Sarah and Rachel recorded this fourteen minute Cinchcast with me today discussing their initial experiences learning how to create with Scratch software from MIT. They discussed learning how to move Sprites, about costumes, loops, coordinate geometry basics, and more. Download Scratch for free from scratch.mit.edu.
Rachel and Sarah: Since you both love the Voices app and the Chipmunk option so much, I’m sure you’ll be interested to learn how you can use the free program Audacity to change voices into “Chipmunk” sounding voices. One of my UNT students created the following screencast explaining how.
… show us your creative ideas for improving communities, schools and businesses so that Oklahoma remains a creative frontier. We invite all forms of creativity including, but not limited to, essay, video, photography, drawing, or mixed media.
This summer Sarah and Rachel wanted to start their own iCarly-style webshow, and decided to name it, “The Zebra Print.” I helped them register the domain name (www.thezebraprint.com) and get the site launched. We created a YouTube channel for the show as well as a Twitter account. Sarah selected the WordPress blog theme and made sidebar customizations, I helped her add a ClustrMap and add Feedburner chicklets. We published the first episode in June, but busy schedules have prevented us from publishing the rest. We still need to publish episode #3, which was recorded in Washington DC at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. For now, however, there’s three episodes for you to watch. It’s going to be exciting to see the girls develop their on-camera communication skills. (Some of us certainly have an apparent flair for the dramatic.) Enjoy!
Rachel has seen her siblings listen to audiobooks on their iPods, so this week she decided she’d like to have some of her own – particularly in light of our upcoming road trip to Kansas in a few weeks. Last night we searched the iTunes Store together to explore what was available that might be of interest, and she found a Dr Seuss compilation of nine books along with Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” which she thought would be great.
Since she just had $9, I agreed to split the cost of the books which totaled $13. This provided a good opportunity for her to learn how to divide by two, in a practical context. This evening at dinner she took 13 sugar packets at our restaurant and separated them into two groups, eventually figuring out she had to tear one in half. In this way she figured out we both needed to contribute $6.50 toward the purchase. This evening before bed she made her purchases with my help, and then recorded a five and a half minute podcast discussing her experiences with Audiobook purchases on iTunes. Lots of great learning together tonight!
This morning during our carpool into Oklahoma City, Sarah (age 9) drew the following “fingerpaint” drawings using the program Brushes on my iPad. I uploaded these directly from the iPad to Flickr using PixelPipe.
Last year on Earth Day for the Film on the Fly digital storytelling contest, my kids and I created the three minute and fifty second video, “Go Green, Go Electric!” My son (who was 11 at the time) did some the editing for this video using iMovie, and I did the rest. In following the rules for “Film on the Fly,” we shot all the video for this movie using a cell phone. Since we wanted different people in different scenes (and my son couldn’t legally drive the car) we alternated being the videographer and being actors in the movie.
“The Night Before Valentine’s Day” is a four page book my six year old wrote today. She is REALLY into writing, and I want to encourage her as an author / illustrator as much as possible. After she shared this with us tonight, we snapped four pictures of the pages using my iPhone, uploaded those photos directly to Flickr using PixelPipe, organized the images into a Flickr set, and then created the VoiceThread together. In all, this production process took about ten minutes. Has it ever been easier for a kindergartner to share their original art and writing with the world?!
It’s fun to see the way she has been influenced by other books we’ve read together, like “The Night Before Christmas.” I love how VoiceThread automatically inserts the linked title of each image when you insert them directly from Flickr!
Alexander and I spent some time this afternoon “cleaning up” the shared iPhone and iPod Touch applications we have installed on our family iTunes account. One of the biggest jobs was reducing the number of applications on mom’s iPhone. She is not very interested in games and mainly uses her iPhone for phone calls, texting, and the calendar. We removed about 40 applications from her iPhone tonight.
We were able to get her down to just three screens, which is a big simplification and improvement over what she had previously. One disadvantage of using the same iTunes account for two iPhones and an iPod Touch is that whenever someone installs a new application and syncs back to the computer, the next time others sync that application is installed by default on their device. So, unless you “uncheck” applications which are not wanted, you end up getting lots of additional applications when others in the family are adding them to their mobile device.
Most of the apps on this second page are actually for our 6 year old, Rachel. The first two programs, Brushes and Sketchbook, are drawing programs we just bought for her today using an iTunes gift card Santa brought in her stocking.
In my social studies class we got to sign the Declaration of Indepandence! You get to pick what type of writing you want. You can choose Colonist,American or Patriot. You can choose black and white or color. It will give some background info. too. Also you will need a printer for this activity. I think this will get the students involved in history and it is a very cool activity to do in class.
