What I did in School Today: 4/23/13

My highlight for today is part 2 (well, actually part 4 or 5) of a project I did with a first grade class.  In previous years this teacher had a parent who would take each student's picture and -- with the wizardry of PhotoShop -- turn him or her into a superhero.  I got involved last year when I created a template so the students could use their pictures to make comic strips. 

They wrote three part stories.  Each opened with a character in distress calling for their superhero.  Then, the superhero would arrive and save the day.  Finally, the first character would thank the superhero. 

Well, the parent-helper is no longer available, so the teacher enlisted my help.  I do have a little "game" when it comes to PhotoShop, but I wanted to explore a different method of creation.  After some searching, I found an iPad app that offers several templates, including a male super hero and a female super hero.  You can snap a picture in-app, insert it into one of the templates, and then choose among many options (pose, cape color, background, etc.).  We created their pictures last week.  (We had to add shields to the girls, as the character in the app was a bit chesty!)

Yesterday, we began the class step-by-step process of putting together their comic strips, a lot for first graders, but they did great.

• Locate and open the PowerPoint template
• Save the template in their own names
• Enter text in speech bubbles (which requires a right click, a new skill for most first graders)
• Insert super hero picture --> move to behind speech bubble
• Continue entering text and periodically saving
• Save as JPGs
• Last year we put them into Photo Story.  This year, we're going share them using Voice Thread on the iPads.

Voice Thread

So, today we completed our comic strips.  We finished two Voice Threads and are set to do the rest next week!