Archive of ‘Technology’ category

Grandparents’ Day Arrives!

And the second graders finally have the chance to share their Heritage projects! (If you want to read more about the children creating a touching look at their family history, click here.)

We had a “dress rehearsal” this week – just to make sure the students knew how to access their video or ePub book created in the Book Creator app.

dress rehearsal for GP dayFinally, the big day arrived! The children led their special visitors into their classrooms, retrieved their iPads, plugged in the headsets, and shared their project. They knew exactly what to do!

Watching the expressions of the grandparents is priceless! Listening to the sweet voices of their grandchildren tell about their family history is such a special moment.

Here’s a very quick look at the children sharing.

We Can Code!

Code.org was introduced to our first graders last week. As kindergarteners, most of the children had used Kodable (and we’ll be using that again as well).

We started with the “unplugged” Happy Maps and Move It, Move It activities from the Code.org course 1 curriculum.

First, the vocabulary was introduced:

  • Algorithma list of steps that you can follow to complete a task
  • Programan algorithm that has been coded into something that can be run like a machine.

Instead of having the students work individually on paper, I drew a grid on the board and asked them to how they would move Flurb (yes, that’s its name!) to reach the apple.

IMG_4029This was really interesting with the first class. Two different students came up to the board and each took a very long way to reach the apple.

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After discussing how there are almost always several ways to solve a problem, we talked about taking lots of steps versus taking fewer steps. Then the students realized that Flurb just needed to hop down one space to make it faster.

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I think what confused the students is that there was no square between Flurb and the apple. Once they realized that it was okay to hop to another square, they understood that the move was fine.

The next challenge was to guide Flurb to the flower pot. However, some of the squares were blocked off.

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By this time, the students were quickly rattling off how Flurb could move. They GOT it!

We moved to the computer, had the students log into code.org with their secret picture and off they went. Or, at least some of them – for whatever reason, we had a really difficult time accessing the site. Don’t know if the problem was on our end or theirs?? We’ll try again, though.

I know that we have an eager group of little coders ready to practice algorithms and programs!

Sharing Our Heritage

Each fall our second graders create a Heritage project to share with grandparents and other relatives. They bring in photos of family members, sometimes from several generations back! Over the years I’ve tried a variety of online applications to make the final product but it’s always been more of a teacher-created project. Parents would email photos or send them on a CD. I would upload them to the student’s home directory. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes work that needed to be done before the child could even begin to record their heritage story!

This year we decided to use the Book Creator app, an easy-to-use ePub book maker that allows the user to import pictures and record narration. Besides saving as an eBook, the finished product can also be exported as a video.

We asked the parents to send actual photos. The students really giggled when I said they were going to take photos of their photos! After a photography lesson, the children scattered around the room in search of the perfect place to take their picture. They watched for glare from the lights, checked for blurriness, learned how to crop.

IMG_3872IMG_3862Next step was to insert the pictures into the Book Creator app.

IMG_3851The following week we worked on the cover of the book. What child can resist taking a selfie?

IMG_3887The students also added page colors and chose a font style and color.

IMG_3883The children are in the process of recording their heritage narrations. Then I’ll be uploading the finished ePub books and videos to the web so that their fantastic, student-created work can be shared with family and friends!

Welcome to the Web: A Webquest for Learning How to Navigate the Internet

Welcome to the Web” is a webquest designed by Mark Warner to teach students about the internet. Here is the description from the Teaching Ideas website:

The resources are split into seven sections:

  1. The Beginning – explains how to use the site.
  2. Getting Started Online – teaches children about the basic concepts involved in the Internet (World Wide Web, Hyperlinks, Back button etc). This introductory lesson also gives valuable practice in visiting and navigating around web sites.
  3. Staying Safe – encourages pupils to keep themselves safe online by following the SMART rules. Also tests their understanding usign interactive activities and fun quizzes.
  4. Using Your Browser – helps people to learn more about their web browsers… what are the different features and how are they used?
  5. Searching Online – teaches children how to search effectively, and keep themselves safe when doing so. Also identifies search engines which are particularly suitable for children to use.
  6. Trying Top Tricks – finding information on the net is great, but it is also important to know how that information can be used. This section explains about printing, using the Find tool to locate specific information within web pages, copying and pasting text, and saving images from the web. Also includes information about copyright and why it is important to credit others when you use their work.
  7. The Welcome to the Web Challenge – When the children have completed all of the sections of Welcome to the Web, they can complete this exciting challenge. It requires them to use all of the skills which they have learnt to catch the creator of a destructive computer virus!

