Starting the Year with Names in Motion

Names in Motion 2010 (1) from Mr. Hodgson on Vimeo.

I like to start the first day of school with some fun technology and last year, I had my sixth graders jump headfirst into Pivot Stickfigure to make a movie that included letters in their name. I love that when parents ask “what did you do today,” they can answer, “we made a movie.”

Their only instructions from me are that I want them to include the letters of their name in their short stopmotion movie. What am I looking for? Time to chat with my new students and a sense of who is pretty comfortable with the computers and with trying something new (only one of my students had used Pivot before). I smiled when I heard a boy shout out from the back of the room, “I’m the expert. I can help.”

That’s what I want to hear!

I then grabbed finished movies (a few are still in process) and put them together into longer collections.

Here is one such collection:

Peace (in the names),
Kevin

2 Comments
  1. I love your idea! I am going 1 to 1 computers this year, but not one computer in our school is up and working yet. I have been so anxious to get started creating things like your movies. Thanks for sharing!

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