PE_final_option_1

Relevant and Innovative learning Scenario

By: Mark Lillquist

1.     Target Audience - High school students, male and female, grades 9-12

2.     Materials - Reservations for the computer lab, training video of what to do.

3.     Objectives – The student will be able to plan a story utilizing the seven-step scaffold provided by storyjumper.com. The student will be able to access storyjumper.com and create a story based on the previously created scaffold. The student will define the universal message or intended purpose of their story in the form of a fortune cookie message. 

4.     Procedure – On Monday:

1. Discuss our artistic voice and how we are all individuals.

2. Watch a training video that I make.  

3. Check out some assets that came with storyjumper and brainstorm and plan our stories.

- On Tuesday:

1.  go to the computer lab.

2.  sign in and activate a storyjumper account. 

3.  create interesting stories.

4. save our work and share it with the class the next day.

5.     StoryJumper is what I designed my RILS around. Storyjumper is an online asset which enables the student to create books on the computer.

6.     Social learning – As we brain storm and plan our stories we will be working and sharing, bouncing ideas off of one another – probably in an exponential spiral to see who can be the closest to the edge without going over; and then, of course, someone will leap off the edge of appropriateness and I will have to catch them and throw them back in to bounds with a look and tone of consternation. Peer review occurred during the synthesis of the story, as students shared their ideals.

7.     Connections – As we study short films and paintings
, we explore universal themes, character curves, and the different parts of the story.  This activity is a nice application of creative thinking and contextual understanding. The Georgia Performance Standards: VAHSPAMC and VAHSPACU are connected to students’ imaginative exploits through the application of this web 2.0 tool.

8.     Product – A book we create online.

9.     Assessment –  Assessment of learning objectives and personal knowledge understood/explored, will be ascertained by the empirical observation of the students participation in the activity, and by reading their fortune cookies.

10. Reflection  - The student will be asked to write a fortune cookie style proverb, which embodies their stories universal theme, moral, or secret encryption. The teacher will read these, rub his whiskers and say…hmmm.

My Reflection of the overall RILS process

Using storyjumper with my class was rewarding because it gave the students an opportunity to have a drastic change from our normal activities. The RILS scaffold was a bit inconvenient, but it forced me to consider the social aspects of learning in blatant manner. The reflection and assessment components helped me realize my weakness in this area.  

The purpose of implementing a web 2.0 tool (storyjumper.com) in my classroom was to engage my students' imagination in a novel project; therefore,  this RILS project was successful.

PE5_Storyjumper

Hmmm...

When Rena prompted me to investigate the teachers version of storyjumper, I had assumed that it would cost money, and I was skeptical. When I checked it out, I realized that it just makes it easier for the students and I to share stories and log in. There is some work I must do tomorrow, as far as putting my students names in and setting up the account, but it will be worth it on Tuesday, when we go to the computer lab.

PE4_Storyjumper

Storyjumper has some assets that will help my students brainstorm before going to the computer lab.

Here is a scaffold for story building

Here are character development questions

I am going to create an instructional video for my students and have them plan their story on monday. We will go to the computer lab on Tuesday.

Here are Challenge  examples

Here are motivation examples

Here are setting examples

Here are obstacle examples

The students are going to have a ball with these activators. I am optimistic that they will spend more than 30 minutes planning their stories. The plots may become interwoven to a complexity of a Dickens novel.

Importing pictures from their home computers will be an option that will only be used if student's really take ownership of this project.  I hope they do. If any student purchases a hard copy of their book, it would be even more of a testament to their pride in their work. 

Here is the first run on my training video...

BP7_A one minute infommercial for Storyjumper

BP6_ a link to Michealann's BP4_iVote

Nice...Thanks Michealann.

Here is a link to Michealann" BP4, which I commented on

BP5_A link to Deanna Richardson's BP_4

Here is a link to Deanna Richardson's BP4, which I commented on.


Deanna's second WEB 2.0 Tool

BP4_Review of Storyjumper

I used "storyjumper" to tell the story of Jesus Light Beer. The interface was very intuitive. Signing up was hassle free. I stumbled upon this tool while reading my classmates blogs (Dena Richardson). I could use this in my art classes as an imaginative writing assignment - create a book which tells about your religious beliefs, an illuminated manuscript.

