Journal Week 5.

Today's class began with a very interesting and slightly cheeky activity. We began by making our own adult's only animated short movie from scratch. The website www.afilm.com is an animated movie maker website which allows you to choose your own cheesy stereotypical characters, the scene you would like your movie to take place in and the music to go along with it. So I decided to choose a romantic background with 70's boogie nights music and characters by the name of Letitia and Stud. The plot of the movie was a sexy rendezvous between the chatty and pompous Letitia and the male model who loves puppies and kittens, Stud. The movie is titled Love at First Sight and you can watch it on my blog, hope you enjoy it. The movie is for adults and should not be used in a class room setting amongst children.

The activities to follow were fabulous and intriguing websites that Greg introduced the class to, and would be useful websites that give primary students that opportunity to be creative and design their own animations. The website www.zimmertwins.com for me was not as straight forward and easy to use compared to the previous animation website, and I presume it would be a little difficult for children also. However, it is a fun and an engaging website that gives students  a chance to design their own comic strip with dialogue. The website also entails fun and quirky movies that students can watch.

Sketch Swap is a website with a blank screen that allows you to be artistic and draw with the mouse on the computer, which I must admit is quite a difficult task to do. When you finish drawing the picture the program draws a picture back to you and sometimes they can be offensive and cheeky. For example Kate received a picture of a pig and said you with an arrow pointing to the drawing.  The images created by the students also gives them the opportunity to email them to their friends and family.

The website www.buildyourwildself.com gives children the opportunity to choose a human characters features, clothing etc. It allows them to be creative and experiment with adding different parts of animals features to their human character. The website has an extensive range of animal features for students to explore with.

I feel all of the programs are fantastic and engaging websites that primary students would find fascinating. It gives them the opportunity to be creative and let their imaginations run wild while learning ICT design skills. All of the programs which were visited and explored today have been posted on my blog.

Mel.

GO WILD!

Zimmer Twins Movie.

MOVIE: LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.

M&M Activity!

Journal Week 4.

M&M's mmmmmm.......... I got to eat m&m's this week whilst completing a maths activity with excel which involved m&m's. We began by sorting the m&m's by colour into the candy colour chart, we then were given a quick lesson on how to use excel. By using the program excel, it gives students the tools and knowledge to be able to turn figures into charts. In this case by creating a table in excel with the different coloured m&m's in one column and the quantity of each coloured m&m in the following column. We then created a imaginative graph which collaborated the results. It is also imperative to remember when using m&m's in the classroom to make sure students are not allergic to them. Safety first.

I found the activity quite intriguing and believe it could be an engaging and fun exercise for students. I enjoyed collecting images of m&m pictures from the Australian m&m website (http://m-ms.com.au/)to creatively enhance and beautify my graph and chart. Whilst completing the activity my thoughts were, how simple materials and methods  which incorporate ICT are an intelligent and intriguing way to get students to enjoy learning programs such as excel. This activity assisted to refresh my memory of excel, as I haven't used the program since secondary school.

I thoroughly enjoyed the second activity which followed. We were introduced to a wonderful website www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/, which is an interactive and interesting way for students to learn about Aboriginal dream time stores. The website has a collection of various stories which relate to Aboriginal spirituality and traditions told by animation with music and no words. It teaches students to able to analyse stories by picture only and to create their version and understanding of the story being told.

The dream time story I watched was called 'Morning Star'. The animation was a gorgeous story about some of the Aboriginal rituals associated with death. The colour of the animation and music helped me to analyse the key themes of the story, which was a man was walking through the bush hears people screaming because a man in their camp has died. It then goes on to enlighten the viewer with the various rituals of life, birth, life and death.

The final part of the activity was to re-tell my version of Morning Star with inspiration. By copying and pasting the important images of the story to inspiration, I created a collage or some might call it a story board. I did however have difficulty completing this task, it took me a little longer to finish my story board compared to my peers.  I have posted the final product on my blog, I hope you enjoy my shortened version of Morning Star.

I am appreciating every lesson every week, and I am bursting with excitement to be able to share what I have learnt with my students some day.

Stay tuned to see what Greg has in store for group 2 next week!! Oh, I wonder?

Mel.

MORNING STAR.