November 27

The SAN Script – Friday, November 27

 

‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say.

– Alice Walker

Thank you God for all of your blessings!

 

 

KP Photo Nov 27

 

Celebrate the Holidays from Discovery Education on Vimeo.

Your Global Collaborative Learning Experience

Discovery Education is partnering with GlobalLab and Zaption to connect Community members with resources and tools to explore how people celebrate the holidays. Learn how holidays are categorized and the elements that make them unique by using the Discovery Education lesson starters, featuring resources from Discovery Education and video tours from Zaption. Then, register your class to participate in creating an interactive map showcasing the Favorite Holidays of students around the world.

Want to take learning a step further? Have students apply what they learned about holidays to create their own celebration commemorating a person, place, or event. Allow them to invite others to share in their celebrations by adding their creations to theInvent a Holiday interactive map.

Get Started

Use the ideas below as a guide to celebrate the holidays with your Discovery Education Community.

  • Review the Favorite Holiday and Invent a Holiday lesson starters below for resources and strategies to introduce the project.
  • Register your class to participate in the Discovery Education Celebrate the Holidays GlobalLab collaborative project.
  • Explore the Findings by customizing the charts in GlobalLab, after completing the Form, to compare your students’ responses with responses from other classes.
  • Connect and extend the learning using Google Hangout or Skype to host a Facetime conversation with another participating class.
  • Share how you #CelebratewithDE on Twitter and Facebook

Participate Now

 

Our Partners

GlobalLab: GlobalLab is a unique, web-based, educational platform that enables students, teachers, and learners of all ages to pose questions and together find answers. With GlobalLab, teachers finally have in one place all the resources, tools, partners, and support to bring authentic investigations to classrooms and homes.

Zaption: Teachers, students, and trainers use Zaption to quickly and easily add images, text, quizzes, and discussions to existing online videos. The result is an interactive video lesson that engages viewers, deepens understanding, and tracks student progress.

Go to the  DEN Weekly Update in my DEN Services to find out more

 

St. Anthony Today

Kindness Project- Session One with Mrs. Rupnik and Lindsey Barr

Birthday Celebration today for November birthdays LUNCH

Badminton-Gym weekly until January 24

Pizza Day!!

 

November 26

The SAN Script – Thursday, November 26

We Help Each Other

Step by step You’re one of a kind 

Day by day Keep that in mind

We help each other Each time you start

Along the way A brand new day

Building tomorrow Put out your hand

Reach for the stars Hang on to mine 

Be true to yourself We’ll help each other

Shine wherever you are We’ll be just fine

CHORUS

This is your time Your roots are your gift

This is your place  To share everyday

We are a family You make a difference

Stand tall with pride Along the way

It’s your community You are an ocean

Whatever tomorrow brings Of colour and light

You can do anything You are the music

Just believe in yourself  Making everything bright

And hold onto your dreams 

Music and Lyrics by Pierangela Pica   Musical arrangement by Rob Clarot

    Copyright 2015

a great resource from Sandra Troccoli – Thanks for sharing Sandra!

 

george C

Our hashtag is #stanthonyk6

St. Anthony Today

Stephanie and Denis away – Kirsten and Marie in

Paul out – 11:20 – 1:20 The Hub talk on the Greening of St. Anthony

Looking At Pictures Gr. 3/4

Orkidstra Today – 3:00 PM in the Learning Commons – this is a great learning community to join on Google +

UGM at Centurion Center at 170 Colonnade Road for OECTA members

School Council Meeting 6:30 Paul and Staff rep

Reminder all teachers – please start thinking about how you want to spend your PD budget – I will be asking for your plan in Januar.  There is also the option of spending .5 of a day on Hapara and Discovery Ed Science Techbook if people want me to organize this.

November 25

The SAN Script – Wednesday, November 25

30 DAYS TO GETTING CONNECTED – START TODAY!!

Today we welcome the leadership of Kim Figliomeni in working together with OSSEMOOC to encourage all education leaders to “get connected”.

Please read Kim’s post here.

