Tech Time

The second graders are having a Market Day on Monday.  They have been working hard and saving their money to create a stall that provides goods or services to the community.  They earn money by coming to school and doing extras throughout the day.

Yesterday 2NI recorded their advertisements designed to persuade people to shop at their market stall.  We used Garageband to record and took a photo of their poster.  We joined the two together in iMovie to make a quick but effective commerical.

Well done 2NI!

I’ve been working after school with a group of fabulous fourth and fifth graders to learn more about Digital Photography.

This Monday we tried doing some cool things with Photoshop.

The kids each took a photo that said something about themselves.  Then we placed the image inside text, their name, and went from there.

The results were really cool.  Look at what Talia has done.  She used a photograph of the pool, because she loves to swim.

Cool, huh!

Want to try?

1. Open your image in Photoshop – in this case the image of a pool.

2. Duplicate the Layer (Command j)

3. Add a new blank layer between the two images (add new layer under layer tab)

4. Fill the new layer with a color – Talia used purple (fill is located under the edit tab)

5. Select Layer 1 (the one you made in step 2)

6. Using the Text tool in photoshop, select a big fat font, and write your name, or another word.

7.  When you’re done, click on the checkmark up in the Options Bar to accept the text.

8. If you’d like to change the size, shape or location, press command t to transform the text. Click the checkmark again.

9. Drag the text layer below layer 1.

10. Select layer 1, go to the Layers menu and select Create Clipping Mask.

And you’re done!

Oh dear.  I was hoping to get this posted early this week so that I could say I blogged at least once in April.  Here it is in May and I’ve missed that deadline.  There are a few excuses I could give, one whole week of April was Spring Break, MAP testing and Yearbook has consumed almost all of my waking moments this month, but really there are no excuses.  I simple dropped the ball.

Some of our second graders have been reading plays during their workshop time.  Mrs Tucker and I thought it would be fun to put their recordings up on the blog.  Three at a time we snuck out of class to a very quiet place and used Garageband to record their reader’s theatre.

Nice job kids!

Keene, Nikola and Nicholas

Daniel, D’arcy, Luke

Third Grade,

For the next few weeks you will be doing lots of research in books and online about your countries.
Together we will investigate some safe ways to navigate the internet.

Lets begin by using our school databases.

Let’s go to Culture Grams first.

And head over to the Kids Edition.

Next we will look at World Book

Finally we will start our image search in Britannica Images.

Sometimes we don’t always find the information we need all in one place.  Culturegrams and World Book are great places to start, but when we want to look for very specific information we might go to a broader search engine.  Let’s turn to Google and search smart.

We have been doing lots with Photoshop here at SAS Elementary.  Our kindergarteners put themselves in a Dr Seuss in honor of the great man’s birthday.  The students chose the page and posed for the photos.  Later, after we photoshopped them, the kindergarteners added speech bubbles imagining what they might be thinking if they were in the book.

This is my favorite:

His speech bubble said, “Wee, I’m flying!!!!!”

In fifth grade we are looking at famous artists and the kids are putting themselves in the paintings.  It was so cool to see what paintings the students chose and to decide how to insert themselves into the artwork.

Look at this one – amazing!  And I could have chosen any one of them.  They are incredible!

Some online helpers to build nonfiction text features for research projects

Timeline

Timeline #2

Timeline #3

Venn Diagram

3 circles Venn Diagram

Third graders are investigating non fiction in depth.  Today we took some time to compare how text features such as Table of Contents, Index, Photographs, Charts, Maps, Diagrams, Glossary and Index are the same and how they are different in books and online.

The fifth graders in 5AR wrote poems and we met together to present them using Keynote.

The third grade is investigating sound, pitch and volume.  We thought it would be super fun to change the pitch and volume of our own voices using a free and fairly awesome ipad app called Voice Changer Plus.

Did I mention it’s free?  Did I mention it’s awesome?

It is very simple to record an audio recording and then the fun begins.  We started by simply adjusting the volume, next we used the higher and lower icons to change the pitch.  Then we went crazy.  I heard mice speaking backwards, I heard Darth Vader voices under water, and robots talking really fast.  Crazy.

Next we used Music Sparkles to play some instruments virtually.

This one we paid for.  Originally it appeared to be free, but each of the instruments was an additional 99c.  It would be $9 if you bought them individually, so $2.99 for the lot didn’t seem so bad.

The app itself met our needs quite well.  Students could ‘play’ the instruments using their fingers and listen to their sounds.  Most of the sounds were very authentic, except for the violin.  For some reason it sounded nothing like a violin.

We’re hoping that our students get some inspiration from these instruments because soon they will be making an instrument of their own.

It was a great way to spend a half an hour.  Just look at these big smiles.

Dear Third Grade,

Here are some websites you may like to visit to explore lots of instruments and their sounds.

Tty visiting the instrument room at the New York Philharmonic site.

There are lots of instruments to listen to at dso kids.

This one is a little quiz – can you guess the instrument?

And another quiz.