Students and teachers from Durham Public Schools showed off their technology talents on Thursday, May 31st at the First Annual Technology Showcase. There was a lot to brag about too!
Several elementary schools had claymation projects. The quality of these one or two minute animated movies was awesome! According to the teachers at Watts and E.K. Powe, the projects only took a few weeks to complete. Students storyboard their ideas on paper and make their clay characters. Then they act out the story and take hundreds of digital pictures to knit together into a movie. The students even put the pictures together into the movie using the Clay Animation kit.
One kindergarten teacher gave her students a digital camera and challenged them to find shapes around the school. The kids put the pictures and their description of the shape into a PowerPoint slideshow.
Middle school students from Chewning were programming Lego robots after school. How's that for motivation! They won third place in a recent robotic competition.
District representatives had information on Internet safety and online access to school catalogs.
Perhaps the best judges of the showcase were my two children. They were entranced by the projects. My eight year old brought a book, Harry Potter, of course. And my six year old brought her Leapster. And they didn't even look at them. They bounced from claymation movies to online subscription services to the robots to a free programming tool.
I talked to Dottie Black, coordinator of the event. This was the first annual and they expect to start planning next year's event in the fall. I will be expecting great things. Way to go DPS, Duke and Pepsico!
1 comment:
Laura ~ Great post! I wanted to go, but couldn't get out of some of my previous commitments. I would definitely like to go next year. Did you get to take any pictures? That would be good to see. Eighteen days until NECC!
Danita
Danitarussell.edublogs.org
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