Screen Shot 2015-11-25 at 1.04.14 AM

Educators are busy people.  30 Days to Get Connected is a 10 minutes per day program to help you learn to connect with other educators and self-direct your professional learning.  Working through this with others helps you to stay motivated to dedicate a bit of time each day to your own learning.

Begin today with Day 1 of the challenge: Dedicating Time

We welcome your feedback through comments on the blog, or on Twitter under the #ossemooc hashtag.

(Follow the OSSEMOOC blog to get email updates when there are new posts to the site.)

 

St. Anthony Today

Notre Dame visiting St. Anthony – 2:00 PM

Wastefree Wednesday Today

Today from Discovery

Discovery Nov 25

http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/blog/2015/09/20/lively-lessons-seasonal-change/

 

November 24

The SAN Script – Tuesday, November 24

When you were called, did you answer or did you not? Perhaps softly and in a whisper?

Søren Kierkegaard

duckworth

 

St. Anthony Today

Dorothy Stanyar, volunteer, in Mrs. Rupnik’s class PM only

Looking At Pictures Gr. 5/6, Gr. 2, Gr. 1

Table Tennis today in the gym

Orkidstra today in the Learning Commons

 

discovery events

 

Live from the Farm Virtual Field Trip

Join us for The Science of Soil’s Live From the Farm virtual field trip broadcast live from Hinton Farms in Dover, FL. Intended for middle school students, this event will explore plant nutrition, periodic elements, and modern farming technology.
December 3 at 1pm ET

See more in the DEN Weekly Update

November 22

The SAN Script – the week of November 23 – 27

Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky

Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Nicole Krauss’s Beautiful Letter to Van Gogh on Fear, Bravery, and How to Break the Loop of Our Destructive Patterns

Brain Pickings

nicolekrauss_vangogh3

That triumphant transcendence of the pattern is what novelist Nicole Kraussexplores in an exquisite response to Vincent van Gogh’s 1884 letter to his brother about fear and risk-taking. Her piece is part of an exhibition by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, in which twenty-three contemporary artists and writers respond to the letters of Van Gogh in paintings, sculptures, letters, poems, photographs, and videos.

Krauss writes:

Dear Vincent,

You write about fear: Fear of the blank canvas, but also, on a larger scale, of the “infinitely meaningless, discouraging blank side” that life itself always turns toward us, and which can only be countered when a person “steps in and does something,” when he “breaks” or “violates.”

It’s extraordinary that I should have been given your letter now, because it is exactly that act of breaking that has been on my mind this last year, and which I feel has everything to do with how I want to make art, and how I want to live.

It’s a strange thing about the human mind that, despite its capacity and its abundant freedom, its default is to function in a repeating pattern. It watches the moon and the planets, the days and seasons, the cycle of life and death all going around in an endless loop, and unconsciously, believing itself to be nature, the mind echoes these cycles. Its thoughts go in loops, repeating patterns established so long ago we often can’t remember their origin, or why they ever made sense to us. And even when these loops fail over and over again to bring us to a desirable place, even while they entrap us, and make us feel anciently tired of ourselves, and we sense that sticking to their well-worn path means we’ll miss contact with the truth every single time, we still find it nearly impossible to resist them. We call these patterns of thought our “nature” and resign ourselves to being governed by them as if they are the result of a force outside of us, the way that the seas are governed — rather absurdly, when one thinks about it — by a distant and otherwise irrelevant moon.

And yet it is unquestionably within our power to break the loop; to “violate” what presents itself as our nature by choosing to think — and to see, and act — in a different way. It may require enormous effort and focus. And yet for the most part it isn’t laziness that stops us from breaking these loops, it’s fear. In a sense, one could say that fear is the otherwise irrelevant moon that we allow to govern the far larger nature of our minds.