Our fourth graders work in pairs to explore the webquest. I always enjoy watching their interactions with each other and how secretive they become when they figure out who the computer virus culprit is! Much is learned through this fun and informative quest.

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Movin’ On to Middle School

As our fourth graders inched toward the end of their Lower School years. I asked them to reflect on two items:

  1. Think back over the many activities you’ve participated in over your years in Lower School. Whether you’ve been here since kindergarten or joined the TVS family later, what has meant the most to you?
  2. Take a look into the future. At this point in time, what do you think you’ll want to do when you graduate from college?

The end product would be an ePub book created in the Book Creator app. In addition, this would be saved as a video. I really like that Book Creator offers this option – extremely helpful to have another format available for families who don’t have iOS devices.

The students would be illustrating both items using Microsoft’s Paint program. There was much discussion as memories of past years flooded back – the Teddy Bear Picnic in Kindergarten, the plays performed in every grade, field trips, worm farms, learning coding, and so much more! And then, the hard decision of what to draw. After all, the Paint canvas is only so big! For some, there really was one event or activity that stood out as a favorite. For others, there were quite a few choices so they drew something for each grade.

Moving on to the “future” picture, we discussed how most people change their minds several times before deciding on a major in college. But, there are those who know exactly what they want to do in life at an early age. Which would they be? I challenged the students to look back at this project when they graduate from high school and see if what they are planning on studying in college is similar to what they illustrated while in fourth grade!

The next step was to write a script. I have to say that this wasn’t a favorite part of the project and there were some that rushed through this step. However, having a script to follow when recording certainly avoids stumbling over what to say!

Each child set up two books in the Book Creator app. They downloaded their illustrations (I’d uploaded them to my Picasa Web Albums site) and added them to their page. Of course, personalizing the page was extremely important – from page color to font style. When recording was completed, the individual books were emailed to me so that I could pull them together into class books.

Cover of Favorite Activity book

Cover of a Favorite Activity book

Cover of Future book

Cover of a Future book

Here are the links to the ePub books:
(Be sure that you tap on the links while on an iOS device that has the iBooks app installed. Choose Download > Open in iBooks)

The next step was to export the books as videos (done straight from Book Creator). This can be a final step before uploading to Vimeo of YouTube because you really don’t have to do anything else to the video. However, I like to do some editing (especially adjusting sound levels) using the iMovie app. I also added a different introduction to the movies.

Below is a visual of the apps used to create the video version of the ePub books.

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App notes: For using the Path On app ($1.99),  I wanted a blank page for drawing the writing path for one of the books so I used Explain Everything ($2.99), chose a template, then exported image as “Photo to Camera Roll.”  Book Creator ($4.99) has a free version but you can only make one book. The paid version is well worth the money!

Since there are 2 videos per class, I won’t embed all of them in this post. You can click here to see them. Below is one of the videos.

Mrs. Malone’s Class: Future Plans from Trinity Valley School on Vimeo.

This is a fun project that does take a while to get everyone finished with drawing and recording but listening to the students talk about their life in Lower School and their plans for the future is worth every minute!

International Dot Day Celebrations!

the dotI love International Dot Day! September 15ish is the day to celebrate Peter H. Reynold’s wonderful book, The Dot. In the book, Vashti is asked to draw a picture in art class but can’t think of anything to illustrate. Her teacher encourages her to “just make a mark and see where it takes you.” Vashti jabs the paper with her pencil to create a tiny dot but the next time she comes to class, she discovers her teacher has framed it. From there, Vashti determines that she really can make better dots! At the end of the book, Vashti pays forward what her teacher has done for her by encouraging a little boy who believes he can’t draw a straight line with a ruler. This book has two wonderful themes:

  1. Every person is creative in their own special way.
  2. Each of us can find a way to “make our mark” by helping and encouraging others.

This year, celebrating Dot Day was a bit difficult for me. I worked part-time till Sept. 15 due to back surgery over the summer. But I had a wonderful sub, Jane Cooper, who worked tirelessly with many classes to  start our Dot Day celebrations. I returned full-time on September 15 to continue the activities – by the end of the day I was completely exhausted but it was a fantastic day to return! Below are descriptions of how our teachers and students “made our mark.”

Kindergarten

Our kinder teachers gave each student a dot and a “swirly gold framed” paper. The students created a picture from their dot.

photo 2(1)Click here for more pictures from kindergarten.

First Grade

The first graders had a two-part lesson. Mrs. Cooper introduced the students to making their creative mark by reading The Dot. The children were then given the dot coloring sheet for use with the ColAR app (free in the App Store and Google Play). Lots of colorful illustrations were made as the students were told that the following week they would see something magic happen to their dots. When the first graders returned to the lab, I showed them how to use the ColAR app. Amazed “oohs” and “aahs” were heard as my dot became 3-dimensional! The students were thrilled to see their own dots come to life.

