have sure flown by! Both 4th and 5th grade Encore Tech classes have been busy wrapping up long term projects. As the clock was ticking towards spring break, the 5th graders worked hard to complete their innovation projects in time for “Invention Convention.” The unit proved very rewarding when we gathered for this event in the ITC last Friday. Everyone had a great time watching student created commercials and hearing groups present their ideas to the large audience. We were joined by our Superintendent, Dr. Jauch, our new interim Principal Mrs. Kappel, various Avoca West teachers, parents and a reporter from our local Pioneer Press even showed up! Check out the article (unfortunately, you need an account to see the full page write-up). Mr. Patel, a district parent, provided valuable commentary about student ideas and gave a great presentation about innovation. Overall, the afternoon was a huge success. Thanks to everyone who helped me out when it was crunch time and to the teachers, administrators and parents who came to support the students and their amazing ideas. Here is a link to a compilation of the commercials that students produced in each class.

4th graders have been busy working on Scratch Nursery Rhymes.  Here is the link to the Avoca West Nursery Rhyme gallery online! They worked with small groups to storyboard and program stories and games that related to a favorite nursery rhyme. In the midst of this project we took advantage of multiple sunny but icy days to capture digital pictures of the winter. Students were challenged to take closeups, use the rule of thirds and try new perspectives. They created slideshows using iPhoto that truly capture the chilly weather and those are now posted to their blogs for all to enjoy!

Earlier in March I had the opportunity to attend the SXSWEdu conference in Austin, Texas. Mrs. Haugeberg and I had an amazing time listening to speakers like Jamie Casap, Bill Gates, Alan Gershenfeld, and Anant Agarwal. We tinkered with Legos and other maker items, played with a giant Jenga, saw the powerful film Bully at the famous Alamo Drafthouse and had a great time connecting with other educators. Thanks to EdReach, I was able to score a media pass and get up close and personal with many of the speakers. Here is a slideshow of the week in Austin!

SXSWEdu slideshow

I am looking forward to our upcoming units, 5th grade stop motion and memories project and 4th grade digital storytelling! More to come…stay tuned!

 

 

 

Innovating & Animating!

We just finished up a successful poetry podcast unit in 5th grade and we’re onto bigger and better things…Invention Convention! 4th graders have been busy learning the ins and outs of Scratch, a fun (and free!) application that teaches basic computer programming to students — scroll down to see what 4th grade has been up to!

While it is difficult to imagine exactly what the world will be like when these 4th and 5th graders graduate from college and look for a job, there is enough indication that a competitive and global job market is what they be entering. When we as educators and parents provide opportunities to spark their creativity, celebrate their individuality, foster self-confidence, encourage independent thinking, teach them empathy, and allow them to dream big, we are giving them the tools to become the innovators and success stories of the future. Both of these units accomplish just that!

what-is-innovation

The 5th Invention Convention is a great way to bridge their studies of past inventors and the Industrial Revolution with current times. As students began brainstorming ideas for their inventions this week, they were surprising themselves and the enthusiasm was contagious! This week we spent Encore Tech time learning about and discussing the idea of innovation and contrasting that with invention. We learned that “Innovation” is the process of making improvements by introducing something that is new and that “innovation” typically starts with a problem.  ”Invention” on the other hand is a unique discovery or finding. We learned how useful items like Post-It Notes (innovation), Velcro (invention), The Ball Point Pen (invention) and Google (innovation) were created.

We also learned that innovations and inventions are typically inspired by failure (a failure on the part of Stanford University Library sparked Sergy Brin and Larry Page to create a search engine. This evolved into Google.), inspired by need (no way to mark a page without damaging it. This evolved into Post-It Notes), inspired by nature (Velcro uses the same technique to “velcro” that burs found in the forest use to latch onto our clothing) or inspired by a discovery with no use (matter and energy were known to be related but Albert Einstein discovered a way to put those to use and paved the way for Thomas Edison to invent the usable lightbulb).

innovation

By the end of class time this week, students had chosen their partners and the challenge for the next few weeks in Encore Tech is to come up with an innovation or an invention. I told the students that they do not need to actually create their products but instead, come up with a problem and a product idea that offers a solution to that problem. At this point, students should be busy observing the world around them, taking note of everyday problems that they encounter that could be solved with an innovation or new invention.  Over the next few weeks, students will be deciding if what they are doing is an innovation or an invention. They will complete a planning guide that I will share with them in Google Docs, draft a diagram of their idea using Google Draw. They will create a print advertisement for their idea using Comic Life or Pages as a publishing tool and then storyboard, script and produce a television commercial. This year we are taking it one step  further. Students will be researching how feasible their product would be to actually create. We will take a look at manufacturing practices around the world, discuss outsourcing, Skype with special guest speakers to discuss product development and manufacturing with the students and finally, share our ideas with one another!

In 4th grade, students experienced working individually to create their first animation in Scratch and now they are working in partners to create a Scratch nursery rhyme. We have spent the past four weeks exploring the Scratch website, creating accounts, examining projects that other students have created, remixing projects that others have created and working on/uploading their own projects. Their challenge was to choose a nursery rhyme and create an animation or game based on the nursery rhyme. Students must use original artwork for their project. The ideas were really flowing this week!! I am anxious to see how the students use each others strengths to develop these animations and games. In the end, I will be posting all of their Scratch projects to an Avoca West Gallery on the Scratch Website. The fun never stops in Encore Tech!  Continue reading

Time flies when you’re busy!

We have had a busy few weeks in Encore Tech. Our 4th graders have posted their iPhoto slideshows. I was so impressed by the quality of pictures that they took after learning some important photography fundamentals. Students in Mrs. Kiedaisch’s and Ms. Michael’s class wrote poems to go along with their slideshows. Here is a great example of poetry combined with photography by Patricia Y in Mrs. Kiedaisch’s class. This week and next, students will be learning about RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and how to subscribe to each other’s blogs using Google Reader. They will also be subscribing to special interest kid blogs that cover news, sports, books and science topics for their current events unit.

Our 5th graders are wrapping up their foley art unit and will be posting this week and next. They did a great job finding creative (and loud) ways to use the items in Ms. Zimmer’s sound effects box to create sound effects for their poems. They are also learned a lot about Garageband, sound editing and narrating for an audience.

We are looking forward to starting a Google SketchUp unit in 4th grade and stop motion animation in 5th grade after Thanksgiving! Stay tuned for more examples of student work!