What genre of music do mummies listen to?
Wrap music!
1️⃣ Cupid’s Cards with Canva
with Melissa and Jen
Jen introduced Melissa’s class to Canva. As per usual, the kids were great and very eager to learn.
Melissa was a great partner throughout this, meeting with Jen every time she was at the school for the last couple of months. Melissa had her own goals for herself, and for her students identified, givin Jen a strong sense of direction for this lesson. Melissa acknowlegded her familiar with Canva and, come next year, looks forward to teaching her class Canva on her own!
The class made custom and interactive Valentine's Cards on Canva, for different teachers at the school. The objective was to get them ready for their book review projects they'll be getting assigned to them later this month, where they'll be inserting different elements and images into a Canva project, and linking each element to either a website or a google doc they've created. So their cards involved a link to a Valentine's themed youtube video (Jen and Melissa suggested choosing a valentine's themed episodes of a kids tv shows), before they were sent off to their teacher.
A small handful of kids had used Canva before, so Jen leveraged their help to support their peers who fell behind. Jen realized it’s easy to forget that while kids are pretty tech savvy, they're also still young and learning. Most students hadn’t quite graped basic skills like saving an image from Google to their Chromebook, or understand the process of downloading a project from Canva. It was a good learning opportunity for both the students and Jen.
2️⃣ Introducing Read & Write
with Luke and Dylan
Dylan helped Luke lead the workshop on Read & Write with Luke’s class. After the workshop, they exchanged feedback for one another to improve the workshop for next time.
- The scavenger hunt was positioned to the students more like a worksheet. So instead of exploring, they seemed to just complete each item and then move on. When things didn't work as they were told, you could tell that there was some frustration with being unable to complete the task. Next time, they would make it more open ended, and let the students choose which tools to explore first.
- They handed out a printout of the toolbar with labels for each item, which helped a lot. Students were referring to it constantly and having it on their desk made it easier than trying to find the open tab with the diagram. Hopefully, this is something students can continue to reference as they become more familiar with Read & Write.
- The highlight and collect notes tool seemed to have the biggest WOW moment for students. They are often asked to highlight words on websites or articles and categorize them as adjectives, nouns, verbs and this tool offered an easy way to collect word!
- As a final task, students were asked to customize their toolbars to reflect the tools they may use the most. We were all surprised at how different the students needs were. It was a nice reminder that tech like this can create equal opportunities for students in customizable ways. The solution isn't the same for everyone!
3️⃣ Anyone traveling within Canada?
with Louisa and Dylan
Dylan had a discussion with Louisa about her Celebration of Learning project. Last year, Louisa had her students create a city made of cardboard which led up to the final project with many small activities about room design, stores, building design and renewable energy!
This year Louisa has employed her class to be travel agents for the provinces of Canada. The final project will be a map of the country, with each province linking to a website with more info and a video of the students creating travel ads for each part of the country! Their research will include natural resources, notable locations and indigenous territories and perspectives. Very Cool!! Dylan will be helping Louisa frame out the website and set up a recording space for her students.
More to come!
4️⃣ Game Development on Chromebooks
with Dwayne and Dylan
Dylan connected with Dwayne's two students who are creating their own video games. After seeing the fruits of their effort, Dylan secretly thought “Holy Shit you guys, this is awesome!!!!”. Both of them had created a full on game with points, and multiple levels in the short time since their last meeting.
One student had made a top down tank-like shooter with WASD controls, a life bar, and a score that followed the player around the map. Collecting money increased the score but getting hit by an enemy reduced the life bar. Very cool! Dylan gave them some advice to add a textured background as it was a bit hard to understand where in space your character was as it zoomed around the map.
Another student had made a sidescroller with SEVEN levels!! Each one with a different background and art style. Their first few levels were just stick figures and lines but, by the 7th level, they had textures, backgrounds, platforms and moving elements to challenge the player. Even they had only beaten the last level a handful of times, it was almost too hard.
5️⃣ iKnow iMovie
with Wendy and Carlo
Wendy asked Carlo if he could help teach her class how to use iMovie on iPad. Naturally, Carlo agreed launched into a 30-minute session with Wendy’s students.
The first thing Carlo asked was for a show of hands on who knows how to use iMovie. Maybe suprisingly, about 90% of them raised their hands — excellent. With that knowledge, Carlo decided he wanted to build a project together with the students. He passed an iPad around and students took turns manipulating photos, adding a voice over, sound effects, and background music. When there was a question, it was first echo’d to see if any other student knew the answer before Carlo replied. Easy peasy.
Wendy's intention is to have the grade 7 class create read-aloud videos for the younger students. How fun!