Starring Digital Citizens

Today we are finishing are digital citizen movie scripts. The chart below is what we are using to make our scripts more meaningful.  We are taking what we know already and what we are learning and teaching our parents about digital citizenship. Tomorrow we will start filming our movies with the flip cameras. We hope that our videos will impact people everywhere.

Cyber Bullying

Because our class is making short films about digital citizenship, my group is focusing on cyber bullying. We are doing this because there has been a lot of cyber bullying around the world to kids. To make it fun we are creating a two minute clip and editing it in iMovie.  Today we are making our scripts on google docs. As a class, we came up with a timeline to complete the project.  Our scripts should be completed by end of class tomorrow (we hope!).  We are enjoying using Google Docs because we can edit at the same time as our other group members. 

Joining The Homework Club

I feel silly being a guest blogger to my student's blog but alas, here goes because I never deny a good challenge (well, almost never).  Thank you to @ugafrank for this particular challenge.  Well, here goes:

11 Random Facts About Me:
1.  Many assume I am an extrovert but I'm actually a big time introvert.
2. I love a good potty joke.
3. One of the things I am most proud of is that my dad reads Hebrew with a Texas twang (wish my accent had stuck around sometimes).
4. My daughter and I have a dream of owning our own bookstore one day and brainstorm catchy store names in our free time.
5. One of my favorite things to do is white water rafting.
6.  I enjoy fishing for sharks.  (I've caught two!)
7. I still think about my grandma's everyday.
8. When I was 9 years old, I went to Vinnie Johnson ("The Microwave") basketball camp.  That's pretty random.
9. One of my most favorite movies is Almost Famous.
10.  When I'm with my camp friends, I regress back to age 10.
11. I am very proud of where I work.

My Answers to Drew's Questions:
1. What is your favorite movie of all time?
Besides Almost Famous mentioned above, I love Some Kind of Wonderful.
2. If you could have attended any concert anytime in history, what would it have been?
Don't laugh but 10,000 Maniacs
3. What do you do for fun?  Hobby?
I love to read, see movies, bake sweets, and travel.
4. What two guests would make the best comedic pair as co-hosts for the Oscars?
Chevy Chase & Ben Stiller
5 .Cat, Dog or Goldfish? Why…
Not just any dog but a yorkie because they are so cute and little
6. How do you caffeinate?
Coffee and diet coke
7. Favorite twitter chat?
#tlchat
8. Best place you ever vacationed?
Hana, Maui
9. Best book you’ve read in 2013?
That is tough!  Seriously tough.  I'm going to go with Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys because it is a perfect love song to New Orleans.
10. Favorite television shows?
Sadly, just Homeland.  Waiting for more quality T.V.
11. What is one thing you never/rarely share that you are exceptionally proud of?
The fact that I was able to give birth to two precious children.

The Eleven Bloggers That I Nominate to Join The Homework Club:
1. Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers http://www.freetech4teachers.com/
2. Karin Schreier Hallett at Liquid Literacy http://liquidliteracy.wordpress.com/
3. Cynthia Alaniz at Librarian in Cute Shoes http://librarianincuteshoes.blogspot.com/
4. Lisa Johnson at Tech Chef 4 U http://www.techchef4u.com/
5. Lee LeFever at Common Craft http://www.commoncraft.com/blog
6. Tony Vincent at Learning in Hand http://learninginhand.com/blog/
7. Erin Klein at Kleinspiration http://www.kleinspiration.com/
8. Jennifer LaGarde at The Adventures of Library Girl http://www.librarygirl.net/
9. Joyce Valenza at Never Ending Search http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/
10. Kelly Tenkely at I Learn Technology http://ilearntechnology.com/
11. Vicki Davis at Cool Cat Teacher http://www.coolcatteacher.com/

Questions for My Nominees:
1. What is an app you like and why?
2. Where is the most exotic place that you have visited?
3. What is one thing that you want to be remembered for?
4. If you were to do a TED talk now, what would it be about?
5. What is most precious to you?
6. What book do you think everyone should read?
7. What was your most rewarding professional development experience?
8. If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
9. Who is your favorite actor or actress?
10. If you could meet anyone in the world that is currently living, who would it be?
11.  What is the best compliment that a student has ever given you?

Here is your Task
1.Acknowledge the nominating blogger.
2.Share 11 random facts about yourself.
3.Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you.
4.List 11 bloggers.
5.Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer, and let all the bloggers know they have been nominated. Don’t nominate a blogger who has nominated you

Digital Citizenship Film Festival

In class today, we are making our storyboards for an internet safety video. We are using Google Docs to share the ideas with each person in the group. One group's idea was about stopping cyber bullying and another group's was about being a good digital citizen. I think it's important to have proper etiquette* online so everyone is safe and can have fun! I hope everyone watches our videos when they are made and that you'll learn how to be a good digital citizen online!
*This was one of our 5th grade vocab words

Programming Scratch

    Today our class explored Scratch. Scratch is a programming language. We were learning about this because we want to program our Lego alligators with Scratch, so we got to play with it today. Some of the difficulty about Scratch is understanding what all the controls mean but the easiest is making it walk. You can learn about different tools that are involved in programing. 

