ITSfolio
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Spotlight on Student Projects |
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| Whooo Knew There Were so Many Owls | ||
| First Grade students in Mrs. Pinkerton's Class at McNeal Elementary School were learning about owls. They began by discussing owls and using resources from the library and also focused lessons during their science class. Then they watched some United Streaming videos. After that they used Kidspiration and the internet to learn specific facts about one type of owl. Each pair made a Kidspiration poster about one owl of their choice. There are student samples at the bottom of the lesson plan page. I chose to spotlight this activity in order to show the students and teacher some components of Ezedia and also what was available on United Streaming. After seeing how excited the students were by the videos and the comments the teacher made about how involved the kids became in future discussions, I knew I had to share this activity. Two days after viewing the movies, the student groups downloaded the Kidspiration template and began working on their posters. It was a great learning experience to see the students add information they learned from the movies as well as facts they read from the websites. |
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| iPod Stories | ||
| Students in Mrs. LaPort's kindergarten class at McNeal Elementary used an iPod to record books. Small groups practiced reading stories with sight words during center time and then they recorded them on an iPod. At the culmination of the project, each student took home a collection of ten books with a CD recording of each story done by their classmates. I chose to spotlight this activity because I had not used my iPod with the voice recorder in an academic setting. I thought the iPod was only for storing and listening to music. When I realized it had more of an educational purpose, I decided to find a teacher to do a project with. Mrs. LaPort has been working hard to help her kindergarten students become readers. After sitting with her and coming up with the plan, we talked with the class and they seemed excited about making a CD. She then chose the books she wanted them to record and made copies of them for each of her students. The classroom teacher worked with her students during center time. The amount of time for the project will vary depending on how long it takes for the small groups to practice their books. I took a two hour block of time over three days to work with the small groups and record the stories. Then I put the recordings in iTunes and burned CD's. The students spent time coloring their books. We had a celebration and invited families and had a book reading party. It was a huge success and the students loved their summer reading packs. |
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| Mother's Day Project with iLife | ||
| Fourth graders in Mrs. Tomeo's class at Tara Elementary made movies for their mothers for Mother's Day. Each student scanned in photos, learned iPhoto, used iMovie and burned an individual CD as a present. I wanted to spotlight this project not only because it was a great project, but also because it was a huge investment of time that was well worth it. I liked the fact that I only had to train a few students to use the scanner and they taught the rest of the class. Mrs. Tomeo and I got to spend some one-on-one time with each student as they made their movies. The students also learned about copyright for the music for their movie. The Mother's Day party was a huge success where the movies were shared with others. |
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