Part of the third grade social studies curriculum in Hamilton Township focuses on the study of the students’ own town. During this period of study, students take a guided bus tour of Hamilton. While on the tour, students are shown historically significant places throughout the town. In order for students to have a deeper understanding, it is important for them to have prior knowledge before going on the tour. Since many of my students are unaware of most of these locations, providing them with addition background information should help gain a deeper appreciation for their town. In previous years, students were shown still photographs. This year students will also take virtual tour to augment their background knowledge. This multimedia presentation will enhance what has been done in previous years and will further prepare them for the actual tour. After the tour, students will be assessed on what they learned. To help prepare them for this assessment, I have also created a matching game where the students will use their knowledge to match the names of historical places with digital images of the locations.
My multimedia presentation includes images, music, and audible descriptions of the historical places. To begin my project, I searched for music that would capture the feeling of traveling back in time. This thought led me to select the theme song from Back to the Future. After this task was complete, I found digital images of the historical locations for the field trip. Using Audacity, I recorded various sound clips narrating the historical significance of each location. Once I had everything prepared, I decided which order to place the images and matched the images to the length of the sound clips and to the sound of the music. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with my outcome. I did encounter several issues while working with Audacity and Flash. The computer I switched to after my first trial ran out encountered difficulties properly downloading Lame forcing me to save the sound clips as wav files. I did go back and rerecord the clips saving them as MP3s when I fixed the Lame problem. The other notable difficulty I encountered was the quality of sound after I published my file. In Flash editor, the sound was clear, but once I published the file, the voice became slightly distorted and the volume diminished greatly. I rerecorded some of the clips and published again, but there was no change.
The second half of my project was developing a matching game using Flash. I took six of the locations and typed their matching names. In order to win the game, the student needs to drag and drop the names underneath the proper image. Once all the names have been correctly placed, the screen turns black with fireworks shooting and the words ‘Way to Go’ fly across the screen. I used the button function at the beginning and the end of the game. In the beginning, there is a moving image and then it stops on the play button screen. At the end of the game, a replay button appears to start it over again. I did not have too many difficulties creating this game once I received help with the action script. The only small problem is that the name plates are very close together. If the words are placed on the plate next to it while touching the correct plate a little bit, it will register that it is in the correct place even though it is not. I tried to remedy this problem by making the words smaller, but did not want to make them too small that they would be difficult to read. I look forward to using both of these creations within the following weeks with my students. I had a lot of other ideas I was going to implement, but these two projects proved to be more time consuming than I expected. At the end of the unit, I would like the children to create digital storybooks that include interesting things they learned throughout the unit.
Here’s my almost complete flash game. I would like to tweek it a little if I can figure out how to get it to do what I want. My students study the town they live in so I thought I would make a matching game of some of the famous sites they have to recognize.
I wouldn’t exactly say my flash experience happened in a ‘flash’, but it did happen. My original vision definitely surpassed the final outcome. I couldn’t get the motion tween to work and ended up using the classic tween. I also spent quite a bit of time creating little men and accidentally messed them up when I edited. Therefore a lot of time was spent undoing my mistakes. So here I present you with my final movie… Workout! Hope you laugh!
Here’s a little inspiration… if you need it.
Using Audacity is fun! Here’s a little inspirational quote that everyone should hear!
I stumbled upon this a couple weeks ago when I was looking for Read Across America activities. I found it on NEA’s website. Kidthing is sort of a social networking site for children (both parents or teachers can set it up). You create an adult account and then add children accounts. It has adult controls which assign permissions. Students can have friends and chat, share photos, read digital books, and play games. Teachers can use it to send messages to both parents and students in a protected network. Some of the things are free and others they charge for through their store. I tried downloading it at work, but my computer is archaic and it won’t function properly. Check it out. It sounds like it’s worth trying.
So here it is. My final creation. I really enjoyed using Scratch and thought it was very user friendly. Initially I had ideas and could not get them to work, but with persistence I found a way. The only problem I had was figuring out how to get the program to automatically generate equations with the product choice. I almost had it, but could not get it to work right. Enjoy playing!
I had a lot of fun with Gimp. For the background image, I used a photo I took from the December snow storm. The way the snow fell on my table outside looked like a small world full of mountains. I thought it would be fun to make it into my own little land of things I like. So I pasted a picture of my husband and me, a cherry tree in full bloom (from our backyard), a blue bird, and Albert Einstein. He was a pretty cool guy. Hope you enjoy my winter wonderland!
How I felt about my computer this week
I guess the issue I had with Jing and myebook was not their website, but most likely my computer. It seems that my computer is also refusing to properly record my Google Earth movie. My movie was a tour of the continents. In third grade, my students have to be able to identify and label all the continents and oceans. I thought it would be really cool to show them it using Google Earth since they seem to have difficulty understanding the roundness of the Earth since they usually look at a flat map. Globes are okay, but Google Earth allows them to visualize the Earth as it really is in space. Sorry I can’t show you the movie, but I promise it was good!
After countless attempts at using Jing to show how to create an ebook, I have concluded that the problem is their site, not my computer (or at least I hope). I had the brilliant idea of trying Jing on another site and it worked. Jing seems to freeze when myebook saves changes and then won’t continue to record properly. So instead, I have created a tutorial for aMap. Enjoy!
