Videos

It worked pretty slick for the kids to get everything done in PhotoStory3 that they could do.  They used the flip cameras for video clips.  I converted them to avi files and then we worked together on WMM to put all of it together.   For no more time than they had to get everything done, they did a great job.

Expectations Videos

In groups, students have been brainstorming expectations for different parts of our building and for our classroom.  They are writing a song, a skit or just making a documentary about the expectations in the part of the building they requested or was assigned.  They have planned what they are going to say, who is going to say it, what kinds of pictures/video they want and in what order everything should appear.   They are taking staged pictures or making short video clips to illustrate the points they want to make.  PowerPoint is being used to make title pages and/or information pages as they will save them as jpeg files and pull them into PhotoStory3.  When they are done they will create a video which will be pulled into Windows Movie Maker.  In WMM they will add any video clips and add credits.  When they are done they should have a video for me to use next year to help explain expectations for the lunchroom, the hallway, the bathroom and other places in our building.

You may be asking, why PhotoStory3 and then WMM...the kids have netbooks and WMM doesn't work that great on them.  We'll have to use the computer lab or take turns on the couple of laptops we have in the room for WMM.  I try to keep their time on WMM as brief as possible so everyone gets time to edit and put a rolling credit at the end of their video.  Rolling credits are pretty cool!  :)

Choose Your Own Adventure Story

Students are currently working on a choose your own adventure story.  I'm not sure they get it.  I wanted to read a sample story to them, but it's been hard to get everything in due to the end of the year and everything that is going on.  I hope to get a chance to read their stories tomorrow and see how they are doing.  The stories are going on PowerPoint.  That gave us a chance to learn how to do buttons.  Of course, they love the buttons.


We also made another brochure.  This one was about fractions.  We made "posters" in Publisher about fractions.  The posters were saved as jpeg files and pulled into the brochure. They love making brochures.

The students told me today they want to make a Voki.  So, somehow we'll try to squeeze that in before the end of the year.

Word Art Collage

I went to the TRC Celebration last week and learned pictures can be used to fill letters in word art.  My brain has rolled that information around and around trying to think of a way to use that in the classroom.  One of our vocabulary words this week was collage.  We took all the pictures of the school year and created a collage.  Students created their own using pictures they were in and I let them use the jpeg files they created of their work for previous projects.  They made the collage in Publisher.  We could have used PowerPoint and the next time I'll probably just use PowerPoint.  We saved the collage as a jpeg file.  We pulled the newly created jpeg file into PowerPoint (there's probably a faster way to do this but this is the way I did it this time).  We cropped the write off of the edges and made a nice square/rectangle of the pictures.  We stretched it to fit the screen and saved it as a jpeg.  Then in a new PowerPoint file each student typed his/her name using WordArt.   (This next part I'm not as sure of as I need to do it one more time to refresh my memory - so if it doesn't work, check back as I'll update this when I get a chance.)  I think we right clicked on the word art and went to format text.  After clicking fill we clicked photo and uploaded the photo.  It's pretty cool.  We saved it as a jpeg.  In a new PowerPoint we pulled in the WordArt collage picture.  We stretched it, saved it and printed it.  I usually don't let the kids print in color for obvious reasons, but I let them print their name collage in color.  What a souvenir they have of their school year.   Someday I'll do this again...when I have a minute to think as I think we had a lot of steps we didn't need.

This can be used with vocabulary, too.  Choose pictures to illustrate a word to make a collage and then pull that collage into the word using word art.

Using Glogster

I've wanted to try this all year.  We finally are getting a chance to do it.  I let the kids go out and create the background of their glog.  We played with some of the features....just enough to get them really into it, and then I had them get out of the program. There was lots of grumbling going on.  Now that they knew what they could do, I had them draw a "map" of their glog.   The topic was butterflies.  They know a lot about butterflies, we have lots of pictures and some videos.  They told me the glog is better than writing a paper because it's on the computer and the computer is fun.  (They wrote their paper on the computer...guess that doesn't count!)