Final Project—Picturing a Healthy Community
For my final project, I created two forms of media to help the students on the Student Council I advise present and discuss their project. The Student Council participated in a United Healthcare Service Learning grant, where we discussed how environments can affect the health of a community. We took a field trip to various places in our community and took pictures of areas that might affect our decisions and our health. When we returned to school, we looked through the pictures and identified a few areas where our community could make improvements that might influence its citizens to make better, more healthy decisions. After we identified theses areas and pictures that depicted our findings, I created a blog to help our school and community discuss our findings. On our blog, I posted a flash video that I created as a photo essay to explain our process and our findings. To create the photo essay, I recorded and edited my students’ voices using Audacity and then used Flash to combine the photos the students took on our field trip and their voice recordings. In the end, we made some recommendations for the Township and will present the blog, the photo essay, and our findings to the Bristol Township Town Council on May 6 and to our school on May 13. We will ask students to go to the blog and add their comments in order to start a discussion on healthy and unhealthy choices they make that are influenced by their environment.
Here is the link to the Picturing a Healthy Community Blog. Feel free to leave your thoughts and comments, or have your class visit the site and leave their opinions!
Healthy Community
For my final project, I am creating a video presentation based on a project the Student Council at my school is completing. The project focuses on the community in which my students’ live and how the community structures affects the health of its residents. Last week, I took the Student Council on a field trip to take pictures of the community. The local paper accompanied us on the trip and then reported on it. Check out the video below!
Presidents Music Video
Here is my music video! I used the Song about Presidents from the Animaniacs. Once I got the hang of using Flash again, it was not terribly hard to use, although it took a lot more time than I had originally thought it would. I had a few problems when I attempted to use the Shape Tween. I wanted to have each of the presidents to morph into the next president but I was unable to get the Shape Tween to work. Also, when I stretch and rotated some of my images, the did not stay in the parameters I created for them, as you can see when the White House stretches and John Adams rotates. Any suggestions on how to fix either of these problems?
Scratch Project
I created a game for my fifth graders to help them practice identifying the meaning of words with multiple meanings. Overall, I did not have too much trouble creating my game. It took me some time to figure out how to make each sprite appear and disappear, but once I did, it was pretty easy to create my game. I hope you enjoy it!
Scholastic Book Wizard
While searching for a new novel for some of my advanced students to read, I discovered the Scholastic Book Wizard gadget. This gadget searches for children’s books by title, author, or topic. You can add it to your blog as a widget. It takes the students directly to the Scholastic Website and gives them a number of books that fit their search criteria. Students can search for books that interest them and check to make sure the book they choose is at their Just Right Reading Level. The website provides both interest levels and a grade level equivalent.
Combining Italy, London, and Boston
Overall, I found GIMP relatively easy to use. The most difficult part of combining these pictures for me was resizing them images and making sure the contrast and brightness matched. I didn’t have too much trouble using the Free Select tool. The one exception to that was when I accidentally cut out the foot of one of my friends. I could not figure out how to undo my mistake and ended up cutting out the foot seperately after the rest of the picture and pasting it in as another layer so I didn’t have to start over again.
I decided to combine three pictures. I started with a picture of the Boston Common that I found on Google.
Then I cut out my friends and I from a picture of us standing in the Roman Forum.
Then I cut out the Peter Pan Statue from Hyde Park, London from a picture I took while I was studying abroad in London.
I combined these pictures in order to surround some of my favorite people by some of my favorite places.
Italian Backpacking Adventure
I used Google Earth to trace my backpacking trip around Italy in Fall of 2007. I had to record it in two parts because it was too long and Jing could not handle that much data at once. For the most part, Google Earth was easy to use. However, using the the path feature could was frustrating at times. Does anyone know how to edit the lines to reposition them or make them longer or shorter? The only way I could fix my mistakes was by deleting the path and beginning a new one.
Part 1
Part 2
Olympic Updates
I decide to add an RSS feed from the Official Olympics Website. I really like watching the Olympics and plan to use the medal counts and race times to teach graphing with my class over the next few weeks. This way I can get updates and major new stories quickly.
Text2MindMap Tutorial
Here is my tutorial on how to use Text2mindmap.com. I am really excited about Jing. I can’t wait to start using it with my interactive whiteboard to post example math problems for my students when they need homework help. It was very easy to use. I’ve already told some of my friends about it and they are as excited about it as I am.
Game Classroom
Game Classroom is a site that provides lessons, games, and homework help for elementary school students. The site gives common topics studied in each grade, an explanation of that topic, and then gives students some choices of games to play that will reinforce that skill. Students can go on this site at home or can play it in school if they have some extra time on the computer. As I was searching through the 5th grade section, I came across a few games and activities that would be very useful in my classroom. I am always looking for new games I can use on my Interactive Whiteboard to play with my class as a way to engage them in a new topic, practice a new skill, or review a previously taught skill. I found a number of activities my students would love. There are very few interactive sites that provide good language arts content and practice for elementary school students. I’m really excited about this site because it has such a large number of activities and games I can use. Game Classroom brings together a lot of good information and is a good resource for students, parents, and teachers.