There are many fanciful templates to choose from. Here are  underwater  and uniform templates.

Here are outer space and  train templates.

Here are fire truck/emergency vehicle and magical templates.

I chose to start from scratch.

I imported my Jesus Light beer can to create the cover of the book. (this is the back and front cover graphics of the book)

Storyjumper allows you to use imported images as background or you can crop them and use them as props.

There is also a clip art library and convenient search tools.

I believe story jumper would be fun to experiment with in my classroom. I think I will take the students to the computer lab - if I can get in. The books we create can be shared or printed. Storyjumper has tutorial videos built into the site. There are many well done books available for viewing, which could be used as exemplars. Teaching elementary students the qualities needed for a harmonious and productive school culture could be a sneaky way to have high school students reflect on their own behaviors and attitudes. Funny books would surely be produced by students exercising their right of subjective interpretation and rationalization.

PE3_Cs4 Photoshop

Lynda.com has an excellent selection of photoshop tutorials. 

I used what I learned to create a "Jesus Light Beer can"

After an over view of Photoshop cs4, I looked at introductory tutorials.

Here I am erasing the bud part.

Here I am utilizing samples from vertically adjacent areas, to maintain consistent reflections.

Here is my final product.

PE2_iMovie

Here is a funny one minute video in which I used The detach audio feature to slide the sound of the mouse trap, to foreshadow the unfortunate event. I used fade to black to enter the night, and fade to white to enter the light.

In PE2_iMovie I have combined technical knowledge gleaned from the Lynda tutorials and theoretical knowledge from this book, to produce a funny one minute story.

PE1_iMovie

Two interesting things I learned about iMovie while trying to capture spring are presented in this one minute video.

This series of training videos showed me many editing techniques, and had a happy family ethos derived from the example videos used.

The screen within a screen and the green screen techniques are ones i've seen and wondered about.
this summer I may buy some green paint and experiment with the green screen technique. One thing not covered in the tutorials is how to import video from an Everio camera. I was lucky enough to find a free down load that resolved the problem. I like the powerful zoom on my Everio camera, it seems a bit more clear than the Aiptek video camera we got with our MacBook Pro and other EMDT peripherals.

This is the software I used. It was free and worked easily. This video also incorporates bee noises that I downloaded from the internet, screen inside of screen editing, and ducking the audio so that the bees and my voice over could be easily heard.

BP2_Schoology

I chose Schoology. I started out by reading some blogs that other people had written about schoology. This one teacher was stressed out because she was using it with seventh graders. They were being ugly and inappropriate. This thing works like facebook, in that you can send messages to the board or to each other.

She was trying to check all their posts, and it became a real time consumer. 

I've uploaded some art works and some photographs. I will ask the students to log on and to make one objective comment and one subjective comment for each picture. I will award them with 30 units of captain's cash (the art room currency). I plan on ordering a BUTTON MAKER and charging 100 units of captains cash per button. I believe the students will get a kick out of making buttons.

One problem I have run into is that my first idea was to use schoology to teach music, and now I can not figure out how to edit some of the fields. I clicked on every thing twice...at least twice, but I can't figure out how to change it. Another problem I am working on is locating the secret code for my students to use when they log in. If I can't find it, I will have to increase the amount of captains cash considerably. That last bit was a joke.
Really, I am liking this blog. I believe it would work more efficiently for my purpose. Schoology makes money when a school system buys their full featured version. This free version may have some undiscovered perks to it, but it seems to be a marketing tool.
Because my school system already has an electronic grade book, the grade book feature is not feasible.

Here is an awesome painting I bought from Neil Kalmanson. It is the second picture in the collection I will have my students comment on. I have made some comments on this picture, so that my students have an example.

 

Although I am not sure what the access code is, or if I am actually going to use this site with actual students, this is the URL.

BP3_iGoogle Screen Shots

This is my home page.

This is my FSO page.

This is my AR page

This is my ETC page.

BP1_welcome to my blog post

Welcome fellow ETC students. Here is a picture I painted. I am an Art teacher and a musician.