Green screen

Way back when I earned a degree in video production and multimedia, so this is one of my favorite activities to do.  With the arrival of our new chroma key green fabric, we were ready to get started on our research projects.  Student choice of research topic made for engaging projects from all of our groups. There were groups who created documentaries about electricity, newscasts, animations about animals, and more. Below is a photo of two 3rd grade students working on a clay animation piece about the fox, and here is a final project on Electricity from two 2nd graders!

Circuits and Circus and Bananas, oh my!

Today, I gave our third through sixth graders a mini lesson on simple circuits. We used our new knowledge to construct simple electronic jewelry. Here are a couple of pins that were made with felt, an LED light, and a 3 volt lithium battery. Simple, fun and educational!

In a continuation of our circuit lesson, teacher’s and students were in and out of the Library Lab all week playing the bananas. Using a borrowed Makey Makey kit, students helped construct our amazing "banana piana". It was such a hit, it was insisted that I include a demonstration (and ongoing banana jokes) in our resident Circus Smirkus performance. We were so inspired, we now have our very own kit in the Library Lab that has inspired some composers.

Two separate LEAP groups are working on musical projects. Here we have another cool musical application of our new technology using the Makey Makey. In this project students drew a picture and, using the graphite from the pencil as a conductor, were able to create a program that plays notes when you touch the drawing.

The other group too the Arduino route starting with wiring their board. The two girls played the default song that comes in the example program and wanted to write their own. They then had to research the notes and frequencies to the song they wanted to create in order to reprogram the board. Pretty fascinating stuff! I'm so proud of all of our young engineers!

LEAP to Arduino

This week began our first six week session of LEAP (Learn, Explore, Assess, Progress). In the library lab eight students and I are learning the ins and outs of electrical engineering with our Arduino kits. What is Arduino you ask? “Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It’s an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple micro-controller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.”

Check out this comic to learn more.

The objectives of this six week mini course are to explore and learn Open Source Software and Hardware applications, to learn the basics of electronics and circuits, and to introduce basic problem solving techniques using computers and computer algorithms. With four experienced Arduino programmers, and four who are new to the interface it’s a perfect harmony of skill sets for us to explore together. I’m fairly new to the tool myself, so I’m looking forward to learning a lot with the students as we brainstorm and experiment to build a project beyond the basic “blinking LED light”. Stay tuned for our progress!

Comic Life personal narritives

The 2nd grade is working on writing a personal narrative. In tech class we took it a step further and turned those stories into the visually dynamic direction of comics using Comic Life. 

Students were asked to locate and save images for their story, and apply filters to those photos to give a comic book feel to them. Above is the example comic I made for them as inspiration. Here are some that they came up with on their own...

PBIS Assembly on Self Control

Both Mrs. Adam's 5th grade and Mr. McLane's 2nd grade classes put together an entertaining assembly on the importance of self control, and what it looks like. For a closer look, have a look at the videos I edited below.

3rd Grade Solar System project

Mrs. Beaupre's 3rd grade worked to write their own newscast on their chosen planet. Here is the result:

I can only take credit for the filming and editing of Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Pluto and Mars. The regular tech teacher started the project before I got here. What fun we had!