Van Meter 1st Grade Writers and Illustrators....Turning Them From Paper To Digital!

Last week we Skyped with my friend Andy Plemmons who is a teacher librarian at Barrow Elementary in Georgia and Kelly Hocking who teachers kindergarten there.

Andy and I have been connecting, collaborating, teaching together and helping each other since we met this year in Texas at a professional development day for their teacher librarians.  

             

Kelly's kindergarten students just finished a really neat project within the classroom and library with Andy.  They created digital stories using TuxPaint for the illustrations and writing, and then recorded through the slides using Screencast-O-Matic.  Once their stories were complete, Kelly and Andy uploaded these to YouTube so they can be easily shared and saved.

Their students also created this sweet little tutorial for using TuxPaint.  My students just loved watching it and really took off last time when we learned about TuxPaint.  

Today it was the first graders turn to really think about their story....the characters and settings were their first task for the project.

Each group also needed to figure out the roles that each would have.  It was very important they work together, stay positive, and let us know if they need our help getting through something.

It was so much fun seeing their stories unfold.....They were telling the stories in detail through illustrators and words.  There wasn't one single student who wasn't engaged the entire time in the library.

For our digital stories we will be using Camtasia Relay which is on our laptops. 

We can capture what is on the screen and even have a small window with a picture of the presenter in the corner.  The students will be able to do this recording themselves.....it is just that simple.  

On the 1st grade Symbaloo, I have placed the two links I just spoke about above...on the right hand side in red.  Feel free to share anything you would like from this Symbaloo.  You can share this with other teachers, students and families too.

We will be sharing the Van Meter 1st Graders digital books very soon.  We are going to share them together and also use Google Hangout to share with the world towards the end of May.