Fun in the Classroom

This week I had the pleasure of helping five different middle years classrooms kick-start projects incorporating the use of technology.   It was a great week working with students from around the city.  I truly have an amazing job assignment!

Music in Me GarageBand Project

Monday I helped a teacher introduce a Music in Me project inspired by @DOREMIGIRL.  For this project each student was asked to find five songs which hold significant meaning in the student's life.  Using GarageBand, students will provide an introduction for each song, along with an explanation of why the chosen song is meaningful to them.  Students will then insert a 30 second sample of the song before moving to the next selection.  The students were quite excited about the opportunity to express themselves through the use of music.  Introducing this project at the start of the year is a good way for a teacher to learn about each student, and for students to learn about fellow classmates.  I look forward to hearing the completed projects.

Willow Awards Book Trailer Project

On Friday morning I worked with Grade 7/8 students as they began a book trailer project.   Using iMovie, students will create a book trailer for each of the books nominated for this years' Willow Awards.  Using Creative Commons and Compfight images, students will provide a narrative description for each book.  These book trailer movies will then be posted to a private Youtube Channel, and a QR code will be created for the link to the video.  The QR code will then be pasted to the inside cover of each book.
Because our school division has adopted a system-wide BYOT policy, students are allowed to use personal devices to connect to the student Wi-Fi network (with parent consent and teacher permission).  This means a student would be able to enter the library with an iPod, smartphone, or tablet, pick a book off the shelf, scan the QR code and instantly watch a book trailer for the book they are considering signing out from the library.  If successful, it would be great to expand this project to include more books and more libraries.  QR codes could also be used to provide students with a chance to try sample AR questions before taking an AR quiz. 

Personal Memoire VoiceThread Project

 

Friday afternoon I was asked to help two Grade 7/8 classrooms begin a personal memoire project using VoiceThread.  My use of VoiceThread has been minimal, and I have never used the Education version, so this project provided me with some great learning experiences.  The students had no prior knowledge of VoiceThread, so the introduction lesson was a good opportunity to discuss the idea of online collaboration.  It also gave us the opportunity to reinforce positive digital citizenship skills and prompted a discussion on how to comment appropriately on other students' projects.  I am always amazed at how quickly and easily students begin using a new program.  This is another project I will be closely monitoring over the upcoming weeks.


If anyone else has experience in similar projects, I would be happy for any advice or comments.