And so before we can arrive at the act of breaking, we first have to confront our fear. The fear that the blank canvas and the blank side of life reflects back to us, which is so paralyzing, as you put it, and seems to tell us that we can’t do anything.” It’s an abstract fear, though it finds a way to take on endless shapes. Today it may be the fear of failure, but tomorrow it will be the fear of what others will think of us, and at a different time it will be fear of discovering that the worst things we suspect about ourselves are true. My lover says that the fear, which seems always to be there when one wakes up in the morning, and which he feels in the hollow between his ribs (above his stomach and below his heart) comes from the “other world,” a phrase that always brings tears to his eyes, and by which he means the awareness of our finitude, our lack of the infinite and eternal. I think he’s right, but I would also add to that that fear, being anticipatory, is always without knowledge. It is a mental calculation based on the future unknown. And yet the experience of fear is the experience of being in the grip of a sensation that seems to possess an unassailable conviction in itself. To be afraid that the plane will crash is, in a sense, to assume that the plane will crash. And yet even if we could scrape away the many forms our fear takes and get to the underlying source-our mortality, our division from the infinite — we would still discover that our fear is not based on actual knowledge, unlike the part of us that chooses to be free. Bravery is always more intelligent than fear, since it is built on the foundation of what one knows about oneself: the knowledge of one’s strength and capacity, of one’s passion. You implied as much in your letter: “However meaningless and vain, however dead life appears to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that,” you wrote. “He steps in and does something, and hangs on to that, in short, breaks, “violates.”

And so we find ourselves, once again, in front of the blank canvas. The blank canvas, which reflects both our fear and our opportunity to break it. In Jewish mysticism, the empty space — the Chalal Panui, in Hebrew — has tremendous importance, because it was the necessary pre-condition for God’s creation of the world. How did the Ein Sof — the being without end, as God is called in Kabbalah — create something finite within what is already infinite? And how can we explain the paradox of God’s simultaneous presence and absence in the world? And the answer to this, according to the Kabbalah, is that when it arose in God’s will to create the world, He first had to withdraw Himself, leaving a void. To create the world, God first had to create an empty space.

And so we might say: The first act of creation is not a mark, it is the nullification of the infinity that exists before the first mark. To make a mark is to remember that we are finite. It is to break, or violate, the illusion that we are nature that goes around in a loop forever. But it is also a confirmation of our knowledge and freedom, which is all we have in this world.

Sincerely,

Nicole Krauss

 

St. Anthony This Week

Monday, November 23

School Wide Waste Audit- first one for 2015-2016

SLP Theresa Patenaude in to work with kindergarten student

Squirmies

Tuesday, November 24

Looking At Pictures Gr. 5/6, Gr. 2, Gr. 1

Dorothy Stanyar, volunteer, in Mrs. Rupnik’s class PM only

Orkidstra Today

Table Tennis today!

Wednesday, November 25

Notre Dame visiting St. Anthony – 2:00 PM

Wastefree Wednesday 

Thursday, November 26

Alina Carranco, Neurocognitive Science Student at Carleton, volunteers in Mrs. Rupnik’s class (AM)

Looking At Pictures Gr. 3/4

Paul away 11:30 – 1:30 HUB Presentation

BROWN BAG LUNCH: ASPHALT TO OASIS

Thursday, November 26th, 2015, 12:00 – 1:00pm – FREE for members & $10 for guests – RSVP required, click here to register

with Andrew Harvey

In 1999 St. Anthony won the National Ugliest Schoolyard Competition. With that dubious distinction as a motivator, the school went on to depave and green almost half of the grounds. In 2015 the school did additional work to make the area as green and inviting a learning space as possible. Come hear about all about the school’s past, present and future greening initiatives!

Andrew is a HUBber, Brown Bag Lunch Enthusiast, a Landscape Architect, and School Grounds Design Consultant.

Paul McGuire is principal at St. Anthony School in Ottawa’s Little Italy.

Recycle Day at St. Anthony Catholic School- PLEASE recycle today!

Orkidstra Today

UGM at Centurion Center at 170 Colonnade Road for OECTA members

School Council – 6:30 PM

Friday, November 27 

Kindness Project- Session One with Mrs. Rupnik and Lindsey Barr

Pizza Day

Birthday Celebration today for November birthdays

free techEdmodo new

15 Things Teachers & Students Can Do With Edmodo

Last week the Wall Street Journal had an article announcing that Edmodo had received a $15 million venture capital investment from the founder of LinkedIn and a former VP ofFacebook. That article gave me the idea for this post of fifteen things teachers and students can do with Edmodo.

