PE5_storyjumper

The end of teacher convention has come upon me. I am energized and renewed. I hope to go back to class with the view that I can make a solid connection with every student in my room and allow them to be themselves. I will make the effort to teach the way I always have always taught, despite what the administration says. I took a three-hour professional learning workshop today on how to use Cuisenaine Rods to teach fractions. I bought some this summer when I thought I was teaching kindergarteners basic math facts. I thought that was a waste of a good manipulative. Nope, now I am equipped with a great manipulative and a new knowledge of how to apply them in the class. I need to get back to more hands on learning stations, we work, we take a quick break, we go do whatever tech stuff that day, and revisit my normal routine. Yup, I am good to go.

Storyjumper is going to be great. I plan on jumping right in and taking however much time we need to be able to master this Web 2.0 Tool. This is the continuation of my Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario. 

I am starting my story, looking for my pictures. I like what I see and I start adding them to my page. As I do this, I am wondering, “Are there pictures of people of color, or is this going to be another let down and not include my student population?” I go through some more images and I do find three whole choices of  “shades”. When will this change? Why is the default white? There is enough variation to continue, but it would be a great addition if more ethnicities were included. INCLUDED. Please don’t discount my son and all of the world’s children. Programmers, take note, inclusion is very important.

I move on, and type in the text. This was easy, my students will have no problem doing this. Their spelling will be invented and phonetic but that’s the cue for me to add a quick lesson on spelling rules. I am able to resize the text box and the text grows and shrinks accordingly. The same happens for the art clips.

Now I need to move my dragon and I am hoping that I can turn the dragon. I can. I can also flip him to face the correct direction so that my characters can face each other, or not. I find different facial features to express emotions. I am doing good. I see there are different backgrounds to choose from. I can insert my own art or pictures too.  This is great!

I am ready to go to the next two pages. I hit save for the current two pages. I notice I didn’t do a cover page. It creates one from my page one. I then notice I can pick any of the pages I create for my story as the cover page. I can change the color of the text, size, and the font. I can also change the color of the background. This is fun and looking good.

I continue through the process and I know everything will be exciting when we start our process next week. Yup, storyjumper, the class, and me; we will be just fine and we will be creating, imagining, and dare I say it, having fun!