Each year, I try to find some new and interesting activity for my incoming students (they arrive on Wed, although a few have begun blogging at our classroom blog already .. cool). This breaks the ice, gets them engaged in an activity and allows me time to wander and have conversations with them.
This year, I decided I will show them Pivot Stickfigure and have them create a short stopmotion movie using the letters of their first name. Pivot (a free download, by the way) is always a huge hit with students, and I am curious to see how tech-savvy they are in the first few days. With pivot, you can export the final movie as an animated GIF. Or use it in Moviemaker (I won’t go that far with them yet, however).
Here is a sample that I created to show them:
Peace (in frames),
Kevin