For those not familiar with Edmodo, in a nutshell it is a microblogging system designed specifically for teachers and students. Using Edmodo teachers can create a microblogging network for their classes. Edmodo allows teachers to create a group specifically for their students and exclude those not invited to the group. Edmodo provides teachers with a place to post assignment reminders, build an event calendar, and post messages to the group. Just as with any good microblogging service users can share links, videos, and images.

Here are fifteen things teachers and students can do with Edmodo.
1. Post assignments for students. Edmodo allows teachers to attach files to assignment announcements. If there is a file your students need in order to complete an assignment, they can access it at the same place they view the announcement. Less clicking is good.

2. Create digital libraries. Students and teachers can create digital libraries for housing their important files. No need to keep track of USB drives because you can access your files from any Internet-connected computer.

3. Post messages on the “wall.” This allows students to ask questions of each other and their teacher. Teachers, of course, can post messages for all students to read.

4. Create learning groups. Teachers can create groups of their students according to the courses they teach or create groups of students who are supposed to be working together.

5.  Post polls for students. Use the polls to gather informal feedback on a question like, “do you feel prepared for next week’s quiz?”

6. Post a quiz for students to take. You can attach links and files to each question and answer choice. This allows you to post a document and ask students to read and respond to it. Quizzes can be in multiple choice, true/ false, fill in the blank, or short answer form. You can allow students to see their scores immediately or you can disable that option.

7. Connect with other teachers. Join discussion groups to share ideas about lesson plans, teaching strategies, and project development. Discuss tools and content that you use. In some cases you can find webinars like this one from Buck Institute for Education about project based learning.

8. Create a calendar of events and assignments.

9. Access Edmodo through the free Android and iPhone apps.

10. Turn in assignments. Students can upload assignments for their teachers to view and grade. Teachers can annotate the assignments directly in Edmodo.

11. Create parent accounts. Teachers can create parent accounts. Parent accounts allow parents to see their children’s assignments and grades. Teachers can also send alerts to parents about school events, missed assignments, and other important messages through Edmodo.

12. Generate printable class rosters. If you’re going to have a substitute teacher in your classroom who needs a printed roster, you can print one from your Edmodo account.

13. Embed Wallwisher into your Edmodo wall to host a brainstorming session.

14. Embed videos, images, and audio clips into your wall to spark a class discussion online.

15. Use the Google Chrome extension or browser bookmarklet to quickly add content to your Edmodo library. Anytime you find something on the web, click the Edmodo extension or bookmarklet to save it in your Edmodo library.

Do you use Edmodo? What’s your favorite feature?

Here are your codes:

Grade Level Group Code
Elementary (PK-5) mq9xis
Middle School (6-8) 2pgkrt
High School (9-12) qjncx6

Additional information for you from Friday:

Here are the links/information that I needed to send you to complete today’s workshop:
  • Your final assignment for the program is to complete a reflection of the Ambassador program through a Transformation Story.
    • Take a minute to access the file: https://discovery.box.com/AmbStory
      • Edit the District Name & Your Name
      • Begin filling in your thoughts about the program.
      • Please e-mail this to me when you are done
  • help number: 1-800-323-9084 
  • when you get booted out what password do you use? This is a glitch right now and Discovery is working on it. Your old usernames and passwords – even the ones I gave you in September don’t work right now
  • Discovery asks that you fill in a survey now that you are true Ambassadors here is the link to the survey

Thank-you for all the work you have done on Discovery and the other programs we have focussed on this year – you are all amazing!

