Witch Doctors and M&Ms

Dust Echoes is part of the ABC network website where there are twelve animated dreamtime stories. The stories are about love, duty to coutry and aboriginal customs. It is interesting to note that the stories were originally recorded as audio files and made into short animated movies by various Australian animators.

I chose to look at the story called The Curse, where the spirit of Namorrodor is summoned by the witch doctor and terrorises the camp. It was well told and the animations were quite engaging and well made.

After having watched it, we cut still images from the video and pasted them in an attempt to tell the story visually. It was quite difficult to retell the story in eight pictures but I think the storyline is still able to be understood. I even tested this theory by asking my housemate to see if she could tell me the story and was more or less able to.

www.abc.net.au/dustechoes

The task itself was good, again moving away from the simple paper form to this but on a

whole it was a little tedious with the constant print screening and cropping. After a while the creative aspect wore thin and I just wanted to get it done.

We also looked at how we can use M&Ms to use in a lesson incorporating it with using ICT.

We used Excel to graph the number of coloured M&Ms in a packet and then created a bar graph with individual colours for the students to ad. This was quite easy to do and I could see the students enjoying putting their own colours and creating their own type of graphs to display the information.

I will admit, I do get a bit nervous when it comes to using Excel and I think it comes from not having really had to use it at all in my life. I know I created this graph during the workshop, but if you asked me to do it again now, I feel like I would be completely clueless as to how I go about it. This is just another reminder, that as a teacher, I need to constantly be aware of current and new software and programs and constantly keep thinking of innovative ways of how to use it in the classroom environment.

Furthermore, this sort of activity could easily lead to navigating the M&Ms website and looking at various things, such as marketing, nutritional information - such as weights and ingredients - and conducting surveys and chance and data activities.

Computers can be used for so many things and not just for 'surfing the net'. I need to keep remembering that you can be very creative with its uses and make learning so much more interesting for students. I would definitely be looking at doing something like this when I have my own classroom next year - so long as I figure out how to do it again!

Jump Froggy Jump!

We looked at Design Briefs today and used one on how to make a frog jump. Partnered up, we had to use a piece of cardbaord, a rubber band and a 'frog'. Stickytape and scissors were optional.

Immediately, we decided that the rubber band would need to be used as a propeller or some sort and then then thought of putting the frog on a torn piece of cardboard to give some added weight for distance. We eventually decided to change to using the cardboard as a catapult and flinging the frog from it, which resulted in it going some distance.

It was interesting to see all the different ways people in our workshop came up with making the frog bounce and how even as adults we are sometimes too shy to show something to our peers and friends. I guess it will be important to let my kids know that they should always be confident in trying new things and it doesn't matter so much if it 'fails' but to have an eagerness and a willingness to learn.

I am not a big fan of the design brief as I found it a little bit tedious in writing everything down before we did it. I think it's a good idea to have it initially, so that students had formed a basic idea before the actual experiment, but I feel like the subsequent attempts and experiments do not necessarily require such strict use of the design brief.

The rest of the workshop was spent looking at the QUIA website, the internet's largests "create your own" and classroom management service where different forms of tests and activities can be created. I had a bit of a play with it and created the two 'tests' below. It was very easy and simple to navigate - and I can see that children would be able to have one of these done quite quickly, provided they had 'researched' their topic of questions if necessary.

I think it's a great idea that they can then go and play other people's games not only from their class but from around the world and vice versa. I think the idea of 'playing' with people in another part of the world could be quite valuable especially as the world is 'shrinking' every day.

Again, this program could be used in so many subjects, including English, Maths and Science. he idea of using it in a foreign language, if students are learning it, could be beneficial in that they could create and play games using that language.

From a teaching level, I like the idea I can ascertain the class average and what students scored individually, as this could be used as a piece of assessment to see what students already know at the beginning of a unit and what they know at the end of a unit.

The only down side about this website is that it is only free for a 30 day trial so we would have to make the most of it during that period.

Publisher Publishings

Today we looked at Publisher and at creating a borchure - this was a very simple task and I can see how children at primary schools will be able to do this. All that needs to be done is to click on the icons and add the graphics or type the information you would need.
I made a quick one on highlighs of East London and this was completed in about half an hour.




This would give the children much creative scope in being able to use their imagination to convey how they want to produce this sort of work.


Students would be able to extend themselves further by creating other things such as
personalized greeting cards, posters, flyers, banners, calendars and advertisements that can link in with the curriculum they are studying.

Furthermore, students would have the ability to play with different fonts and sizes and colours and experiment in ways they could not with pen and paper. There are also a whole lot of layouts and designs that can be used, which would result in a lot more creativity being used. The thing I like about Publisher is that you can change the whole design of your work in a few clicks of the mouse and leads the way to a lot more experimentation before achieving the final product.



Publisher would also be a useful tool to have when creating a webquest as the tools and items are already there for students. There are templates that the students could use with children who are more confident with Publisher, choosing to create theirs from scratch and in hard form to still produce the same type of work.