Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

One of our schools is having a superhero themed curriculum night and in one station (in the media center) students can wear capes and masks and will have a picture taken in front of a green screen superhero background. I used the green screen app Doink ($2.99) on my iPad to take the sample shots pictured here. I have used the app before and I am very familiar with it (I like that it has both a video and photo option and three layers to add overlays). The media center had a green screen wall but the color didn't extend to the floor and we needed the feet showing in most of the backgrounds. We set up a table with a green screen cloth and had a step stool and someone helping students up and down. We do have one school that painted the baseboard green and added green turf to the floor to solve their problem.  When we were setting up the project I started looking for ideas online when I came across this blog  and really liked how she used editing too...

I was in a classroom today and the students were brainstorming goals for the New Year. Later I was randomly emailed a post about students creating digital vision boards using Google Slides...or Google Drawings (which I thought was pretty cool). The picture above is the vision board I created as a demo (I used Google Slides). I added the two add-ons Kasey Bell suggested in her article but I didn't use them so I think you can ignore those. I just used "insert" "image" "search the web". Typically vision boards are made by cutting out pictures and words from magazines, and I have done quite a few in my lifetime. I have to say I really liked the digital version (less mess and having to solicit a bunch of magazines from co-workers!). The article does give some good tips and tricks for how to introduce the activity as well as completing and sharing. Enjoy and Happy New Year!