Continuing With Weather Videos

Today we continued with our Weather Video projects.  We started off by reading our last blog post as a refresher about what we did last week.  After that, we got to work!  We watched our video again to remind us of what we learned.  Then we worked on splitting the video in iMovie and adding the portions that we needed to match what we plan to say.  After our clips were inserted, we started to detach the original audio in preparation for our own voiceover.  Ms Blacker then showed us how to add transitions between the video segments.  Some people are working on transitions while others are still inserting clips and detaching audio, we're all working hard! 

Written by Ms Blacker and the tech group

Weather Videos

Happy New Year to our Technology followers! 

Today we started a new project on Weather because that is what we are learning about in Theme Studies.  Ms Blacker downloaded various movies from Discovery Education about weather.  We picked a topic with our partner and viewed the Discovery movies together.  While we were watching the movies we wrote notes about what we learned about weather from the video.  

After that, we went to iMovie and we created a new project and a new event.  In the new event we imported our weather video.  This is all we had time for today,  in the coming weeks we are going to clip the video into smaller segments, detach the audio and record our own voices explaining weather that we learned from the video.  We also will green screen ourselves into the video as an introduction.  Some of the grade 5 kids have experience with this from last year, the rest are learning for the first time! 

• Persia learned that Tornadoes usually strike in the USA
• Angelica learned that snowflakes are ice crystals
• Efrel learned that the ozone layer is good and bad for the Earth
• Montana learned that the cold air masses pushes the hot air masses up to make Thunderstorms
• Emily learned that when the sun is lower your shadow is taller
• Taylor learned that water vapor isn't a liquid, it's a gas

Written as shared writing by the "Nerd Herd" (our joke name) and Ms Blacker

Elf Yourself!

Ms Badger suggested that we "Elf Ourselves" today as a fun activity before the Christmas holidays.  She thought we would have lots and lots of fun doing this  - and was she ever right!  We downloaded the 'Elf Yourself' app onto the iPads and took turns creating our silly little videos!  We giggled and laughed out loud while creating and sharing! Thanks for the great suggestion, Ms Badger!

We also had time to explore the apps and programs on the MacBooks that we have already used.  Thanks Zachary FB for your help today!

Happy Holidays from the 'Nerd Herd'  (remember this is just a joke name we gave ourselves!)

Written as shared writing by the Technology Kids and Ms Blacker

Making Movies!

Last Wednesday, Mr. McKiel came to our technology time.  He always comes with great ideas!  This is what we learned from him: NFB Pixstop, iStop Motion, and AirServer. 

NFB Pixstop: This is an app on the iPad (free!), you take pictures of objects.  With every picture you must move the object a little so that when the pictures come together it looks like the object is moving.  We worked in small groups, using the iPads to create movies with objects in our class like toys, magnets and markers on the whiteboard.

iStop Motion: This is a program on our computers, it is similar to Pixstop because it is taking pictures and creating a movie.  These are quick little movies.  To make a short, like 10 second, movie we took over 100 pictures.  We worked with partners or in small groups to make iStop Motion movies.

AirServer: This is a tool that allows you to connect the iPad to your computer so that we can share our creations on the projector for the rest of the group to see.  We all learned how to get our iPads on and off of AirServer, now we can share with each other!

Today, we learned about a new app called MovieStorm.  This app on the iPad allows you to customize a male or female avatar and then add actions, voice, etc to make a movie with it.  We had the choice to either use MovieStorm or iStop Motion today.  We had fun! 

Written as shared writing by the technology kids and Ms Blacker

Videos Completed!!!!

Unfortunately, we ran out of time to blog together today, so I am blogging on behalf of the technology kids.  We finished our shadow puppet videos today!  Ms Badger came back to help us complete the project.  Today we got our puppets ready, practiced and then recorded our shadow puppet play in the puppet theatre while an adult read the play aloud.  Once videos were recorded, we detached the audio and then put in the audio that we recorded on Garage Band which included sound effects and music. We added captions and then the videos were done!  There was no way we could have done this without Ms Badger's expertise!  THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

Little Red Riding Hood

Animal Band
Puss In Boots
While we're busy with technology there are other students from the grade 4/5 classes at hockey.  Here is a video of what they do while we're busy creating! (note that this video is a supposed to be fuzzy because the pictures are inside a snow globe!)

Posted by Ms Blacker

Shadow Puppets

Today we continued with our Shadow Puppet project.  Our focus today was to record our voices on GarageBand.  Every group has now recorded their play.  We are still working on adding sound effects to our recording.  It's tricky because we can't all record in the same room because of noise, so we have to take turns and that makes it take a bit longer. 

The 'Puss and Boots' group worked with Ms Wiens today to record.  Next week they need to arrange their recording so that it is in order, when we record each character gets a track and after every part is recorded then we arrange the clips so that the story flows.  When Ms Badger comes back next week, she will help us to add more sound effects and we will make sure all the recordings are complete.  Then we will PRACTICE, PRACTICE and PRACTICE till we've got our play right!  We've never done shadow puppets before so we know that we need to practice lots before we record the video part.  The following week, we will record our movies! 

Like we said before, some projects take a while! 

The "Little Red Riding Hood" group arranging their audio

Written as shared writing by the "Nerd Herd" and The Head Nerd Ms Blacker 

(disclaimer from Ms Blacker - the kids wanted to be called the "Nerd Herd", we know it's just a joke, we like to be silly like that!)

Shadow Puppets with Ms Badger

Today Ms Badger, one of our technology coordinators, came to technology time with us.  It is fantastic, terrific, perfect, amazing to have Ms Badger come and help us!   Ms Badger came to teach us how to make shadow puppet videos.  Mr. FB's son, Zachary, also came to help us.  He is going to help us with tech time every second week! 

We started off today by watching a movie that some of Ms Badger's former students made.  It was a shadow puppet show of The Enchanted Caribou book (check out the video).


After viewing the video, we worked in groups to start developing our own movie.  We picked a fairy tale book that already had a reader's theatre play in it, this made our job a little easier.   We're making our movies with the books: Puss and Boots, Little Red Riding Hood and The Animal Band.

We picked out our books, figured out how many characters there are, assigned roles and then started to make the puppet silhouettes out of black construction paper.

Ms Badger showed us how to record our voices on Garage Band.  She also showed us how to change the sound of our voices and how to add sound effects.  COOL!  One group started to record with her while the others prepared their puppets.  We can't all record at once because there would be too much background noise.  Taking turns is fine with us! 

Next time, we will all record our plays on Garage Band and add different sounds, voices and effects.  We will also practice our play in the shadow theatre and either record our video portion next week or the week after.

Sometimes a project takes longer than one day to complete... stay tuned for our next update!

Thank you to Ms Badger and Zachary FB for helping this week!

Written as shared writing by the Technology Kids and Ms Blacker