Congrats All!

Yes, I have seen our website, and it is a doozy. Thanks to all for making it such a success. A fitting tribute to our dear departed Ms. Perez. As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed this project. Working together to create one project was fantastic. I learned all about Dropbox, GarageBand and podcasting and now I'm psyched for the next project. Lauren, when my students create new reviews, I shall put them in the folder in Dropbox.

Have you seen our website?

Lots has been happening behind the scenes, and while the website still needs quite a bit of work, there is now plenty there to look at. Check our "beta version" at http://ps376.org/books/.

404 Getting Down to the Wire

I hope everyone had a good weekend. I have made plans for our display boards. Since I have four groups I would like four boards. Each board will explain one facet of podcast production: writing a script and recording the voice, editing the voice, adding images, and adding sound effects and music. In addition, each board will discuss one popular series: Dragon Slayer's Academy, The Series of Unfortunate Events, The My Teacher is an Alien series, and the Boys Start the War series. Why? Because these students have all read many books in these series. What do you think?

By the end of the day Friday 404 have all the podcasts saved as files that can be used by the webmasters at 504. Also, we put all of the Pages for the podcasts and the "About the Reviewer" in the Dropbox.

Lauren, I put Alyssa's and Evenez's files in the dropbox and I am about to do Zen'z once I find them (he's absent today).

third grade TAG & ESL

PHEWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!The movies are done and on the dropbox. Both classes learned alot about meeting deadlines. We worked very hard and added nice pictures and nice backgrounds!!!!!Congratulations to the Logo winner from 1st grade. And congratulations to the children that were runners up from class 304!!!!A job well done.....Thanks to 504 for all their hardwork and continued dedication to the project!!!!!

1-104 Phew!

Our class brought it to the wire, but we were able to complete all of our Keynote reviews. We spent Friday working on our speeches and then created pop-up card invitations for our families. We will finish off by selecting our "costumes" for the presentation, choosing our speakers, and practice, practice, practicing....

WAY TO GO CHRISTOPHER!! You're logo was awesome. To be fair, I didn't tell our class that his logo was one of the finalists, so he won on his own merit. The class will be thrilled when they find out on Tuesday. :-)

Book Wizard Logo

The voting was soooo close, with only one vote separating the first and second choice. Amazingly, a first grade student's artwork was ultimately selected. Congratulations, Christopher,  for creating the winning logo:

Second Grade- One week to go!

This week we finished up most of our review iMovies and we only have one more to complete and send to Ms. Heinz by the end of today. We also wrote a song about reading that will be linked to the main page of the Book Wizard website. We took pictures of students in each class holding some of the books they reviewed. One group will input these pictures into an iMovie and have the song playing in the background. Today our plan is to record the letters that some of the students received from David A. Adler, Mike Thaler and Jack Batcher. If we have extra time, we are going to create a game to link onto each book page with comprehension questions.

Next week our plan is to make a presentation board of our author letters and practice the presentation speeches. I'm sending each group home with one part of the speech that they will write for homework and then we will have auditions to see who will present on Friday.

Mentoring Class 5-502

Things are continuing to go well while mentoring Mrs. Maria's class. The students have helped most of her students create about them pages. SOme have been absent so we are finishing them up today. The post casts are all recorded most have images in them and some are just adding the jingles. Some students in Mrs. Maria's Class are finished but we are not sure how to export the podcasts correctly. I was wondering if we can get a lesson on that during 2nd period so I can help them with finishing their projects.

Class 5-504 Busy Busy Week

Class 5-504 has been working very hard this week on the project. We have spent a little time each day including one full project day during the snow storm. We Have been taking all classes pages and movies and adding them to the website. This has taken a LONG time even though the students do it fast. There is just so many to do it takes a long time. The students are loving this and are always asking if they can work on the project. They are interested in starting the main, reviewers, the book and the authors homepages.

