Having a Great Day!

It is Thursday and I am in 7th Period Planning. I just finished grading all of the projects that our classes have turned in over the last couple of days. Kind of fun, in a laborious, working sort of way. Definitely makes you feel like a teacher, though.

All of our classes have been really moving along and getting stuff done today. Depending upon the class, kids were working on their "Media Tech" webpage, which includes their name, picture and links for all of the projects that they are doing. Kids are encouraged to make their site as "cool" as they can. They were coming up with some great stuff, using neat bubble, fade and drop shadow effects for their name, tiling neat graphics for their page background and making their pictures look like ghosts, paintings or drawings.

The other classes have been working on their Dream Vacation, wherein they take an imaginary 3000 dollars and plan a trip to a foreign city, such as St. Petersburg, London or Madrid. Kids are having alot of fun with this project. They have to find airfare, hotel, rental cars and plan activities for a 6 day trip. They also have to research local customs, foods, etc.

Our other class is now a couple of days into their Commercial in PowerPoint. They are doing extremely well. I see tons of creativity going into the ideas, the presentation and the graphics. We learned from Mr. Jewett how to import sound files. This was alot of fun and the kids are finding some great stuff. I was pleased to see that the kids that I had shown the "eliminate background color" trick the other day were all using the skill today. One student, A, is doing some great, detailed work on her Tide commercial, blocking out the entire background of a Tide picture so that she can show her own background.

Kids also spent alot of time looking for sound and music files on the Internet to play in their commercial. I was pretty surprised that a bunch of kids were looking for old Rock and Roll clips, from such bands as Steve Miller Band, Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc. That is the music that I grew up with! They all like it. Makes me feel not quite so old!