Over the past few weeks, students in 1st grade have been working on a seasons unit around their weather standards in science. This collaborative project involved the 1st grade teachers, the art teacher, and the media center. In class, students learned about weather in the various seasons, dressed paper dolls in appropriate clothing based on the seasons, and wrote sentences about each season. In art, students created background images on construction paper for each season.
In the media center, students came for 2 sessions to create photo story about their creations. They took digital photographs of their paper dolls in each season, imported their photographs onto the computer under their own accounts, and used photostory to record their scripts for each season.
The amount of technology that students used in the media center was a bit overwhelming, but they accomplished so much. To do this project, students had to figure out:
- how to turn on a digital camera and take a photograph that included all of the subject in the shot
- how to login to a computer with their own username and password, which included understanding how to use the mouse and keyboard
- open multiple programs on the computer and go through program wizards to complete the various tasks
- save pictures into their picture folder and delete photographs from a camera
- import pictures into photostory
- arrange pictures in the correct sequence to go along with the script
- use a usb microphone to record scripts for each photo in the photostory
- save and view their final piece
