Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Teaching Technology

My absolute favorite class this year has been my computer class. I had no boundaries on what I could teach so we've done every fun thing I could think of. We created our own classroom social network. Check us out at http://computerwarriors.ning.com. There you can see our avatars and assorted other fun stuff.

Recently we completed digital stories. I say "we" but only 4 of the 8 kids finished their projects. The students wrote their own stories then recorded and edited them. We used Windows Movie Maker to put pictures with the narration. You can view their stories at http://lc.celebrateoklahoma.us/profile/SydneyPerry. The stories are: Star Spangled Banner, Comanche Powwows, Oklahoma State Capital, and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919.

Just yesterday we started working with Photoshop Elements 7. It amazes me how kids can open a new program and just intuitively figure out how to use it. I've taken several workshops and I'm still not very good at it. Today Kyle used layers and opacity to take the head off one of his friends and put it on the body of another friend. It was perfect. He made the skin tones match so the face and the arms were the same color. He came back to the library three times today to work more on his projects. At one point he got up and jumped in the air and said, "I love this program!" I love the enthusiasm and I love my computer warriors.

No comments: