Week 5

This week's workshop was all about animation. Again, this is not an area of technology I had ever explored before, so I found it really interesting and valuable. We were introduced to a number of different websites, but really didn't have the time to explore them in great detail so this is something I plan to do in my own time as I believe some of the sites we saw would be great inclusions in classroom learning activities.



First we visited the Zimmer Twins website and had the opportunity to make a cartoon movie using graphics templates that you could add text to. A screen shot of the movie I created is below:




This website is a great find, as the content is appropriate for school and it is very simple to use. This could easily be integrated into literacy activities in the classroom, as students could write a narrative story and then use this site to make a movie to bring their story to life.

http://www.dfilm.com/ is another website that allows you to create movies by adding text to existing graphics. This site was a lot of fun to use, however not appropriate to introduce in the classroom because of some of the images, characters and themes contained. We had a good laugh sharing our movies with each other, and mine can be viewed below as I also learnt how to embed video files in this blog!




http://www.xtranormal.com/ was anther site that we viewed, this one extra impressive because of how well the lip syncing matched up to the audio!


Another site that I really enjoyed was http://www.buildyourwildself.com/. On this site you can create gorgeous characters using different features from all different kinds of animals, and you are also exposed to lots of language and information. Here is a picture of my wild self!

This kind of activity could easily be incorporated into a literacy program as students could write narrative stories based on the characters they have created, and could also be included within an inquiry unit about animals. This would be a great tuning in activity as it is fun and engaging and begins to introduce you to different species of animals and some factual information about them.

www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache/default.html is another site that we were introduced to today that I found very useful. This site provides a behind the scenes look at how animations and claymations are created, and there are some great videos that you could show the class to introduce them to the idea of creating their own. A school that I visited recently had integrated visual arts into their literacy program and were creating characters and writing a script for a claymation video, and I really loved the idea of doing something like this. Having not done this type of activity myself, this site is also very valuable in teaching me how to do it as well as my students!

Throughout the workshop we visited a number of other sites such as http://www.sketchswap.com/, http://www.storygames.com/storygames.com/, http://www.reasonablyclever.com/ and http://www.catchmentdetox.net.au/, all of which are really clever ways that technology could be integrated into the broader curriculum. Below are screen shots of some of the activities I completed on these sites.

What this workshop has really shown me is that there are so many resources available to me, it is just a matter of spending the time to find them. Not all of the sites we looked at today would be suitable for the classroom because of the content or images, or the lack of control about what may appear of the site, so it is really important to look at each site with a critical eye and consider all factors before introducing it in the classroom.

This workshop concluded our look at resources in this subject, and I have found this class to be incredibly valuable. There are so many ways to integrate technology in the classroom rather than just having 'computers' as a stand alone subject. In the coming months before I commence teaching I plan to spend time revisiting the resources I have learnt about in this subject and researching many more to ensure I provide a rich learning environment for my students. As Greg says, children today are doing far more than just typing up stories at home so why would we limit them to this in the classroom when there are so many opportunities to extend them further!

Week 4

This week I was introduced to the dust echoes website, which contains short animation films relating to Aboriginal stories and culture. It was not one that I had heard of before, but I am glad I have had the opportunity to see it as I think it is a great site and one that I hope to use in the future. Each film also has an accompanying study guide which is a great teacher resource.

We watched the 'Mermaid Story' film together and were then asked to choose one film to watch, and then use the Inspiration program we were introduced to in week one to re-tell the story through images and text.

I chose to watch 'Brolga Song' and then I used MS Paint to capture images from the film and upload them into Inspiration. We were then able to move about the room and see each other's work, and some of the creative ways that people had chosen to lay out their story's were amazing. I think this would be a great English exercise for students to undertake, as it particularly relates to sequencing.


The second half of this week's workshop was all about MS Excel. I have used Excel a lot in my previous jobs, and have created many graphs and charts in my time! Today we used M&M's as the data to be included in the spreadsheet, and created a chart that depicted the number of different coloured M&M's were in a bag.


One thing I learnt that I hadn't really explored in Excel before was to make the charts fun - make it colourful and drop in images. We used the M&M website to find images to include, and this is easily something that Primary students could do too. Interpreting and understanding the graphs is the next step for students to extend their knowledge. This could be done by adding more visuals to the graphs such as labelling the data. Students could combine their results to create a new set of data and new charts to compare the differences, or even use another bag of M&M's to see whether the results are similar.

I have always recognised that graphs and data is essential in the maths curriculum, but today really showed me that there are easy ways to make it fun for the students.

Week 3

In this week's workshop the focus was on design and creativity.

Firstly, we learnt about the value of a design brief and were

provided with an example that you can see here. It is broken
down into sections which are Investigate/Design, Produce and Analyse/Evaluate. I learnt that this is a good tool for students to use at the beginning of a design project to help them gather their ideas, but that it is also a good idea for a final good copy to also be submitted to clearly see the steps that the students work through.

We had the opportunity to plan and implement a design brief as we were given a problem to solve. We had to make a picture of a frog jump, and were only allowed to use a rubber band, sticky tape and cardboard.

My group decided to fold the cardboard into 4 to create a concertina effect. We stuck the picture of the frog onto the face of the cardboard using the sticky tape and looped the rubber band through the cardboard.

