Week 5

In today's workshop we worked on how to create videos for primary students and also researched on many number of other educational websites.




http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies/-455729

This is the link to my movie I made from the dvolver website. It was a really friendly and entertaining website. Students can improve their creative skills by making their videos. This include creating their own story lines, dialogues,characters and also the environment.The video went for about 5-10 minutes. I found it really fun choosing the characters and their dialogues and  I think primary kids will have so much fun with this. But I am not sure if some of the contents should be exposed to primary kids because when I was making the video I came across semi naked girls and bad music. If this is parts are censored or removed, I think this website will provide a lot of fun for the kids.

The next activity we did was the typing blindly activity. Greg asked to switch  off our monitor and type what he had read out. After reading I had realized that I had put space between words even though he didn't tell to put any. This is what I typed in

I have a spelling checker
It cme with my PC
It plainly marks for my review
Mistakes Ic a nnot see

I stikea key and type a word
And wait for it to say
WhetherI am wrong or right
It shows straight away.

I think key board skill is essential  part in both our work place and higher education. So it is really important that we train our students from the lower level grades itself. This could be improved through having keyboard typing race or talking online in class using computer.

This is the link to the website

http://www.zimmertwins.com/

I found the zimmertwins website really fun and creative. When compared to dvolver its more basic and got less animations for students to work around with. But I think this is more suitable for primary students in regard to contents the websites got like more cartoonist characters and actions. They can put this in to other programs like inspiration and blogs with the usual procedure used in other weeks (print screen,paste...).This is a good way of introducing students to the model of story boarding like dvolver. Further students watch a lot of cartoons and stories on television, and so when we introduce these activities to them they will the enjoy these creativity work. The best part is that you can create it any where including at home or in school as long you got a computer and internet.

http://buildyourwildself.com/

I think build your self activities are created for play times rather than as a work during class. I am not sure if there is any contents in the website that I can make lessons out of it. It could be used for students to relax after maybe a lot of work. It also could be used to improve the creative aspect of the students. We can make different features for a person, for example mine is a combination of lion and human being. I think this website is created more on the fun side than like the other websites like dvolver and zimmertwins where there is more focus on storyboard, creating the dialogues etc.


http://www.sketchswap.com/



 


 This website allows the user to draw anything on the screen and then when the swap button is pressed, a random picture drew by other users will  appear instead of the one the user drew. It could be a fun activity but its got its disadvantages because if anyone drew an inappropriate picture it could appear on someone's screen when the pictures are randomly swapped.

http://www.ziptales.com/

This is an educational reading website where children do different reading activities.

http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache/default.htm

This is also a website where we can animations,videos,storyboards, create characters etc.

http://www.catchmentdetox.com/

This was one of my favorite games during the workshop. The aim of the game is to provide food for the country and avoid environmental disaster while we do activities like growing  plants, trees and builting houses.

The other website I found really interesting during the workshop was the story games.com, xtranormal.com, and clay animator.com  and wfp.org/how-to-help/individuals/food-force  (united nation food website)
I think including technology in todays education is really important. We should prepare our kids for the future and not to get stuck in the traditional way of teaching.

Week 3

In this workshop we did work on design brief and created quizzes and games.

The first activity we did was to create a jumping frog in groups of two using a small picture of a frog, cardboard, rubber band and a sticky tape. I think the activity was really  engaging and creative which I wasn't expecting for this activity. I think this kind of work will improve team work skills and the students who are creative can create the structure while other students can work on the research. This will make the students think about how to make the make the frog jump longer and higher and thereby improving their thinking skills.Student will enjoy playing with the frog as well as comparing each teams jump.

Both of the images were taken based on the activities we have done on the website. The first activity  I had to do was to create a quiz on any topic I liked. I found it really fun and interesting doing other students' quizzes. I have realized that this an easier way of learning a topic in class. The second activity we did was to create activities like word search, hangman etc. I chose the hangman but through my workshop I realized that it was not appropriate to use hangman and so I used the balloon type instead. This website allows teachers to create online lessons, practice games for their students and make quizzes, and tests to suit the desires of the students and the teachers. It includes flash cards, word search, jumbled words, rags and riches, picture perfect etc. In addition to what we can create, teachers can also search for activities created by other users for a variety of subjects. Students will also benefit, because they will have the freedom to practice and review the subjects at home.
I think one of the advantages is that when the students have done a quiz, the results  can be sent to the teacher's account to mark. Hence recording marks would be easy and further students can log on from their home and do their home work since its all online. And  parents could get an idea of the students work too from home. But sometimes  while searching for content posted by others, we can come across stuffs which can vary on content and grade level. Like Greg said in the week 3 lecture  it is really important that the school uses positive strategies to keep unsuitable content from students and also make sure students behave responsibly. The dangers of bullying, pheadophiles on the internet are really high so it is important to protect and educate the kids.

Week 4

http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/default.asp

First we looked at the educational federation website in this weeks workshop. This website is very useful as a strong teaching resource including for subjects like civics and citizenship, environment, languages, mathematics, science etc. Hence this this website is linked with the Australian curriculum in a way.

This is the link to the dust echoes website.
http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/

Dust Echoes- Namorrador

I found this website really colorful and entertaining. The website consists of twelve animated stories which tells about aboriginal love, loyalty, duties and custom. I found out from the website that we can learn the meaning of different aboriginal words and also learn to pronounce it. The story of Namorrador was really a thrilling story but I am not quite sure if students under grade 4 should be exposed to it as the animation is really scary and disturbing in some parts. But some of the stories was really interesting and calm. This website would provide lot of activities for students. Students can look at the video and have a discussion about the story line. Students can also view and decode the story and put it in different ways. Students can improve their research  and planning skills by researching on different characters and planning to put it in to story. This will in turn improve their writing skills. The images was created from inspiration. We had to print screen the each scene and put it in to inspiration and later save it. And finally put in to the blog. I found it bit hard as it was repetitive process but got used to it after few try and I was quite happy with the whole image.

Microsoft Excel- M&Ms

Before this exercise I never imagined that microsoft  excel could be used in a primary class. But because the activity was done in a fun way i think students will like to work with excel eventhough it looks boring. It will be a good activity to intorduce students to graps, different types of charts etc. Studetns can also get an idea about fractiions using excel as well. It will be good to bring parents who work in the financial area and could do a presentation on excel to the students. The idea of working M&Ms with excel was a great idea and with a pie chart we can determine the data and find out  ratio, fractiona and also percentage.. We had to count the of different colour M&Ms and create a graph and a pie chart. I think with this exercise students can compare the result in pictorial form and it is very easy to organise. The different colours and the characters of M&Ms will interest the students more in to the topic.