Friday, May 31, 2013

End of the Year Projects




Student directions for how to use apps


Click here to view slideshow



Click on this picture to view a slideshow

Thursday, May 30, 2013

End of Year Projects Part 2






Check out our "Pi Day Blog"



One of the projects for ROW was to create a Public Service Announcement about a natural disaster that can happen where we live. We all shared our videos on Skype!

WinterStormsAbernethyPA from Mrs. As Powerful Penguins on Vimeo.





Sunday, May 5, 2013

Connected Community Challenge

It all started when Mrs. Abernethy applied for a grant from Lowes Toolbox for Education to get iPads for the classroom. Well, the Powerful Penguins got the grant, and they bought six mini iPads and two full-sized iPads. They have been exploring apps and creating projects ever since.

  http://www.toolboxforeducation.com/


One day, Mrs. Abernethy shared a contest being held by The Foundation for Rural Services and Discovery Education called "The Connected Community Challenge." The top prize included $2,500 for technology. Immediately the students' ears perked up. They could use that money to buy more iPads for the classroom!

 

You can go to this link to learn more about the contest:
http://www.discoveryeducation.com/ConnectedCommunity/

Basically, this was the challenge: The students needed to find a rural town somewhere in the world to compare to their rural town (Greenville, PA.) Then they needed to make a two-minute video explaining what they found. It seemed easy enough, but it wasn't!

Students worked on the project every spare minute and voluntarily stayed after school for over a month to make their video. The town they chose was a little town in Australia with a population of fifty people called Gulargambone. They learned a lot about this town, and it didn't fit easily into a two minute video. Evenutally, they met the challenge. The result is shown below.



A lot of the work put into the video really can't be seen. Students used a variety of editing programs to create the green-screened video. They kept track of where they got all of their information, videos and photos. They even contacted a photographer on Flickr who had taken pictures of the town to ask him permission to use his pictures in the video.

Their hard work paid off!