Tech Integration
The grade 4 team has worked very hard to increase our students' media literacy and digital fluency. We want them to have an understanding of how to analyze the messages bombarding them in various media forms, and have a varied toolbox to be content creators themselves.
General Technology
As a class we have an effective general technology essential agreement. The trust they have garnered has given them the freedom to build up an impressive skills toolbox. We use computers for a variety of research and presentation tasks. The students often use a variety of search engines, Word, PowerPoint, Pages, Keynote, Notepad, Canva, Prodigy, Epic, and Seesaw to inquire and create.
Green Screen
The students learned how to incorporate green screen technology with iMovie and DoInk during a project about resource scarcity. This project both allowed them to explore the process of film making and taught them valuable planning and scripting technics. It has the added benefit of allowing the students to peek behind the curtain of how some of the media that they often consume is created.
Comic Life 3
I am a passionate believer in the power of comics and graphic novels to engage children and enhance their enjoyment of learning. It was a natural extension from that, to finding a program where the students could express themselves in this medium. I love seeing how proud the students are after they make their first comic!
In grade 4 we piloted using Google Cardboard with the younger students as a means of building empathy. They were able to travel to places, such as refugee camps, and follow and connect to the lives of children that are very differnt from their own.
“21st Century Education won’t be defined by any new technology. It won’t be just defined by 1:1 technology programs or tech-intensive projects. 21st Century Education will, however, be defined by a fundamental shift in what we are teaching - a shift towards learner-centered education and creating creative thinkers. ”