When we pressed down on the frog the result was like a spring action and froggy jumped! It was great to see first hand how completing the design brief goes hand in hand with creating the final product and I think is a great way to provide some structure and scaffolding to students when they complete a similar task. To extend this task we could have looked at using different sized cardboard, or testing how far or high froggy jumped in comparison to other teams results. One thing that I really took away from this activity is that 'technology' in terms of the curriculum doesn't necessarily have to be computer based. A hands-on materials based activity such as this is also incredibly valuable for students.

The next activity was to look at some online technologies, and in particular online games. We were introduced to www.quia.com/web and were able to explore the games we could create through this site.

First I created a quiz, which was a simple multiple choice about farm animals. As a group we were then able to have a go at trying each others quizzes which was a lot of fun. I think this would be a fantastic activity for students to show their understandings of a topic they have just studied. At the primary school where I did my first placement they have implemented an accelerated reading program where each time they finish a book they have to complete a comprehension quiz on the computer. I think that a really great exercise to couple with this would be for students to create their own quiz about a book they have read. Another classmate or the teacher could then read that book and answer the student's quiz.

In addition to the quiz we learnt about the different activities that can also be created on this site such as hangman, word jumbles, word searches, concentration cards and many many more. I really enjoyed using this site and will try to use it on my next practicum to see how the students respond to it.

Here are some of the other games I

created in this workshop

Week 2

The focus of week two's workshop was on using MS Publisher and the job application process we will all soon be going through.

I have used MS Publisher before, mostly for school projects or invitations. In fact for an assignment due in semester one my team and I created a brochure. Funnily enough, this was the first thing we created in this week's workshop.

I began creating my brochure on Phuket, a holiday destination in Thailand. I chose what I thought was a 'beachy' feel for the colour template and began entering text and images. Because I have used the program to make brochures before I didn't find this activity too difficult, however I do sometimes find Publisher to be a bit 'finicky' for lack of a better word, and the formatting of the different sections can sometime be hard to get perfect which can be incredibly frustrating. I think Primary students would really love to be able to make something like this, but I think it would be best suited to the older grades.

The next activity was to create an e-Portfolio, also in MS Publisher. I have heard a lot of talk about portfolio's this year so was interested to learn how I could go about creating one. I put together a rough outline of some of the things I would include in my e-Portfolio to get a feel for how it would work.

The template itself was quite easy to create, and I really like the way the program makes it clear and easy to navigate around the portfolio and jump from page to page. The types of headings that our class talked about including were things like About Me, Educational Philosophy, Resume and Achievements. All of these thing suddenly gave me a lot to think about. We also talked about including photos where possible, and I think this will really add value.

I have heard mixed feelings towards the need for a Portfolio when going for an interview. The union said its not that big of a deal, some teachers don't think it's necessary whereas others spent hours putting theirs together and think it is crucial. At this stage, I am not sure what to think, however I would rather have one and not need it than need one and not have it!

I like the look of the e-Portfolio's we were able to create in Publisher, however as this is not a program I have at home I don't think it will be useful to me. I plan to create my e-Portfolio in MS Powerpoint and hope to be able to create something that looks just as professional and engaging.

Week 1

Today I set up my first blog on blogger.com

I have not done any blogging before so am interested to learn more about it as I think it will be a really useful skill to have as a teacher, particularly with the Ultranet coming in. I learnt how to create a post (obviously!) and how to add images. Greg showed us an example of how to add images in MS Paint which is a program I am very familiar with and use a lot. I haven’t ventured into looking for other programs as yet because it has always done enough for what I have needed, and I also think it is an easy and useful tool for Primary students to use – although I am sure they will be able to show me many more.

Next we were introduced to a program called Inspiration which is a great tool that can help to create diagrams and mindmaps. The program fosters creativity and higher order thinking processes, and one of the great things about it is that it is able to upload images (including images from the internet). This makes it a really easy to create visual pieces of work.

The first thing I created using Inspiration was a diagram. As is usually the case with me, my gorgeous cat Belle was my inspiration (pardon the pun) and I created a diagram that showed her in relation to her feelings about different thing in her life, as you can see below.

This was very straightforward and easy to create and I definitely think primary school children would have no problems doing something similar. Greg suggested an activity that I thought was a great idea, which was to use this diagram as the beginning of an author study. Roald Dahl could be the central starting point, and students could brainstorm all the titles of his books that they already know.

The next thing I created was a mind map, where related ideas branch out from one another. I decided to use holidays as my starting point, and listed the countries and cities I would like to visit if given the opportunity, and from there started to break down specific activities or things to note for each one.

This was also very simple to do, and something that I think would be very useful to use at the start of an inquiry unit. A benefit of using technology to do this is that once you are finished you can easily keep it for future reference, whereas writing it on a whiteboard will likely be rubbed off soon after you have finished. Another great thing about the Inspiration program is that you can transfer your creations to a word document so that they can easily be saved and printed. At the beginning of an inquiry unit the class could create a mindmap together on the interactive whiteboard, then each student would be able to get a copy to keep in their folders or notebooks to refer to throughout the unit.

I had not looked at any other mind mapping programs using technology, but now that I see how easy it is I will definitely be investigating them further. From what I have seen, Inspiration looks to be a great program but does have costs associated with it and the school's that I have been in so far have not had it available to them. I plan to spend some time playing around with the sites that have been suggested in LMS and hopefully will find something that I can take with me and use in my classrooms.