Xtranormal - Movie Maker

http://www.xtranormal.com/



Design Your Scene

Xtranormal offers a variety of artistic sets and actors to fill your stage.


Custom Camera Angles

Unleash your inner Spielberg, and leave the camera work to them. You can frame your action by selecting a pre-defined camera shot, making and saving your own setup, or rely on their Magicam option for automatic camera switching.


Drag-and-drop Animations

Quickly bring your characters to life with our patented drag-and-drop animation system available on the web.



This by far the most sophistcated animation program i have come across, with lip snching basically done to a tee.



This would be a website you can use once the students have a feel for producing short animations



Students are required to type dialogue and what happens, therefore not only does it incorporate ICT but has a literacy focus as well

Dvolver - Movie Maker

The above video was created at www.dfilm.com

It is not appropriate for primary school students as the website has a sexual connotation to it

Animations on the internet seem very easy to use and can in general be implemented in the classroom.
Students with a creative side will love the animation programs and will love playing around with different backgrounds, characters and dialogue.

Zimmer Twins

Zimmer Twins

ZimmerTwins is an interactive website that enables students to create their own cartoons

On zimmertwins.com you create your own endings to one of our story starters. You may also create your stories from scratch. So put on your director's hat and you might just be our next featured movie maker!

This can be a fun way to finish a literacy lesson or lesson for ICT

http://www.zimmertwins.com

The net is not the enemy

The net is not the enemy

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-net-is-not-the-enemy-20090809-ee6h.html?page=-1)


This article is talking about social networking sites and the progression from the 1990’s when the internet began to today’s world of facebook, myspace and twitter. The Catholic Church has argued that social networking sites and killing off real life friendships and people no longer talk face to face, when infact I believe it’s the opposite.

A lonely kid of the passed may have sat at the computer and participated in online chatroom’s which were a dangerous place of anonymounity and were barely regulated. These days he would have added people from his class and if not confident enough to chat in person can at least chat to his real friends over the internet through facebook and/or myspace.

Research also suggests that the new communication tools available to young people help enrich their offline friendships rather than commoditise them or replace them with superficial relationships. In addition to these social benefits, a study conducted last year by the University of Minnesota suggested that using social networking sites improved technology and communication skills, boosted creativity and exposed students to new and diverse world views.

Social networking activity taught students how to edit content, to think about design and encouraged the production and sharing of poetry, art, photographs and video content. These students also tended to do better in exams.

There are always going to be concerns over privacy and young people letting the world know too much about their likes/dislikes and where they live etc. It is important to teach these young people about the dangers of posting too much information on the internet.

Week 4

http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/

We started the tutorial by watching a video from the above website named "Mermaid Story", this story was about an aboriginal elder who was wondering the land and later finds himself swimming with spirits. There are a number of different short videos on the website and there are some wonderful study guides and literature to go along with the videos.

Our task is to watch another short film and take screen shots that we believe represents the film

We see a story of good magic fighting bad magic, and triumphing.

This story is told mostly to children to keep them close to the camp at night. Namorrodor is a night creature, who should be feared. It also tells of the power of medicine and the knowledge of the elders in the camp

The main message is about being aware of and protecting yourself against evil and harm.

Excel Exercise

The next exercise involved m&m's and the graphing of different colours. First we talked about the dangers of allergies and how we as teachers need to be very particular about what sort of food we give kids as they may be allergic. Kids may also be allergic to things such as fruit, band aids etc

The above graphs were a screen shot of my excel inputs, they represent the number of different colours found within a packet of m&ms. Kids should attempt to read the graphs as they are however you can add numbers to the columns to help them interpret the graphs/pie charts. In this tutorial we have colour coated the graph and added a picture to the spreadsheet.

Many people find excel hard to use and do not like using this software, I have always found it easy to use and it is very valuable for many subjects within the school curiculum.

Week 3 -Teaching Design Briefs and Online Games

Week 3 - Design Briefs and Online Games

This week we are looking at design briefs, first we explored the old and new systems of designing:

Before - Investigate, Design, Produce, Evaluate

After - Investigate/Design, Produce, Analyse/Evaluate

In the Ivestigation/Design stage you brainstorm ideas and think about how you can solve the problem

In the Production stage you create your response to the problem and then analyse/evaluate if it worked

An important aspect of the new system is to analyse as you go and if necessary go back to the investigate/design faze and change the design.

Above is an example of a design brief, it involves the new system described above

Online Games - www.quia.com/web

This website enables you to create your own quiz

The quiz I created is on Michael Jackson knowledge and can be viewed on the website below

This was extremely easy to use and can definantly be used in the classroom, it is importanrt however that you keep an eye on the kids to ensure there is no bullying going on during class

http://www.quia.com/quiz/2513802.html

The next activity i worked on was to create a jumbled word quiz, I choose to do AFL teams and at first I thought it would be easy for students to get but after seeing it in action, it is harder than first thought

To access the jumbled word quiz see website below

http://www.quia.com/jw/387044.html

Finally I created another activity, this time based in the Hangman format, to access the quiz see below website

http://www.quia.com/hm/668189.html

Week 2 - Microsoft Publisher

Hi

Today's date is the 4th of August 2010, in this blog I am going to be focusing on Microsoft Publisher.

In a classroom lesson, you may be able to ask the students to create their own brochure.

From the above screen you can choose from many templates that suit your needs.

The above brochure was created using publisher in about 15-20 minutes.

This was the first time I had used publisher, I'm extremely confident that I would be able to run a lesson on publisher and teach the students how to use the software. I believe this software would best suit grades 3 and up. A major benefit of publisher is that there are many templates to choose from, this can help the students decide which template best suits their subject.

Publisher can also create webpages, which I will be using to create an ePorfolio for pespective employees to view.

I created a quick ePortfolio webpage, it is very east to use and asthetically great. Below is a sample of my home webpage.