I try to plan for a variety of projects to keep it interesting. For desktop
publishing, I had 4th graders create a page using Comic Life and it was
integrated with their science theme on weather. For digital imaging, 3rd
graders recently created ornaments and the theme was Christmas Around the
World. They chose a country and typed the name of it on their ornament as
well as "Merry Christmas" in that country's language. Of course I gave the
option to portray another holiday, like Hanukkah, or just the season, if they
wished. The 5th graders are working on a PowerPoint show which is integrated
with the Native American theme in social studies. One of the slides will be a
virtual museum image in which the viewer can link to another image.
For future projects, I will have 5th graders creating iMovies on the Colonial
theme that will be coming up. Also, I discovered a wonderful, free, online
painting program called Artrage 2.5 that is in the process of being installed
on the 4th and 5th grade computers. It falls into the digital imaging
category, and can be used for such projects as redesigning their favorite book
cover. Tux Paint, another similar program and that's already on the
computers, the 3rd graders will use.