IMG_1060View Animoto videos of each class:

Second Grade

Mrs. Cooper worked with the second graders to create a dot using the Drawing Box app. She explained to the students that, just as people are unique, their dots would be different from their classmates. But, when joined together, they would create a tapestry of colors. The children discussed how they were individuals but each unique person was needed to make a successful group – just as each dot they drew was important to the overall tapestry.

Third Grade

I asked the third graders to combine their creativity and a desire to “make a mark” on others by illustrating a picture in Microsoft’s Paint program. The students were asked to think about how they could make a difference  – in a person’s life (a classmate, family member, friend . . .), by doing a task to help their community, or thinking about something they could do in the future. The students wrote a short description then illustrated their idea. I combined their thoughts and drawings in Animoto videos

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Fourth Grade

Because of time constraints, I was only able to work with two of our three fourth grade classes (the third class participated in Dot Day in Spanish).

In one class, I asked the students to create a PowerPoint slide that included their name written in Braille and clip art that represented some of their interests. The students used the Braille Bug website to convert their name to Braille. They then used the shape tool and duplicate shortcut to create dots to form their Braille name. After adding clip art, I asked the students to save their slide as a jpeg (at this point I hadn’t decided how we would share their work). I ended up creating one slideshow with their images.

For another class, I thought I would give coding dots a try. The students had been learning JavaScript with our headmaster, Gary Krahn (see post) so they already had some practice. I asked them to use the ellipse code to create dot pictures. They eagerly set to work and programmed some absolutely amazing images! I loved watching them problem-solve with each other as they worked on placing their dots. When finished, they took screen shots of their work and I combined them into a slideshow.

Co-Curricular Classes
Of course, Dot Day wouldn’t be complete without music, art, and Spanish and those teachers led some very creative activities!
Mrs. Holloway had her music classes practicing musical note writing as they composed Dot songs.
photo 2First graders in Mrs. Black’s art classes used watercolors to beautifully decorate coffee filters.
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Click here to view more art and music pictures.
Our Spanish teachers were busy with a variety of activities. Sra. Ross’s first graders learned the Mexican Hat Dance (a circle dance). Her second graders designed Mexican mirrors. Sra. Nedrelow’s third graders created colorful Aztec calendars while her fourth graders constructed Costa Rican Ox Carts. (See more detailed descriptions of the mirrors and ox carts by clicking here.)
Spanish classesClick here to view more images from our Spanish classes.
We are proud to be part of International Dot Day 2014 but our creativity doesn’t stop in September. We will continue to make our mark all year!

Celebrating Dr. Seuss

hatDr. Seuss week at our school is a HUGE undertaking! Our librarians design some wonderful activities that certainly excite our students! But, it doesn’t stop with the library – Dr. Seuss is celebrated across the curriculum and we definitely have creativeness shining in the lab.

We started the week with Crazy Hat Day. The second graders and one third grade class visited the lab to draw their rather interesting hats using the Microsoft Paint program.

On Wednesday, some very wacky first graders (and teachers) arrived. We read Wacky Wednesday, by Dr. Seuss and discussed how we could draw our own wacky pictures. This was the first time our little ones had used Microsoft Paint but we ended up with some wacky pictures!

Silly Sock Thursday arrived along with our kindergartners. Since it had been such a wacky week, the students used a wonderful website from the Bronx Zoo called, Build Your Wild Self. The funny thing was that the website didn’t quite work as expected. Students would click on an item to add to their wild self and they would get something completely different! We decided it was just a wacky thing happening since it had been a wacky week.

build your wild self

Look at our silly socks!

Mrs. Moore's Class

Mrs. Rea's Class
Throughout the week the fourth grade classes rotated between the computer lab, music, and art. In the lab, we read Oh! The Thinks You Can Think! by Dr. Seuss. The students were asked to think of an invention of any kind (a new animal, a different food, something that could help them in some way . . .). The pictures were drawn in MS Paint (We prefer this over apps for our more detailed drawings). I uploaded the illustrations to my Picasa account because we wanted to use the Book Creator app to make a class book and we had to get their pictures to the iPads.

The next step was to choose the book size (we used landscape for this) add the picture, text, and narration to the app. Once each child had finished their book, it was emailed to me. I combined all into class books.

Mr. d’Auteuil’s Class Book of Inventions
Mrs. Malone’s Class Book of Inventions
Mrs. Wright’s Class Book of Inventions

Be sure to open the links on an iOS device with the iBooks app (free) installed. Click on the book link above (while on an iOS device). Download and choose Open in iBooks.

