Dancing Santa: Special Holiday Greeting From Aviva's Class

The students in my class made a special holiday greeting during computer time today. I showed them how to use My Avatar Editor to create their own avatar and save it. Then they had the option to use this avatar to make a Dancing Santa Card. The students could create their own greeting, and many of them changed their greeting to match those for holidays that they celebrate.

Here are the avatars that four of my students created:

While a fun activity, this computer activity also taught the students some basic computer skills including saving, resizing, and uploading images. Sometimes when I watch my students and see their amazing skills, I forget that they are only in Grade 1!:)

Please click on the links in the posts below to see our holiday greetings to you. Have a very happy holiday! See you again in January!

Aviva

Santa Yourself - Holiday Wishes From Student #6

Santa Yourself - Turn yourself into a dancing Santa

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Santa Yourself - Holiday Wishes From Student #5

Santa Yourself - Turn yourself into a dancing Santa

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Santa Yourself - Holiday Wishes From Student #4

Santa Yourself - Turn yourself into a dancing Santa

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Santa Yourself - Holiday Wishes From Student #3

Santa Yourself - Turn yourself into a dancing Santa

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Santa Yourself - Holiday Wishes From Student #2

Santa Yourself - Turn yourself into a dancing Santa

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Santa Yourself - Holiday Wishes From Student #1

Santa Yourself - Turn yourself into a dancing Santa

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VoiceThread Holiday Greeting From Aviva

Animoto Video On Our Creative Process -- Making Our Wild Things Movie

Here is the video that my students made today after creating their own Wild Things movies. They took the photographs off my camera, uploaded them to the Animoto website, and chose the music. They were very excited to make a movie to remember this wonderful day. Thank you so much to the Director's Cut for giving us such a phenomenal learning experience!


Aviva

Glogster: What is a glog?

On Friday, I introduced my students to Glogster: a wonderful online tool that allows the students to experience media literacy in a fun way. They learned how to create their own glog (almost like an online poster) using a combination of text, images, and backgrounds that are part of the program. We first made a glog together on the SMART Board:



Students learned how to choose, rotate, and resize images and how to edit text. I then took the students up to the computer lab where they got to start creating one of their own glogs on a subject of their choice. In the coming months, I want to use this program as part of our literacy centres, for it provides a great opportunity to combine literacy with science and social studies topics.

Here is an example of a glog that a student created on Christmas:



She independently found the images in the gallery, resized them and placed them where she wanted them, chose a background, and inserted a textbox and wrote a message of her own that corresponds with her glog theme. I think that this is a great first attempt at creating a glog. Way to go!

I love that my students are so eager to explore new tools that they can use to help them in their learning journey!

Aviva

Where The Wild Things Are

From December 14th-17th, all of the Grade 1 students will be creating their own videos as part of the Director's Cut. The students have been using a storyboard to plan their movie, and they are so excited to create what they have planned. Feel free to send in costumes or props for your children to use when filming the movie. Talk to your children about costumes and props that they might need. We have some available for the students to use too.

In preparation for this video experience, we have been completing lots of literacy activities at school that relate to Where the Wild Things Are. Here is a video that documents some of the different activities we have done in class:



This is our first Animoto video, so we hope that you enjoy it! Please comment below and let us know what you think.

Using Technology With The Students: Your Thoughts?

It was great to sit down and talk to all of you during the Parent/Teacher Interview Process, and in many cases, we had the opportunity to talk about the use of technology in the classroom. While many of you are thrilled that the children have so many opportunities to use various technological tools (i.e., Twitter, blogs, Bitstrips, Diigo, VoiceThread, Google Docs, and numerous other websites), some concerns were expressed about if the students have enough time to write using a pencil and paper.

Here are my thoughts on this subject:

For every time the students write on the computer, there is an equal opportunity for them to write using a pencil and paper. In many cases, students are also given the chance to decide if they want to use a computer or use a pencil and paper. As an adult, I know that I spend more time on my laptop than I do with a pen in my hand. Most times, I need to borrow a pen for the few times that I do need one. We live in a technological world, and I feel that it is my responsibility to help prepare the students for this world. That being said, the curriculum expectations always drive my instruction, and technology is just one of the tools to help deliver these expectations.

With writing being our current school focus, here is the link to an article that I found through Twitter that provides statistics that children who use technology are better writers. If you can, please take the time to read this article and comment here to let me know what you think. All points of view are welcome, as it is through sharing that we learn more.

Have a great weekend!
Aviva

My Montage 12/5/09 at OneTrueMedia.com

Here is a short slideshow of my students completing the last round of literacy and math centres. Watch this slideshow with your children and discuss what they learned during these different activities. As you can see, the students are learning lots and having fun too!

Have a great weekend!
Aviva

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com