The Programing Challenge

Today, as a class of 5th Grade students, we are taking the Programing Challenge. The Programing Challenge is where we have to program a Lego alligator to make the alligator splash into the water while detecting the motion of a man coming toward its jaw and make the jaw open and shut 10 times. Wish us luck.

Hungry Hungry Alligator

Today we are building and programing our hungry alligator Lego Creation. We are working with the Mac Books to program our alligators. This is the first time that I have used Legos.  Personally, I learned how to build the alligator.  My team volunteered to rebuild a second time because we liked it so much.  We also learned new vocabulary words, such as what a pulley is and what it does. 

     Today, we went to the idea lab. We started to learn how to build an alligator out of Lego's and it opens and closes its mouth. We got to choose one partner to do this with. We didn't get to build it yet but we went through the steps of how to make it. We went on the laptops to see them. We also watched a video (or a couple) starring the amazing alligator! After we were done, we got to write on the walls with expo markers about what we are excited for about this project.

Digital Citizenship and Tagxedo

                                        
Today 5D is doing a tagxedo on digital citizenship. We are thinking about words and phrases that represent good digital citizenship. Some of these words are: gender, age, name, information, phone number, and password. These are things we know to protect online.

Being Employed

In our fifth grade tech class we are assigned a certain job. There are nine jobs so we have to rotate with each other so we each get a job. The jobs are the blogger or the person who writes the blog, the help desk and tech support to help people that do not know what to do. We have a tech sweeper to make sure everything is in order (headphones, monitors, and logging off). We also have a time keeper to keep track of how long we should be doing a specific activity. We are still learning all the different jobs. 

Finishing iMovie

Today we were finishing up our iMovie projects. We discovered that in sharing our device with another class that our movie was deleted.  We must have forgotten to log off.  It is a good lesson for us.  Now, we are refilming but because we are doing it again, it will be better the second time around.  We know what mistakes we should correct.  We also picked a new background.  Stay tuned...

Using the Broadcast Studio

We are continuing to work on our iMovie projects. Many groups are using a green screen. The advantages to doing this is that you can add a backdrop and custom sounds. SO, what do you think about our project?

How Do You Use Windows Movie Maker?

We are continuing to work on our projects with iMovie. I have figured out that in iMovie you can add and take away video clips by clicking just two buttons. You can add music and pictures just as easy. You can record with it too and you can cut out parts of videos and much, much more. We think it is funny that we are using iMovie to make a movie about Windows Movie Maker. They are both the default movie-making programs on Windows and Mac software. We are learning two tools at once!

Techno Questions

Today in technology we are working on our script for solving how things work. For example, our group is trying to discover how Google works. We are still trying to solve it. So far, we have researched Google by googling Google. We discovered Googleguide.com. We found out that Google uses these things called Google Bots and they search the whole web for information and pages that relate to your topic. Also, Google uses something called Page Rank and it ranks the pages based on the most accurate and the most viewed. We have lots to discover and are continuing to do so!

Researching Technology Questions

Today in technology we are going to research technology questions. My favorite question is "Why did they invent the Internet?". After we learn more about our questions we get to make an iMovie! I can't wait to show the class my iMovie. We can learn so much more from this project.

Project Based Learning

Today in Technology we started researching about our topic. It was really interesting to find out about what we wanted to know. Using Google Docs, we started researching the answers to our questions. In our research, we are being careful to document our sources so that when we create our movies, we can give credit. I`m really excited to work on it more tomorrow.

iMovie

Today in Technology we discussed some ideas that we can use for iMovie. We talked about technology ideas and some things that we have always wondered. The ideas were really interesting and I can`t wait to make the movie.

Lego robotics

This week we made Lego robots and programed them to do cool things like make their jaw open and close and sense when something is coming or not. We programed them on the laptops. Today we will make them make a splash noise!

Marshmallow Challange!!!!

This week we did the marshmallow challenge. The marshmallow challenge is where you use twenty pieces of spaghetti, one yard of string, one yard of masking tape, and a marshmallow to build the tallest structure we can with the marshmallow resting on top. I think we all learned that team work is very important, and believe me it is harder than it looks. 

We did a crowdsourcing activity as a class.  Below you will see what we assumed before the challenge and what we came to learn after the challenge:

The Marshmellow Challenge from Stacy Brown on Vimeo.

Our first week of technology!!!

In our first week of technology we learned about each other, the insides of a computer, and how to stay safe online. We used an online website called todaysmeet.com to reflect about being brave in the first week of school. It was a very technical first week.