The book can be read on a Mac or PC but you must use the Google Chrome browser with the Readium app. (Instructions on Reading ePub Books with the Google Chrome Readium App)

Friday arrived with students forgetting to dress in their uniforms! Oh, yes . . . pajama day! Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book was the focus for the day. Two third grade classes came to the lab and, after looking at some quite unusual beds, they designed their own dream bed.

What a busy but fun week!

(*We had several absences when I saw the students so if you don’t see your child’s work, that would be the reason!)

ABC Weather with Second Graders

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photo by K. Arrington

Mrs. Shapard’s second graders have been learning all about weather. When she mentioned that to me, I suggested taking what the students had learned to create some type of an “ABC Weather” project.

We brainstormed different ways to do this and ultimately decided to create a video using the Drawing Box and Explain Everything apps on the iPad minis.

The students were assigned a letter (or 2) and then did some research. Sometimes you really have to stretch to come up with ideas for a few of the more obscure letters!

The first step was to illustrate the letter chosen. I like the Drawing Box app and much prefer the paid version as it has so many more tools. Almost everyone finished in a 40 minute session. Drawings were saved to the camera roll (Photos) for the following step.

Next, we had to import the pictures to Explain Everything. Since this was the first time the students had used the app, I went over the tools and gave them some practice time before we continued with their weather project.

ShapardAfter a few minutes, they were ready to begin. The students tapped on the + to begin a new project. They were guided through the process of inserting the picture and setting it as the background (so it wouldn’t move around). Then the recording began! This part took longer than expected – not because the technology was a problem but because it was difficult to find quiet places to record. And, for some, absolute perfection was desired so any tiny mistake called for a do-over! After recording, the video was saved to the camera roll and air dropped to me. The students and I LOVE air drop! So quick and easy.

EE to video to vimeo

Apps and process for publishing the Weather video

I pulled everything together in iMovie and uploaded the video to Vimeo. (Click here for direct link.)


But, the students weren’t finished!

“What about making an eBook?” announced one child, then another and another!

So, we now have a video AND an ePub book made with the Book Creator app. Yes, it’s the same information but the students were excited to share their work in different formats.

All students chose the square format (necessary for all to be same size if combining books), added their picture, changed the background, recorded their narration, and emailed the book to me. From there it was easy to combine all the books (absolutely LOVE that feature of Book Creator).

Drawing box to Book Creator

Apps Used to Create the Class Book

Click below to read the ePub book on your iOS device or with the Google Chrome browser.

Our Weather ABC Book by Mrs. Shapard’s Class

Directions to download books to your iOS device (iPad, iPhone, etc):

  • You will need the iBooks app (free) installed on your iOS device.
  • Click on the book link above (while on your iOS device).
  • Tap on the download button.
  • Choose Open in . . . and then choose Open in iBooks
  • The book is now in iBooks on your iOS device.

Directions to read the ePub book on a computer:

A Quick Peek at International Dot Day Celebrations

I LOVE International Dot Day. Based on the book, The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds, students around the world celebrate “creativity, courage, and collaboration” on September 15th (ish).

Our students have been “making their mark” this week in a variety of ways. Here is a quick glimpse at some of the things we have done so far. As I pull everything together, more will be posted.

Kindergarten

After brainstorming what a dot could become, kindergarteners were given a “swirly gold frame” from Fablevision’s Dot Day Handbook and a dot sticker to make their own creation.

First Grade

First graders decorated their dot by using the sheet from the ColAR website. ColAR Mix is an augmented reality coloring book app that brings images to life!  Dot Day Fun! Watch Your Dot Come to Life describes what special things happen to a dot when viewed through this app. Talk about oohs and ahhs from students! What I found amusing was watching the teachers getting just as involved as the children!

Second Grade

Second grade took this activity a step further. After discussing that, yes, even young children can make a difference in other people’s lives, we brainstormed how this could happen. The students wrote their thoughts on their dot then decorated with crayons and markers. Then the fun began with the ColAR Mix app.

Picking up litter to help wildlife

Third Grade
Picking up litter to help wildlife

The third graders had the same charge as the second graders but they used Microsoft’s Paint program for their drawings. I’m hoping to use the Tellagami app to have the students insert their picture and then tell about their ideas on making their mark in their community.

Tomorrow the teachers will dress in their best dot clothing and students receive Dot Day certificates, stickers, and Dot Candy. What a fun, creative week we’ve had!

Yum - Dots!

Yum – Dots!

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