Category Archives: my classroom

The Digital Math Book Project, part three

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This is the third part in a series of posts in which I am sharing and reflecting on my Digital Math Picture Book Project in which sixth grade students (ages 11 and 12 ) use MS Powerpoint to create original picture books with a technological publishing aspect. (See post one and post two for more information).

Today, I want to share some of the reflections that my students wrote as they completed their books. Along with taking the survey, whose results I wrote about yesterday, my students had to write a few sentences about things they liked about the project and ways that I could improve it for next year. I also ask this question because it gives them some power in how to shape a project and I often do make changes based on their reflections.

Some common themes in their reflections is the aspect of time (mostly, not enough time, even though we spent weeks on the project) and freedom to choose the topic (I force them to use math — or science, last year — as the underlying theme of their books so that we can tie it into the curriculum and our district’s huge pressurized push to boost math skills).

Here are some of what they said:

  • “I enjoyed the math book project. One thing I would change would be to give less time. I know some people take a while to do the project, but I was done fairly quickly. Maybe it should be done independently because a lot of people are more efficient when working alone.“
  • “I think you should have different learning topics. Learning and teaching (some subject area) should still be part of it, but if everyone did different topics then it wouldn’t be the same thing in a different story or form for the audience. If we had different topics, like science or social studies or writing, then it would be better for the audience and for the writer. The writer would have more topics to choose from.“
  • “What I would change about the project is the deadline. I think you should give kids way more time. That way, kids would be able to spend more time on their pictures.“
  • “I think doing math kind of ruined it. It would be better if you could pick your own topic.“
  • “I really liked how we could draw our own pictures. But I think next year, kids should be able to have about two or three pieces of clip art in their stories.“
  • “I enjoyed using Microsoft Powerpoint to make a book. I think having it based on math was enjoyable. I like math a lot and it was fun to make a book around it. This was so fun I didn’t want to stop.“
  • “One way I think you could improve the project is to have a key or sheet on how to do certain things (in Powerpoint). There should be a paper that tells us how to do backgrounds, fill effects, animation. Then, you won’t have to go everywhere in the room and people don’t have to wait for you with a question. People could still ask questions if they are confused. I know I would have liked a key instead of always raising my hand.”

I think that last comment — on creating a sheet of paper with some basic technology instructions — makes a lot of sense and now I think, why didn’t I do that? I was running around the room quite a bit, helping out individually and doing mini-lessons here and there and everywhere. A sheet with some basic instructions would have freed me up. Great idea.

The comment that “math ruined it” is an extreme expression of a reaction that I got at the start of the project, and which quickly faded for many of the students as soon as they had a story idea in their mind and the laptops open. It’s true that math is not the most engaging theme, but it does allow me to justify the time spent on the project, allows students to think about math in a different way, gives them a chance to write for an audience (of younger students), and pushes them a bit outside of their regular comfort zone.

The first comment about having too much time on their hands was the only one of its kind in the stack of student reflections. I do have a series of bonus activities and different layers of the project for a variety of learners, so most always have something to keep them going. Last year, we even tinkered with embedding video into the books, but we did not get to that this year. But we do have students use audio to narrate their books, add hyperlinks to game and resource sites on the web, write biographies of themselves as published authors, and other activities. Even so, some kids cruise through and some are move slow (one of my students is still working on his book, which is looking great but it has been in progress now for almost five weeks).

Here is another video collection of the books:

In my next post, I will share out some thinking on what I will do next year based on my experiences from this year.

Peace (in pictures),
Kevin

Digital Math Book Project, Part two

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This is the second part of my attempt to share out a month-long unit in my classrooms around creating digital picture books that center on the theme of math. Yesterday, I shared some of the links to the books themselves and one of the movies that I made by converting the Powerpoint files into video. (see part one) I will be sharing another movie with each of these posts.

By the way, this idea of digital picture books is also the topic of a chapter I have written for a book I am co-editing that centers on the concept of how technology may be changing the way we look at writing in the classroom, with a special emphasis on how teachers are handling the assessment of such work and balancing these changes with the increased state and federal push for standardized testing. (We’ll be sending off the book to our publisher in the coming weeks!)

At the end of the project, I have students take a quick survey as a way for me to gauge how things went overall (I have 80 students in four classes) and also write a quick reflection. I will share out some of the written reflection in the next part of these posts. But I gathered up the results of the survey and turned some of the questions into graphs. I had about 75 students take this survey.

