July 29, 2008
This interesting article in The New York Times focuses on the many positive and negative outcomes that are being seen as a new generation of students spend more of their time reading online. It is the first in a series that will look at how technology such as the Internet is changing the way we read.
If you’d like to follow up by continuing to use the Internet to read some of the research, try The New York Times Web Extra: Further Reading on Reading. And as a thought to ponder: “What do we as teachers need be doing to teach our students how to read online resources?”
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Information Literacy, Professional Reading | Tagged: Internet, literacy | 
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Posted by mjmidolo
May 7, 2008
The 2008 Scitech Animation Film Festival is now open for entries. Students can win great prizes for their school and are invited to submit a two minute animation in either Flash, 3D or Stop Motion and enter Scitech’s annual Animation Film Festival before Friday, 1 August. To take part schools must register their interest by June 1
2007 Winning entries can be viewed at the 2007 Animation Film Festival website
A classroom activity assessment rubric is available for download along with the entry form.
The festival is open to students from Years 4-12. The most impressive creations will be viewed at Horizon – The Planetarium, one of the biggest screens in Australasia!
The ABC’s RoLLeRMâCHé website offers young people the opportunity to be creative and to learn about basic animation techniques. The site also affords the opportunity to be published on the web. Users must Register as a Roller Coaster member to be published.Other useful Animation sites and tools to consider:
Stop motion Pro: http://www.stopmotionpro.com/ – Free Trial Version available and basic tutorial.
Pencil: http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/index.php?id=HomePencil – Pencil is an animation/drawing software. Pencil is free and open source.
Morphx: http://www.norrkross.com/software/morphx/morphx.php -Norrkross MorphX can be used for calculating images or movies where one image transforms into another.
Array: http://www.mediumk.com/array/macosx/index.html -Array is an easy to use animation program.
FramebyFrame: http://web.mac.com/philipp.brendel/BrendWorld/Software.html – FrameByFrame lets you create stop-motion animation videos using any webcam/video camera connected to a Mac.
Blender: http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/ -Blender is more appropriate for high-school students. It’s a free open source 3D content creation suite that can export movies.And so that students don’t forget that animation is all about the ancient art of story-telling -
CeltX: http://www.celtx.com/ – Combines full-feature scriptwriting with pre-production support and also enables online collaboration.I’m sure students and teachers can have a lot of fun with these options!
No Comments » | Competitions, E-Learning, Tools | Tagged: animated movies, animation, Competitions, literacy, storytelling | Permalink
Posted by cainr
January 29, 2008
Programming:The New Literacy by Marc Prensky featured in Edutopia
‘ I believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do — to bend digital technology to one’s needs, purposes, and will, just as in the present we bend words and images. Some call this skill human-machine interaction; some call it procedural literacy. Others just call it programming.’
Marc Prensky conducted a series of workshops and keynotes in Perth from 28-30 May 2007. They explored online technologies and their application for innovative education.Resources from these workshops are available on the SOCS webpage.
Marc Prensky keynote podcasts and PowerPoint slides
Student panel podcasts
Marc Prensky workshop resources
Marc Prensky testimonial
Order Marc Prensky DVD
Also available: CMIS Resource Bank records for Marc Prensky’s books.
No Comments » | Professional Reading | Tagged: literacy, Prensky, research | Permalink
Posted by janning
