Tag Archives: technology

Robo-Sauce

From the duo who brought you, “Dragon’s Love Tacos“, today’s story, “Robo-Sauce” is, well, awesome-sauce and the perfect ingredient to kick off Robot Week!

Check out the funny book trailer from the author Adam Rubin and illustrator Daniel Salmieri:

Hilarious, right?

Tomorrow we design our robots for our robot builds on Thursday.  When reading “Robo-Sauce” today, look at all of the interesting robots included in the story.  See what type of robots give you ideas for your own robot design.

I sure enjoyed making the video and I’m happy to say I made our principal laugh when I showed him.  Success!  He thought the sound effects were funny too – robots make noises after all!

Find today’s reading of “Robo-Sauce” here:

Want to make your own Robo-Sauce?  Check out the recipe here at Forks & Folly to make your own:

From Forks & Folly

ACTIVATE ROBO-DAY BLAST – 

🙂 Mme Zibin

 

 

A Sidewalk Flower Scavenger Hunt

Grab a camera or a some paper and a pencil and take a walk around your neighbourhood!  Like the little girl Tally in our read aloud yesterday, see where you can find pops of colour and beauty in your community.  If you can, document your finds with a camera or take some time to sketch what you see with paper and a pencil.*

Be Considerate

Picking flowers are a lot of fun, however when you are out walking, know your flowers before picking them.  Refrain from picking any flowers native to our Island as many are endangered and a fragile part of our ecosystem.  That’s why taking pictures of your finds is such a great idea!  Picking dandelions, daisies and other introduced wild flowers is fine.  In consideration of your neighbours, never pick flowers from someone’s property.

Mme Zibin’s teeny bouquet of introduced wildflowers.
Mme Zibin’s Scavenger Hunt Finds

With more time, I have been walking a minimum of 6 kilometres every day.  I have found lots of unique flowers all around my neighbourhood and took lots of pictures.  Do you know any of the flowers pictured below?

Now when it comes to actual sidewalk flowers, I only found dandelions and that’s alright!  I am sad to say that I have lived in my neighbourhood for over 10 years and other than the daisies and the dandelions, I never noticed the other beautiful flowers in my community.  Many of the flowers I found are introduced, meaning they are not from or native to Vancouver Island.   However, many flowers I did find come from our beautiful island.    Can you guess which flowers are native flowers and which flowers are introduced?

I learned the names of the flowers I found using the app Seek:

Here are the flowers I found all around my neighbourhood:
  1.  Common Stork’s Bill: Introduced; Native to the Mediterranean
  2. Common Grape Hyacinth: Introduced; Native to Europe
  3. Red Dead Nettle: Introduced; Native to Europe and Asia
  4. Common Daisy: Introduced; Native to Europe
  5. Oregon Grape: Native to Vancouver Island
  6. Skunk Cabbage: Native to Vancouver Island
  7. Wood Forget-me-not: Introduced; Native to Europe
  8. Redwood Violet: Native to Vancouver Island
  9. Henderson’s Shooting Star: Native to Vancouver Island
  10. Dandelion: Introduced; Native to Europe

French:  Dandelion comes from the French term, “dent de lion“.  What does “dent de lion” mean in English?

I can’t wait to see what you and your family find on your scavenger hunt!  I hope you had fun and were inspired to get out more to see what else you may find on your walks in the future.  Flowers, just like everything else, change with the seasons!

*If you would like to share your pictures, please see the “Submitting Student Work Tab” on the blog main page.   Email your submissions to me at dzibin@sd79.bc.ca

 

A message to Our School Community – We Miss You!

We miss our students.  We miss their smiles, their funny anecdotes, their brilliant ideas and the laughs we share together.  To show our students and their families how much we miss them, our staff created a video message to offer encouragement during this time.

We hope our students know that their social and emotional needs are most important to their teachers.  We hope we make them smile.

🙂 Mme Zibin

Lifelong Learning and Stop Motion

Today I made a thing:

One of the reasons I became a teacher is because I truly love learning.  As a teacher, my goal is to instill a love of lifelong learning in my students.

Today I taught myself basic stop motion animation.  I’m sure a ton of my students are able to create more sophisticated videos than what I made today, but I’m still super proud of my work!

Why?

I wanted to create a little introduction to start off my videos for when I read stories aloud online.  Over the years I’ve amassed a large collection of vintage school supplies, saving them for who knows what — a pandemic, I guess?  I chose to use my 100 year old anagram letters and a vintage chalkboard as manipulatives for my introduction video.  Since I’m working from home, I have more time to explore techniques and tech and so I decided to create a stop motion video with my vintage supplies.

I didn’t have a Q so I had to paint in a little yellow tail on an O.
Platform

I chose to use the Stop Motion Studio app our school district recommends:

I found the app incredibly straightforward and easy to use.  I made the video entirely on my iPad, taking only 30 minutes to complete.

In Stop Motion Studio, pictures are taken one by one to make the video.
Music

When you create a stop motion video in the Stop Motion Studio app, it is soundless.  You can add an audio voiceover, but I chose to save the app to my camera roll.  Next, I downloaded the song, “Library” by The Little Bandits from iTunes (there may be a TikToc video coming soon using that song…) and added a sound clip to my stop motion video in the Splice app. I could have used iMovie but I find it’s glitchy and doesn’t work well for me.  I prefer to use Splice and find it easy to use.

Editing the stop motion video in the Splice app.
Final product and Reflection

Reflection is hard for students to do after a project is complete.  Reflection is one of the most important tools one can practice to improve future work.  From looking at my video, I’m very happy with my first effort but it’s by no means perfect.  Where could I improve?

BC Core Competencies: Critical and Reflective Thinking.
  1.  The video is not level.  I could not get my iPad to straighten parallel to my work surface.  As a result, the off-kilter angle bothers me.   I will need to come up with a better solution for my next attempt.
  2. My lighting is a bit dark.   I like the look of natural light;  the dark shadows of artificial light bother me.   When I chose to start filming, it was overcast outside, darkening my video.
  3. The picture quality is a bit grainy.  The video is slightly out of focus.  My iPad is school district issued, three years old and well used; all quality issues I cannot change at the moment.  So for now, I will have to deal.
  4. I don’t like the start or end of my video.  I should have added in clips of a blank chalkboard, allowing the music to play out a bit at either end.
Next Steps and New Learnings

I will reshoot the video tomorrow, using my reflections to improve the overall quality.

I’m also really interested in TikTok.  I haven’t been able to get into SnapChat but I definitely see the draw of TikTok.  I love a good lip sync and I have been practicing a library-related song to share with students soon.

What new learnings have come your way lately?  I’d love to hear.  Please comment below.

🙂 Mme Zibin