Some things I find interesting:
  • I always hope this project might spur more students to see themselves as authors and publishers of their own books. Last year, the numbers did not show this interest but this year, more students indicated they might be willing to try to self-publish their own book in the future. This means that writing has value to them. Yeah.
  • It’s clear that the technological aspect to the book creation has drawn their interest and made them invest more energy into this project than if I had given them paper and pencils. I see that in the classroom, but it is nice to see it reflected in their own reactions, too. They were very engaged for few weeks on this project. Every day, the question from their mouths: Are we working on the books today?
  • The question of whether their book would be different if we had not used technology is an interesting one. Last year, the numbers were high in the column of “yes” but this year, there were a lot of “not sure” responses. I wonder if this is because we could not print them out and they could not see the flat version of their books. Almost everyone used some sort of animation within Powerpoint — moving characters, shifting scenes, etc.
  • I ask the Comfort Level question because at the start of the year, only a handful of my students had ever used Powerpoint before. The software has many drawbacks, of course, but I like to show them how to use programs in creative ways. I like to think that I am sending them forth with some knowledge that not everything has to be used as it was designed for and that it is OK to play around and dig deeper into technology to discover possibilities.
Here is another video collection of picture books:
Stay tuned for Part Three, where I share out some student reflections.
Peace (in pictures),
Kevin

The Digital Math Book Project, part one

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My students have finished up their Digital Math Picture Book Project and I am going to share out some of the work and some reflections over a few days. The basic premise of this project is that students use MS Powerpoint as a platform for designing and creating a digital picture book. They can’t use any clip art. And the theme that must woven into all of their stories is math (last year, it was science). Some students go deep into Powerpoint and animate their stories in pretty neat ways. Others spend a lot of time on the illustrations. Everyone is fully engaged in the work during the entire unit and many students emerge as leaders and helpers of others.

Typically, this project takes a good three to four weeks, including planning time, rough draft writing and storyboarding, and then working on the computers. The final results are shared on our class weblog for families and shared with younger students at our school. Some years, we have money to print out hard copies of all the books, but not this year. Which is unfortunate, because there is value in their perceptions of their books from the digital canvas to the printed page.

Here are some samples of the books from this year, including a few that I experimented with my converting into a video. It’s not perfect — some frames move too fast and some of the writing is too small. I need to keep working with the software and figure out a better method. But I like turning the books into little movies, however.

I’ll share out the three little movies that I made as part of this series of posts. I would include them all here but the new Edublogs platform seems resistant to more than one embedded video media.

Here some links to download and view some books in Powerpoint mode:

I am now in the process of grading all of the books (more than 50!) and I am pleased with many of the results. This weekend, I’ll post out the results of a survey I gave to students and then I will share some of their written reflections on the project. The reflections provide an interesting insight into the process from their viewpoint (hint: why math? is a common thread).

Peace (in picture books),

Kevin

Self-Publishing Student Poetry

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This year, as we ended our unit on poetry, I decided that I wanted to try something a little different with my students’ poems. In the past, I have collected voluntary submissions of some poems, gathered them into a Microsoft Publisher document to make it look pretty, hit the photocopy machine and cranked out a bunch of stapled booklets. It worked just fine for what it was.

But I want my students to see themselves as published writers as much as possible. So, this year, I decided to be bold and use Lulu, the self-publishing site, to create a real book of student poems. I had tinkered in the year with using Lulu for some of my own work, and I was inspired once again when I saw that the collaborative @manyvoices project that had students using Twitter to write a story across the world published a final version through Lulu (I bought myself a copy). My students were excited about it, too.

And, so, after all of us doing proofreading and choosing some basic designs from Lulu, our book of poetry, entitled Exploration, is now for sale via Lulu. The cost is about $5 per book, which isn’t too bad, but shipping costs another $5. If I had another month in the school year, I would just use order forms for parents and buy a bunch in bulk. But time is running out (two weeks left) and so I have been directing students and families to the Lulu site, in hopes they will order a copy. (I have also set it up so the download of a PDF version is free, although one student asked why you would want that when you can have a book that you can hold in your hands — nice insight in the digital age).

buy this book on Lulu.

This is what the cover of the book looks like:

This file has been created and published by FireShot

I think I will do more with publishing next year, knowing how easy it really is with web-based platforms. My hope had also been to do a fundraiser in which we publish short stories and sell the book collection for a little bit more, and use the proceeds to benefit an organization in Darfur, which my students learned about and became advocates for earlier this year. But, again, time ran out on us.

Peace (in publishing),
Kevin

Capturing Claymation Activity

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We spent a lot of time working on Claymation Movies yesterday and, with a couple of exceptions, the students were really focused. Much of the work was just capturing the raw video, which requires patience and teamwork and a vision of how the stories might unfold. The theme this year is Climate Change, and I am going about the movie making process a little different than in years past (I will reflect later).

But as I was helping the groups, I took a couple of pictures of them at work, and made this collage.

I love their little creatures!
Peace (in multicolored clay),
Kevin

Getting a Glimpse of Digital Math Picture Books

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My students are hard at work with their Digital Math Picture Books and some are now starting to panic about some deadlines that I have set for next week. But I think most of them will be OK. They need a little fire under them to reduce some of the social chatter during class and focus in on their work. Some of the books are just amazing. Others are going to need some significant work. But everyone — from the strongest writers to the most reluctant — are fully engaged in what they are doing with this project.

I grabbed some of the pages from books and went back to Animoto to see if I could create a fun little overview of some of their work. Here goes:

Peace (in pictures),
Kevin

Creating a Virtual Art Museum

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Along with classroom teacher, I am also one of the technology coordinators at our school. It sounds better than it is. Usually, it means fixing wires, turning on someone’s printer when they think it is just broken, or making sure the laptop cart is all charged up. Glory work, really.

