Best of Luck!

Today we wrapped up our final projects, played vocabulary Snowman, and some students shared their favorite projects. To learn more about their favorites, use the "Zoom" image below. Click through the slides to find your class. If you shared a project, hover over your avatar to access the hyperlink. If your link does not appear it may be that the link you shared does not work and you need to take a screenshot of your work and resubmit the form.

ALL submitted work must be original, free of personal identifiers (first names are okay), and have the proper sharing permissions. Some student work is shared only to the GDRSD domain and only accessible with student accounts.

The avatars and comics were made with Google Slides. You will see some coding projects created with Scratch and songs coded with the RootBot simulator. They are a creative bunch. 

Enjoy!

Everyone Loves a Parade

The semester is winding down with only one week left. Students are wrapping up projects before completing new activities next week. Stay tuned for a variety of shared project this week and next. 

One project we wrapped up last week was learning how to screen record while making a practice how to video for making a new Google Drive Folder. Feedback was provided and students created a second how to video pulling ideas from a list of tools that we explored in class. Options included Zoom, Google Drive, Classroom, Slides, Scratch, Screencastify and a few random tools suggested by students. With their permission and as long as no personal identifiers are shared, videos will be added to the ABC's of Technology page. It is a work in progress and we only have a few videos at this time. Come back and visit again or bookmark the page for future use. 

Below are the Scratch parades we are building. Sixth graders were tasked with thinking through some simple coding activities before writing some starter code to make their Google Slide avatars come to life in our parade. Stay tuned for changes and new additions as we complete these projects in the coming days. 

Fifth graders will use their avatars to tell the story of our FAB Constitution in comics we are building in class. See what they think a positive learning environment looks like. How FAB are you? See last weeks post to learn why students at GDRMS as so FABulous! 

Screen Recording with Screencastify

Screen recording is a powerful tool that anyone can use to show what they know, help a friend, or just have fun by clicking the record button and utilizing tools on the computer. Students began with a visit to the Chrome Webstore  to find and install the Chrome extension Screencastify. 

Next they watched a short screencast demonstration of making a new folder in Google Drive. Once the raw video file was ready, they watched as I opened in the editor to demonstrate specific tools, crop, trim, zoom in, and titles. Although there are some additional annotation tools, our focus was to remove any personal data with the crop tool, trim unwanted parts of the video clip (a sneeze or dead space), use the title tool to add a title or "closed captions," and zoom to focus on key points in the video like a pop-up menu or button to be clicked.

We also spent time reviewing file extensions as we are now focused on video files, or mp4's in this case. Not to be confused with Chrome Extensions.

Want to give Screencastify a try, check out my tutorial below.

Data! Data! Data!

Data! Data! Data!

In our lesson on data what started as an overview on ways we collect, organize and share data, grew organically into a lot of great conversations and sharing of ideas. Check out our data review Slide which we used with PearDeck, more data collection! Take a close look at the student generated Word Clouds in slides 6-9 that we made with WordClouds.com.

Our conversation started with a previously used Google form and response sheet as we reviewed student data on Hour of Code activities. Review of the response worksheet lead to some conversations about how quickly a computer can sort through lots of data in fractions of a second, unlike us humans.

We continued looking at other collected data, how it is represented and ways it might be interpreted. All the while PearDeck was collecting their data, sharing it anonymously during the live presentation and also compiling it into a Google Doc for my review afterwards.

On Deck!

Students are learning how to screen record to show what they know. Stay tuned!

Their Constitution

Fifth & sixth grade students, the Founding Students, just finished work they started before the break and finally voted and signed the Innovation Lab FAB Constitution. A big shout out to my friend, fellow digital coach and computer science teacher, Zak Kolar, for sharing the script that made capturing student signatures on our digital document. 

Every student in both fifth and sixth grade contributed to the creation of this document in part of our unit on "My Classroom, My Learning." Sixth grade students completed this work last year so they reviewed our FAB articles with a new lens being careful to consider our new remote and hybrid learning environments when listing and sharing ideas.

Their input was entered into a Google Form and later used to create word clouds. Word clouds show the frequency of responses in a culmination of words usually in the form of a shape, see 2 examples from our data collection below. The more frequently the word or phrase occurs, the larger the word or phrase appears in the shape. You will learn more about our work on data collection and representation in a future post.

Before each student signed this document they considered its contents as well as the ideas shared within their groups. Sixth grade students decided that no amendments were needed at this time. Although the tools they use may not be the same and they may learn differently, they believe that a positive learning environment should include and be FAB!

Click to enlarge.

Avatars, File Management & Google Slides, Oh My!

Avatar PNG Files from Google Slides

This week students completed their work building avatars with Google Slides. I can't wait for them to use these creations in upcoming projects. Some are even using their creations for projects in other classes, like Social Studies to show what they know about the American Revolution or Neolithic Times. So exciting!

While making avatars, students explored toolbar buttons, menu bar dropdown lists, tried a few right-click options and utilized some shortcut keys. There are many means to the same end. Check out the graphic below to see the objects and the tools that we explored. (From an earlier post.) 

Short descriptions of some of the favorites are included here:

Zoom for narrowing in on small details or to see the big picture. 

Paint Format, a hidden gem lets you copy the properties of one object (a shape or text) and apply them to another of the same kind. 

So many Shapes, the rectangle oval, trapezoid, callouts and donut shapes. Spoiler alert! You can enter text directly into any shape. You DO NOT need to place a text box over the shape. Word Art yes, text, not necessary. 

Line button. It takes some practice but the curve and polyline tools are a big hit! My goodness they are creative.

Crop (and Mask) to manipulate the image sizes using gutters to make them fit like a true comic. 

Fill Color & Borders were helpful for our avatars when making hair, tie-dyes, and other materials.

     

Check out our digital avatar poster or view our Zoom classes below to see the work that has been submitted thus far. Bookmark it to check in for some late arrivals as some students are still fine tuning their creations. We close each class with an exit ticket. Most days it includes sharing with me using the Zoom chat. Students are always asked to 1) share something that they learned or 2) tell something that they wonder. See some of their actual comments in the "chat" window.