Tomorrow I am starting a project with my 6th graders. It's a pumpkin pie recipe. They have to go an find a recipe on pumpkin pie and answer various questions about fractions and multiplying them. This is a 3 day starting tomorrow and concluding Monday and Tuesday next week. Since next week is Thanksgiving week I am hoping this project will keep them interested and diciplined due to the holidays....will keep you posted on the turn out

How time flies by! I have to apologize for not adding to the blog every week. I'm still trying to get in the habit of using it. With all the wonderful developments in technology it would be great if we could figure out a way to add some extra time to our days or at least reduce work somewhere else! It's just becoming impossible to keep up with all the tasks we all have to do each day. I've been very busy with all my classes creating their iMovies about themselves. They are making progress ever so slowly. We are now working on adding images & video of pictures of family & friends from home as well as learning to use the digital sill cameras & the Flip video cameras to record around school. Students are learning in small groups about proper procedure & policies for camera use. This includes proper downloading of images/footage and getting it to their iMovies and deleting from their cameras. The students will then reinforce their newly acquired knowledge/skills by teaching their classmates.

In addition to the Flip cameras coming in, Gail & I were finally able to get to Best Buy to purchase our items with our grant we won last year! Yippee!! So, now I have a new all-in-one printer/copier/scanner which we'll be able to use for kids to scan any photos in to their files. (My old scanners don't connect to the new Macs & most weren't working anymore too.) Not all of our kids have digital cameras or cell phones to take pictures. Plus, I encourage them to bring in any older photos of their parents, grandparents, etc so they can get them digitized. This is part of my genealogy interests I've acquired from my Mom.

In using all the new Mac applications and the new equipment, I am barely able to keep ahead of the kids right now! Next on the agenda, is learning all the ins and outs of iDVD for the kids to then turn their movie in to a DVD. After that, time allowing, I hope to have them design their own DVD covers in iPages. Needless to say, they are very excited about all of this! By now though, my students are well-grounded in creating Garage Band music loops, iPhoto slideshows, editing images in iPhoto, photographing and videotaping themselves in Photo Booth and importing all in to their iMovie. They know how to add titles, transitions, video & sound effects, and import their music loop for background music. They know how to access the Video Tutorials to use whenever they need more help. And they usually show me something new every day too! So, we are having lots of fun while we're working hard every day!

Art Teacher Conference

I am ever so thankful that there is the TAEA Art teacher conference coming up this Thursday-Sunday. Since I missed last year due to Mitchell, but it was worth missing (sort of! *laugh). One of the classes I am taking is called "Boxes with Fires: Wisely Integrating Technology into the Art Classroom" which will include integrating digital technologies such as PPpresentations (which I know already, but...), podcasting art style, imovie, wikis, web sites, mind mapping, social bookmarkings, blogs and improving student learning to stimulate educational reform. This is one of many technology classes offered this year, which I have not seen in the past. So, for this year, I'm not going to all the hands on cool art project classes, but things like this. Hopefully this can help us get technology used effectively in the fine arts wing as well... something besides just using the computers to look up images and play games on. I know there's gotta be something more! Can't wait!
I'm also going to be attending 4 upcoming different web classes on how to keep the SBISD web art page updated with the new branding stuff. I am looking forward to being the photographer and co-webmaster for that endevour! So hopefully, that will help us all also with stuff that we want to put on our website here at school...

I made it....

I am in the Power to Learn training meeting on Digital Storytelling....Learning lots of new things that I cant wait to try in class.   

MacBooks and video

I have begun using the Macbook computer to download and edit videos with my students. It took a while to find the correct firewire as I did not receive one with the computer and my video camera is not the flip camera. We did purchase some additional flip cameras, so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to let the students work with them in the next week or so.
Ms. Ringler did have her students out learning to use the flip cameras this week and we have been working with students after school on editing their movies. My Broadcast students are about ready to upload their first videos to be viewed and entered in a district contest. We are excited about the steps we are making toward getting all the devices working together and in the students' hands.
This week we will get further training on the storytelling aspects and hopefully I will be able to immediately use that with my students.