Reflections by Mrs. Brown

I am looking forward to a great day of sharing and reflecting.  We will be doing a review of each of our ScratchJr. projects as they have now been set to music.  Then, using Padlet.com, we will be sharing our challenges, inspirations, and hopes for those who are interested in our inventions.   Click on this Padlet link to learn from our experiences.

SCRATCH JR. by Brooke

We are learning to program with Scratch Jr.  We each have an iPad to create a project using drag and drop programming.  In the beginning of class, we all start with a warm-up challenge and then share our creations.  Then, we get to program a project of our choice.  Because I love the way the ocean background appears, I am inspired to create a guy diving into the ocean at night.  All of the ocean creatures are trying to find him.  I am really enjoying this. I think everyone is enjoying this too.

.

Design Squad by Jessie

Today in class we are making our own inventions with the help of PBSkids design squad. We are creating  inventions and we are learning about different people who have been successful inventors in the world of technology. Yesterday we played charades in class focusing on  these famous inventors. We learned about the inspiration for  their  ideas.                

Did you know that Steve Jobs was as obsessed with design as he was with how the device worked?

Welcome Back! by Mrs. Brown

Are you ready for the best year ever?  I hope so because that is what the year ahead promises to be!  This year, you will become an entrepreneur, a change agent, a creative genius.  This is the year of YOU.  How do I know, you ask?  Because I've got big plans.  Before I get to that, however, a few housekeeping topics that you should know about:

• This year we will be so busy building our dreams that we will no longer have time for in-class typing.  Therefore, please follow the directions below in order to practice your typing at home:
• Type to Learn Students can access the Type to Learn program from home in order to practice their typing skills. To install Type to Learn on your home computer, simply download it from the following link: http://ttl4.sunburst.com/downloads/
• The students use their last name and first two initials for their username the password is davis.
• Once the program has been downloaded onto your home computer, the account code to log in is 135321.
• We will continue with our iHelp job chart.  I will go over a refresher of the jobs on the first day of class. 

As for the year ahead, we will be building our own Tech start-ups!  There are many ways to become an entrepreneur.  My goal for this class is that it will inspire you to think about the many paths on which creating a business can take you.  Together, we will learn how to create a business model centered around an invention of your choice inspired by wanting to create a solution for a problem that has not yet been solved.  

Where do we start?  Well, we will start by reviewing successful entrepreneurs and their innovations.  By exploring what they have in common, we can begin to understand what it means to invest in yourself and take such a giant leap of faith in creating something of your own invention.  I look forward to creative brainstorming activities where we will discover our own passions that we want to devote our time to building and sharing.  

You may be wondering how technology plays a role in all of this.  We will explore different tech tools that will help us develop our "brand", stay within our set budget, invent a prototype and very importantly, market our brand.  With the help of technology tools, we will pitch our ideas to investors. Finally, we will reflect on our hard work and support each other through a peer critique process. Shark Tank anyone?

 I hope you are excited because it is sure to be an adventure!

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/504262489496854167/

The Fantastic Process of Making an iMovie

We just finished an iMovie project so please check them out below. We worked in groups of three.  Each group wrote a script using GoogleDocs.  We filmed bits and pieces of our movies each day.  We were able to film our movies throughout the school and use the GreenScreen app by DoInk to create backgrounds of our choice.  Then, we put it all together in iMovie and edited them.  We learned many different things from the practical to the technical: the importance of being a good digital citizen, how to use iMovie, how to hold the camera, the importance of adjusting your audio after filming if your voice is too low, how difficult it is to act the part sometimes, and how to work as a team. Today we are sharing our videos in class! After watching each video, we will be discussing what was most challenging about the process, what we would do differently, what we learned, what we are most proud of and what surprised us most.  We hope you enjoy them!

The Cyberbully

How to Stop a Hacker

CyberBully

Digital Citizenship

Usernames and Passwords

Script Writing

Today in class we are starting our scripts for online showmanship.  We have to show signs of creativity and effort. We are using Google docs to connect with our group members to write our scripts.  To write this script we have to collaborate with our friends.  We are learning it is important to respect each other's ideas and not change their work without permission when sharing a document.  This will be a fun activity to share with our friends.

Digital Citizenship Film Festival

We are beginning our digital citizenship film festival today.  As a team, we are emphasizing communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking.  We watched some short videos that demonstrate each of these skills and discussed what stood out in each video in relation to these topics.  Then, we evaluated @mrbadura's digital citizenship tool kit and why each item is important.  This helped us frame our topics that we wished to focus on in creating our movies.  After brainstorming what it means to be a good digital citizen, we broke into teams of three and began writing our scripts with Google Docs.  We are just getting started but we are excited about the planning process.

http://comfortably20.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-new-and-improved-digital.html