Inspired by art projects from the UK I took photos of each student's head, took out the background and saved them as .png files (this maintains transparency, ie. no background!) The students then used 2Paint a Picture to 'open' their head and choose various objects to 'come out'. A couple were creative; one used a complete picture of herself that we'd used for a project last year, and another student used her wordle! This is quite a repetitive exercise, but was good reinforcement for filehandling skills. Check out the examples:
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Inanimate Alice is an online adventure story that uses a variety of media to enhance the narrative. 5/6G spent three lessons using it individually with headphones. This enabled the class to focus on the task in hand (the week prior they had been very easily distracted!) as well being able to view the story at their own pace. In order to concentrate on certain features I gave them a worksheet at each lesson to record their thoughts and impressions. Here are some of the student responses: "The sound effects worked well because you can really tell what happened." "The video games ans texts added more meaning and fun." "The music and pictures made me scared." "I would recommend it because it is very interactive and real." "It's fun and exciting but a little bit scary." Screenshots from Inanimate Alice Episode 1: China I am convinced that students don't use cameras enough at school. They can certainly add some creativity to display projects, as well as documenting practical work, such as art, drama etc. Once the Gr4 students understood how Animoto worked I sent them round the school in pairs during their lunch hour to take pictures of what they saw. I was delighted with some of the more unusual photos, taken from different angles. Of course there were a lot of standard 'posed' photos as well. I then showed the videos before Assembly as all the classes entered the gym. Examples below! I'm still musing over how effective iPads can be to support Technology Integration. There's no doubt that they are very accessible, engaging and have an ever increasing range of Apps. There are still some barriers, more from the point of view of teacher implementation. File handling needs careful organisation, as it's quite different from regular practice. Printing material can be awkward, but is not insurmountable. Using the Rover App Flash websites can be accessed, but at a cost - high bandwidth use, delay lag, lack of fine control. Also Shockwave sites still won't work. Hopefully the Rover App will be continually updated to address these issues.
At this point I feel that both the traditional computer approach and the iPad path are complimentary. The ideal solution would be access to both forms. I had the privilege of attending the ISABC Collaborative Pro-D Conference at Mulgrave School. As well as presenting a workshop in the morning I was able to attend an iPads in Grade 3 presentation in the afternoon led by Mulgrave teachers. What follows is my initial reflection on a superb presentation!
The presentation began with Gr3 students showing us some of their work using the iPads. This was most effective as it presented an authentic student voice. I really appreciated this talk being rooted in Philosophy and Pedagogy - this was led by Kent Jamieson. I personally feel that all use of Educational Technology needs to be grounded in this way - there is simply no point is using technology just for the sake of it! I appreciated hearing about the different uses of the iPad in supporting the curriculum, especially in terms of reading assessment. I had not realised that the iPads were student owned rather than school owned. The practical implication of this is that students may have their own extra personal apps, in addition to school required apps. Shauna was candid in telling us how this app peer pressure was addressed in school. My 'big idea' is grappling with the following question: 'To what degree is this project covering Technology Integration in a way that Collingwood is not, and what are we achieving in Technology Integration that Mulgrave is not? ' My initial feeling is that both approaches are complimentary rather than mutually exclusive. There is no doubt in my mind that iPads are both engaging and very easy to use. Thus an iPad program is very accessible and able to support the curriculum well. However there are areas that are under-served, for example the lack of Flash compatibility excludes some wonderful activities. I am still pondering...... A voxel is a 3d pixel, and a pixel is a tiny dot (square) in a computer image. We used VoxelArt in 34DG to create pseudo 3d images. The only way to save images is to the online gallery (which is moderated) or by taking a screen shot (CTRL + prt sc). Here are some of the images the students made:
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AuthorAfter many years in the Archives
March 2018
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