Although our students only move on to secondary college in late January next year, transition programs and information evenings are being held now. Students in the northern hemisphere and parts of Asia move on soon. So, they have been asked
what are you looking forward to?
what are you nervous about?
moving on together….do we have much in common with the world?
Students from England, Bangkok and our school here in Australia, have written a post about it and answered the questions on a voice thread. Listen to their comments!!!
Thanks MrKp for setting up our voicethread and encouraging us to share with you.
Grade 6 students have been busy making their cards over the last few weeksto send to 24 schools situated in Perth, USA, Canada, Italy, Hawaii and the Arab Emirates as part of the From Me To You project. Emails have been sent back and forth to organizing staff generating enthausiasm and a little knowledge about the countries these cards are going to. One of our cards was sent to a Ronald McDonald house in UK. Each one of our cards contained a personalized note from a student and outlined a little about the student, where they live including Victoria and Australia.
Google search revealed the identity of the strange area abbreviations and the world map had to be consulted to find the actual locations. Then we set about making our cards. Below is a photo of our class.
Global projects are a wonderful project to get involved in. Social networks are established, natural student curiousity arising from comments made in emails, cards etc activiate learning and there is an authentic recipient of their work. Please enjoy the following movie by a grade 6 boy using MS Photostory to show some of what we did.
It has been the last, full week of school for years prep to 9, before they go on the 5 weeks Christmas holidays break. This last week has seen some alternative programs eventuate, as reports are now written and all work assessed.
Friendly rivalry has broken out between grade 5 and 6 classes in that each class is trying to make the longest paper chain. Each morning the chains come out of their boxes and spread out along the corridor to be measured. A shout came out from the grade 6 class in the middle of this week as they had gone the full length of our long school corridor and made it out into the carpark and yard. The chain started to double up and come back down the corridor. It has been a great group activity and students have worked well as a whole on their mission. Download Video: Posted by murch at TeacherTube.com.
It was decided to make a podcast and then to enhance it with photos. Manufacturers, security guards, occupational health and safety officers and the art director were all interviewed and here is the outcome.
My laptop recorded the interviews into Acid 6.0 (although audacity would have been an appropriate alternative)  using a cheaper desktop microphone. The audios were edited and saved into mp3 files and uploaded onto podomatic, which gives rss feeds to iTunes. A search found a free mp3 jingle bells file that could be downloaded and this was added into Vegas Movie Studio. The podcast mp3 file was also imported and then the photos added after they were resized. Finally, the file was converted to movie format (wmv) and uploaded to teacher tube.
Students in years 7 and 8 went to Gail Casey’s blog page. They were each allocated one student from her penguin or wombat groups and instructed to write a comment to those ESL students in Korea. They were reminded to state their first name and where they were from but once Gail emailed bact to me, it was clear that not all had done so!! Some submitted their comments several times thinking that they had not gone through. Poor Gail would have had her work cut out for her trying to authenticate each one. Thanks Gail!
As I go on long service leave next week and then our students are on 2 weeks holidays, I will leave the commencement of the digital storytelling project until we return in term 4. Time just seems to pass so quickly.
Some of my year 7 students are on the verge of completing their kahootz expressions so once we convert them into movie format we may put them up for trial comments. Some of these entries will be put into the annual competition.
My classes will work on the digital storytelling global project with Gail Casey and other teachers from various countries. Will work with years 7 through to year 10 at this stage. They love multimedia and its associated applications. As some are already working on projects, they may be able to complete these for uploading earlier than planned. Some of the year 7s have been working on Kahootz, which is an animation software available to Australian schools and developed by the Australian Childrens Television Foundation. This might make interesting digital stories for other students to comment on.
It is far more meaningful and highly motivating to work on projects involving others, especially people from other countries.
I will be away from school for the last week of this term, so some classes will not really get started until next term, which starts on October 8th. I will however, forewarn them that they need to think about digital story possibilities and the type of software that they might use so that they can be prepared when they return from holidays. Will get them to use http://bubbl.us to brainstorm their ideas. All students have their own accounts now with this great software.
Tomorrow and next week, we will look at the blogs of Korean students and make some comments.