I would like to find ways to help other teachers in my building think more about technology. Time does not always allow it. I have gone into other classrooms to show teachers how to do podcasting (for poetry), and had my sixth graders work as mentors with third graders on creating pictures in MS Paint.

This past week, I have been working as the technology person for a wonderful project that was envisioned by our librarian and art teacher. It fuses history, art, research skills and technology together. It is the We The People Virtual Art Museum and it is done by a group of fifth graders. The two teachers received some grants to get prints of famous artwork (found at Picturing America website, which is run by the National Endowment for the Humanities). The students researched the art and then recorded (on my little voice recorder) a guided tour of the print.

Next Friday, when the fifth grade hold its annual Living HistoryMuseum, we are going to set up a series of laptop computers with headphones, and allow visitors to “tour” the virtual art museum. We decided to make little movies with the podcasts (using Photostory3), and now we are working on developing a website resource. What I like is that this kind of project has many layers to it and hats off to my colleagues.

Here is one sample. This is about The Ladder for Booker T. Washington by Martin Puryear:

When the website is completed, you can be sure that I will share it out.Peace (in exploration of art across the curriculum),
Kevin

Comic Dad and Our Picture Books

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My students are fully immersed right now in creating Digital Math Picture Books, using PowerPoint as the platform for creation and MS Paint as the (cumbersome) illustration tool. Despite the many limitations of both of those software programs, they are hard at work and fully engaged in creating picture book stories that weave mathematical elements into the mix.

There are stories explaining the geometry of shapes; using order of operations to solve mysteries; and explaining the difference between pie and Pi. Their audience is going to be students at our school in lower grades, but they are having a blast with the creation.

comicdad2

This past week, we were fortunate to have a father of one of my students come in (I will refer to him as Comic Dad) and he worked with our four classes on the process he goes through to create a comic called Rocketboy, which has been featured in Nick Magazine (as a 3D comic, no less). He and his partner have also worked on other projects over the years, but he focused in on Rocketboy — who wishes more than anything that he can fly, but cannot.

What I liked about what Comic Dad said:

  • his collaboration is a true collaboration with his partner — ideas are bounced in and bounced at all the time;
  • the work is being revised constantly right up until publication and he had the storyboards to show the changes;
  • creating a character with flaws leads to story lines (each Rocket Boy story revolves around his failed attempts to fly);
  • humor — both outright and subtle — has a special place in comics, where the visual medium meets the writing;
  • perseverance is a key word for any writer wanting to be published.

Meanwhile, my students were finishing up their own storyboards and so I grabbed a few of the pages and made this little movie of their initial brainstorming work that must take place before they even get to boot up the computer.

I’ll share out more as the process progresses, including some of the characters they are creating (some are just so amazing and interesting, I think).Peace (in picture books),
Kevin

Creating with Clay

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Yesterday, my sixth graders began making clay characters for an upcoming claymation animation project. I had a brainstorm in the morning that it would be very cool to have them use the software and webcams to capture the creation of their characters — from blob of clay to full characters. This would give them more practice with the software program (which is pretty easy to use but I want to expose them to it as many times as possible).

This collection of their videos is the result of that work:
They worked in small groups and some listened to directions more closely than others (the Friday afternoon syndrome). I had visions of these cool videos that begin with a hunk of clay and then slowly, something is formed in front of our eyes. If I had time, I would have done an example myself to show them. I still might.

There is an interesting mix of strange creatures, that’s for sure. A few of my students clearly have an artistic gift.

One lesson that I continue to learn is that I need to push the concept of patience, patience, patience, and more patience. The slower they can move their character and capture those movements as frames, the more lifelike it looks on the video. Some of them still want to leap ahead with movement and the video then looks all jerky. For 11 and 12 year olds, that concept of patience is a hard lesson to learn, but I am hoping that they will see the results of that patience in the quality of their movies.

Another variation in this project is that this year, I am allowing the students to build a character first, and then work on the story (around climate change) second. Usually, it is the other way around — the story informs the characters. This year, the characters may inspire the story. I am not sure if this approach is better or not, so I will have to see how it goes. I do know they were incredibly engaged in what they were doing for the entire 40 minutes of stop-motion and clay creation yesterday. So many came up and told me how much they love doing the stop-motion and they wanted to know when we can do it again.

More to come as the weeks progress …

Peace (in clay),
Kevin

The Staff Talent Show: Stray Cat Strut

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I should have know someone would have videotaped our staff act at the Talent Show and put it up on YouTube. I don’t mind. In fact, it allows me to share it with you (I shared it with all of my students today since some of them did not attend the event).

That’s me on the saxophone — in white shirt and black hat. And we are playing live — no lip syncing for us. Everyone on stage is a member of our staff, except the drummer, who is a friend of the staff (he drums for us whenever we have a need).

Peace (as a real cool cat),
Kevin