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

Skitch, Photo Booth, Animoto and Voki... Oh My!

Today was our third technology time together.  We started our morning by reading our last blog post to refresh our memories about what we have already learned.  We viewed everyone's Animoto video from last week. We thought that everyone did an AWESOME job with their video clips!  

We discovered the difference between a web tool and an app.  Web tools are programs found on the internet and apps are programs that you have to download to use. 

Today we learned about SKITCH.  This is an app on our MacBooks.  Ms Blacker told us that Mr Carnegie, who is the head of technology for our school division, really likes Skitch!  Skitch is an app that allows you to draw, add words, or put arrows onto photos.  

We also learned how to use PHOTO BOOTH which is an app on our laptops.  When learning about this we discovered how funny Ms Blacker can be, she was making silly faces and pretending she was on a roller coaster.  Photo Booth is similar to using a green screen but it is easier because the background is already built in. In Photo Booth you can take pictures or videos.  We liked Photo Booth because the effects are HILARIOUS! 

After Photo Booth we went onto Animoto again.  We learned how to edit our videos, some of us worked on editing previous videos.  Others started a new one.  We used pictures that we took last week or pictures that we took with Photo Booth today. 

Make a video of your own at Animoto.
We also discovered VOKI today!  Voki is a web tool where you can create a talking avatar.  Once you have selected your character you can dress them up.  You type in messages for the character to speak.  You can change the voices to make them sound funny or different or have an accent. 

Today we had a lot of fun with our technology time.  We laughed out loud many times throughout the morning.  It feels good to have those moments when you can laugh with each other.  Our morning was full of joy!  We are looking forward to new projects next Wednesday... stay tuned for what we learn next!!!!

Written as shared writing by the technology students and Ms Blacker

Animoto with Mr. McKiel

Today was our second technology time,  we had a guest teacher!  Mr. McKiel came to our technology class to teach us about a really cool web tool called Animoto.  Animoto is a quick and easy way to turn your photos and video clips into 30 second videos that look like commercials!  Mr. McKiel taught us how to create an Animoto video by using his pictures of Nanuq from when he travelled to Churchill for the Polar Bear Expedition last year.  We were amazed by how little time it took him to make this video!

We were really excited to start our own videos - but first we reviewed the rules of photography that we learned about in September. That was a long time ago but together,  we remembered about all the different rules.  Talking about photography made us even more excited to get started because we really like taking pictures!

We said good-bye to Mr. McKiel and thanked him for teaching us.  Then we went exploring around the school to take some pictures.  Ms Armstrong said that we could go into the new Learning Commons and take pictures of our library space.  After that we crept down the hall and made our way towards the gym.  The gym was empty so we snuck in and snapped some pictures without touching anything.  We then went into our new music room and explored in there.  We found some really colourful things in the music room and Ms Blacker showed us that we could take close ups and fill the frame with all the beautiful colours.  After the music room we explored the hallways.  After recess we spent a few minutes outside snapping pictures.

Then it was time to learn to transfer photos to the laptops,  this was easier than we thought!  Once our photos were loaded we selected about 8 pictures to add to our Animoto clip.  We dragged those pictures to our desktop so they would be easy to access.  Ms Blacker reviewed the steps for making our Animoto clip and then we were able to work.  Ms Blacker asked that we include at least one text slide with a title and our name.  Everyone in our technology group successfully completed an Animoto clip before lunch!

What a great morning!  Now we're not only photographers - we're movie makers too!

Here is an example of a few of the Animoto clips...  Enjoy!

Make your own slide show at Animoto. Make your own slide show at Animoto.
Posted by Ms Blacker (we ran out of time to blog together!)