Day 6 – Website Ahoy!

We actually have a name for our website and a holding place on the web. The name, selected by students voting, is Book Wizard, which seems like a great start. Students who are artistically inclined may create a logo over the holidays and we will vote on the best logo on January 7, 2011. Logo’s must be no more than 5” long and 2” high and must include the “Book Wizard” name. 

Here is a brief summary, by grade:

• First – All groups finished recording, except one group in which both students were absent. Ms. Hamlin will catch them up next week. Students are now looking for images to put into their podcasts and finishing up the keynotes. Podcasts will be imported into the keynotes and saved as movies. Ms. Hamlin will create “Pages” documents for the web pages, as students will most likely not have time this round.
• Second – Students were very excited about their second interview with the author of Jack the Cat is very Brave. Groups are just finishing up their second storyboards. Next up, students will create fun interactive online games related to their books to add to the website.
• Third –Because we are using new computers we had to spend a little time setting up new log ins. We didn’t have the adapter for the projector, so students had to practice their listening skills to get the job done.  Then, students in Ms. Schembri’s class introduced their partners in Ms. Kubinyi’s class to iMovie. We began to add titles and credits to the movie. Students were left with the task of finding background images to use with the green-screen video.
• Fourth – Audio files have all been re-recorded and most of the images are in place. Next, students learned how to add sound effects and music into their podcast. We discussed how to select appropriate sounds and how to use “ducking” to make sure sounds and music didn’t overtake our voiceovers. Next, students are being asked to  use “Pages” to create their web pages.
• Fifth – We had an extended period today as fifth grade was introduced to Dreamweaver. In this lesson students learned how to create an html page in their folder, insert the JPG image onto the html page, resize the jpg, create a layer on top of them image, and insert a movie into that layer so that when you open the html page into a folder the movie plays in the appropriate place.

I hope everyone has a happy and healthy winter vacation. I will see you all in the New Year, and we will have lots still to do!