Logo Contest

Well, we had a lot of good submissions and some wonderful artwork. For the voting, we selected the best five images and digitized them using Flash. Here are the entries:

You can vote for your favorite logo by taking this survey: vote now

4-404

Friday was crazy trying to get the podcasts together. The first student would get one in good shape, then you help someone else. Then you preview the first student again and it's a mess. As a result, the "about the reviewer" pages didn't get done. Also, I thought the podcast pages were supposed to be blank. We spent all day today redoing those.

Any suggestions on how to get kids to 1. focus and not spend hours fiddling with design 2. listen and apply ideas of good design?

As a result, I did not have time to work on logos in Word, as I had said to Ms. Moran. Dumped the revised podcast pages in dropbox today @ 4:24. Dropbox does not really work on the laptop I have, so I have to use another computer for that. It's annoying.

FYI Gael is sending me away Tuesday. I really don't want a snow day; let's pray for blue skies!

To All Teachers

If anyone finishes any media or pages during the week please send put them in the drop box right away so class 5-504 can add it to your webpage as we get them. This way they will not get piled up and the kids have to rush through their work. Also on Friday as you are working all day. As a group finishes you can send their work. Please don't wait until the end of the day if they finish earlier. The students will be working on the webpage with all of your work throughout the day. Thanks a lot.

5-504 and 5-502

This week class 5-504 mentored class 5-502 on pages. The students picked it up easily and finished most of the pages in just one period. The students are still working very well together and have learned 3 different programs now. Keynote, GarageBand, and Pages. They are almost done with their podcasts and only have recording to finish.

5-504 Web Design

Today the 5th grade students learned how to add hot spots to the web pages so they can link works and pictures to other pages. They completed all the pages for 5-502 and a few from 2-204. Throughout the week they will be working on the other grades. They have been doing really well on converting the pages received from other classes to .index pages.

They have a lot of work ahead of them but are interested to learn more.

Second Grade Author Interview

Today we had another author visit and interview with Jack Batcher, thanks to Ms. Moran. The students interviewed him and the illustrator of his joke books. They have learned so much about the writing process from the authors that visited. We have finished most of our pages and the next step is to finish the last iMovie, record the author response letters and write a poem/song about reading. We will be working on our projects Monday and Friday to make sure that everything is ready for the following week.

4-404 On the Go

Looking over the to do list we are in good shape. All students have created a Pages document for their podcasts. I would like Ms. Moran to view those documents before I send them.

All of the podcasts have been rerecorded and now the sound is clear. Students are experimenting with sound effects, stingers and music. They have all become adept at editing for sound. The podcasts should be complete by end of day Monday at the latest, if the snow cooperates.

Mr. Amft

Things To Do

We have only two weeks before our presentation so there is much to do. Here is a brief list:

• Web Pages: Every student/group must submit a pages document to Ms. Heinz's class by the end of today (1/7/11) in order to ensure it is included in the final website. If students have completed more than one product, each one needs its own pages document.
• Media associated with each page must be submitted by next week (1/14/11). This includes ebooks, podcasts, movies, etc.
• Spreadsheet: Every book reviewed must be included on the "Books" spreadsheet. We will use this spreadsheet to create the links to specific book pages.
• Reviewers: Every student/group must submit an "about the reviewer" page to Ms. Heinz's class by the end of today (1/7/11). This page should list every review or author page the student worked on.
• Logo contest: Students who are artistically inclined may still turn in Book Wizard logo ideas. Logo’s must be no more than 5” long and 2” high and must include the “Book Wizard” name.  
• Presentation: Select students/projects that will represent your class at the presentation. Presentations for grades 1, 2, and 4 should be no more than 7 min (including media); grades 3 & 5 can have up to 10 minutes, since there are two classes involved.
• Additional Details:
• Program & Banner: Get info to PTA and Parent Coordinator ASAP.
• Invitation: Send home to parents.
• Display Boards:

Fifth grade has a few more specific chores:

• Create web pages out of pages documents.
• Create links on each web page to reviewer pages and author pages as apropriate
• Create overall look to site and page navigation