Week 5

Animation

This week the focus was on animation. There is an abundance of rich animation resources on the internet and we looked at many of them.

The first is Zimmer Twins (http://zimmertwins.com/). Zimmer Twins allows you to watch short animated videos of the Zimmer twins and their cat 13. In addition to this you can also create your own animated videos using these characters. Unfortunately you cannot save your animations unless your a paid up member to the site. However you can still have a lot of fun playing with this website, and I think this is a great site to introduce students to creating and editing a movie.

Here is a screenshot of the animation I made with Zimmer Twins:

Build Your Wild Self was another application we looked at (http://www.buildyourwildself.com/). This starts you off with a human boy or girl but you are then able to change all the different body parts into animal body parts. I think this would be a great activity for students to do at the start of the year as it give them the creative ability to turn themselves into any creature they wish. This website is also very informative as it provides details about the animals you have selected. This would be brillant for an unit on animals!

Here is me as a Hiss-bat-aka-fro-elly-at-monkey:

We also looked at a number of other animation websites such as an Australian site Rollar Mache (http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache/), xtranormal (http://www.xtranormal.com/), Sketch Swap (http://sketchswap.com/), Reasonably Clever (http://www.reasonablyclever.com/), and another Australian site Ziptales (http://www.ziptales.com.au/). All theses sites had useful resources that could come in handy in the classroom. I particularly like the two Australian sites Rollar Mache and Ziptales as they contained excellent activities and learning resources, such as storyboarding instructions, that could be very helpful in the classroom. Ziptales unfortunately does require a membership.

Sketch Swap allows you to receive a sketch after you draw one yourself (a bit scary because you don't know what a student we get), here's what I received back:

Reasonably Clever allows you to create little lego characters called mini-mizers, here's mine:

The final animation internet program we explored was Dvolver Movie Maker (http://www.dvolver.com/live/home.html). This website is very simple to use to create short animation videos, but more importantly highlights a critical point about web content. Whilst this program is easy and fun, it contains images and content that is unsuitable for primary aged students. As teachers we must ensure that we never let kids loose on the net. The internet is littered with inappropriate content, even websites and programs that look innocent might have some unsavory pictures buried inside them. Therefore it is important to check and explore all websites we plan to use prior to suggesting them to students. I will keep an eye on Dvolver in case it ever becomes child friendly but for now it remains unusable in the classroom. 

Nevertheless here is sample video I made with Dvolver:

Week 4

Story Retells

This week we used the program Inspiration again to create a story retell. The stories used were aboriginal dreamtime videos form Dust Echoes (http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes). The story I chose was Mermaid Story. Using the video found on Dust Echoes, I took a series of screen shots and copied them into Inspiration to retell the story. This could be a very useful tool for students to retell any story, I think this is even a good method to retell the story of thier school activites such as camp, they could use the photos they took on camp to do this.

Microsoft Excel

This week we also used Microsoft Excel to input data and using this data to create graphs. This graph represents the number of different colour m&ms found in a packet (the results are not accurate). You can customise the graphs anyway you choose, I made the bars of the graph the same colour as the m&m it represents. I also added a picture by copy and pasting an image from the official website. This seems to be a fantastic lesson for students as it learning focus features both ICT (using excel) and maths (data and graphing), not to mention the kids will love to eat the m&ms!

Week 3

 Design


Our task in learning technologies in week 3 was to design a frog that jumps using the following materials;

• 1 frog cut out
• 1 rubber band
• sticky tape
• small piece of cardboard

We also used a Design Brief to record our design, resources and results. The design brief was split into the following sections; Problem to be solved, Resources, Investigate/Design, Produce, and Analyse/Evaluate. I think this layout is very effective and efficient for students as it will help them layout and structure their ideas.


The activity was very engaging and involved a lot of trial and error to come up with an effective design. What was interesting about the activity was when each pair shared their finished design they were all very different. Everyone managed to get their frogs to jump using the same small numbers of materials but each design used different unique ideas. I think that students would enjoy this task, it promotes creativity and encourages students to think for themselves and outside of the box.


Here is our design, we made a frog launcher to launch the little fella across the room. Success!

Games

This week we also looked at an internet resource named Quia (www.quia.com/web). Quia is a great resource for students and teachers to create quizzes, games, surveys, and a lot more. It requires a subscription but it does have a 30 day free trial.

Here are a few samples I made:

Essendon Bombers Quiz!

You can access the quiz here: http://www.quia.com/quiz/2513961.html

Guess the Sport Hangman!

You can play hangman here: http://www.quia.com/hm/668211.html

I think Quia is an excellent resource that can be used for not only teaching purposes (creating quizzes, etc.), but also as a reward for students to create their own games and quizzes. They can share these with other students. I think students would really enjoy this and creating games such as these can really demonstrate a student's knowledge on a particular subject.

Week 2

Microsoft Publisher

This week we examined a few features of Microsoft Publisher. Publisher is a good program for schools to use as it comes with most Windows packages. One feature of Publisher allows you to create brochures or pamphlets. There are so many templates to choose from. It is easy to place your own pictures and text in the template to create something that looks very professional.

Here is my brochure created using Microsoft Publisher. It is a trourism brochure for China:

Front page.

Back page.

This is a wonderful program for students to create a brochure for just about anything! However I do like the idea of choosing a destination somewhere in the world and creating a brocher to try attract tourists. Students would learn about the countries' people, places, food, history, weather etc. For the purposes of my sample, the information and pictures used to create my brochure was copied and pasted for a number of different websites. This process can be examined in a classroom, students will need to learn about copyright in this digital age. Discourage students from simply copy and pasting information and encourage students to write information in their own words.

Publisher is also very effective for creating websites. Again there are numerous templates to use, or you can start from scratch. We looked at using Publisher to create our e-portfolios to enhance our job interviews, I will definitely consider using Publisher now and in the future.

Week 1

Welcome to my blog. Here I will explore numerous computer and internet resources that will enhance my future classroom across the curriculum for years to come.

First on the agenda: screens-shots, and cutting and pasting. The above logo is from the top left corner of this webpage. To capture it, I used a simple process by pressing the "print screen" key to take a screen-shot. I then opened Microsoft Paint and copied the screen shot. I then cut out the logo from the rest of the picture and saved it. The above logo is the result of this process. This will be the method I use to post most of my pictures onto this blog. This is a good process to practice with students so they learn how to capture any image they may need or want from the internet for their own work.

Inspiration

This week we also looked a program called Inspiration. Inspiration is a idea mapping program that allows you to create concept and mind maps. It is very simple and fun to use.

Here is my Inspriartion concept map. It is about famous places in the world. By placing the globe in the center of the map I could then drag arrows out to link to photos of famous places in the world, the arrows are also colour coded to indicate which country the place belongs. All these pictures came with Inspiration too. Concept mapping may also be useful for timelines.

This is my Inspiration mind map. By starting out with the central idea of Europe, it branches out into different countries, then to cities, and then to places of interest of attractions. 

I think this is a fantastic program to use for brainstorming. Some students do not have the visual and creative ability to brainstorm effectively with pen and paper. Mind mapping lays out the structure for you and it would not take long for branch out ideas until the page is full! This is also very clear and easy to read.