PD Request Form

November 20

The SAN Script – Friday, November 20th

Featured_WelcomeToAtomicLearning

Atomic Webinar with Derek Herman

1.  Please join my meeting.
2.  Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) – a headset is recommended.  Or, call in using your telephone.
Access Code: 727-017-093
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
Meeting ID: 727-017-093

November 18, 2015

MAKING FRIENDS WITH YOURSELF

The things that really drive us nuts have enormous energy in them. That is why we fear them. It could even be your own timidity: you are so timid that you are afraid to walk up and say hello to someone, afraid to look someone in the eye. It takes a lot of energy to maintain that. It’s the way you keep yourself together. In tonglen practice, you have the chance to own that completely, not blaming anybody, and to ventilate it with the outbreath. Then you might better understand why some other people in the room look so grim: it isn’t because they hate you but because they feel the same kind of timidity and don’t want to look anyone in the face. In this way, the tonglen practice is both a practice of making friends with yourself and a practice of compassion.

Pema Chödrön Heart Advice

 

Review from Session One

  1. How have you integrated with students what you learned from our last session?

     What have you learned or shared in Edmodo?

SOS Review

  • Which strategy did you implement?
  • How did your students react?
  • How did you tweak it to make it your own?

 

  • Homework Review
  • Did you complete the Interactive Training? • Did you learn anything new about integrating digital media?

 

download

 

Phase 1- Event 2

Day in the Life

Overview

This event continues building on the integration strategies and expands knowledge of the depth and breadth of the resources available through Discovery Education. The content is delivered through 5 video segments. It is designed to give Ambassadors examples of digital integration strategies within multiple subject and grade levels.  Time will also be provided for Ambassadors to share a strategy they tried from the first session.

Day in the Life of a Discovery Educator

In the next portion of the event, you’ll play 5 video segments that provide an overview of the variety of resources within Discovery Education.

    • NOTE: Depending on what services you have access to, will determine how many of these resources will appear within their individual searches.
  • Each segment ends with a question, plan to leave approximately 3-5 minutes for discussion

Virtual Events

Remind Participants they have access to virtual events from Discovery Education.

Phase 1- Event 3

Student Experience and Celebration

Overview:
In session three, ambassadors will learn more about enhancing the student experience and share personal successes. This session will review resources shared that walk them through My DE for Students, how to share content, and highlight some of Discovery Education’s great educational partner programs. The culmination of the program includes an opportunity for each participant to showcase what they have learned and how they have implemented their new learning in their classroom.

Going Digital (15 minutes, Slide 6)

 

  • Script Next, we will be watching “Going Digital: The Next Chapter in Teaching and Learning” from Discovery Education’s Senior Vice President of Partnerships, Scott Kinney.

 

  • Play: Going Digital: The Next Chapter in Teaching and Learning
  • Pause at 1:17>  Ask participants to share which way they believe instructional content is primarily used in general across your district: Text, Lecture, Media, Hands-On.
  • Pause at 6:00> Ask participants to share what they believe is not current in textbooks today and to share how many different textbook adoptions/ curriculum changes they have gone through since starting their career.
  • Pause at 8:52 > Ask participants to share what these graphs mean to teaching and learning

Student Center Experience (15 minutes, Slides 7-10)

  • As a review from the homework Interactive Training Activity, have Ambassadors review the Student Center Board

 

Reflection & Closing (20 minutes, Slides 13- 21)

Transformation Story

  • Script: Your final assignment for the program is to complete a reflection of the Ambassador program through a Transformation Story.

Staff working Meeting

see agenda here

 

November 19

The SAN SCRIPT – Thursday, November 19

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

Confucius

paris

Photograph via MrFinigen on reddit

Buildings around the world showed their solidarity and support for the victims of the horrific attacks in Paris, France on November 13, 2015. From Australia to Brazil to Canada, iconic buildings and monuments projected the colours of the French flag onto their façades.
At least 128 people were killed last night in coordinated attacks across Paris by eight gunmen and suicide bombers. It is the worst atrocity in Europe since the 2004 Madrid Bombings and the deadliest attacks ever in peacetime France. You can read more about the terrorist attack on BBC.

St. Anthony Today

Boys Volleyball – Maria away (Paul Away)

Paul at Board (snowsuits for St. Anthony students)

Alina Carranco, Neurocognitive Science Student at Carleton, volunteers in Mrs. Rupnik’s class

Theresa Patenaude, SLP, in Mrs. Rupnik’s Class all day

 

November 18

The SAN Script Wednesday, November 18th

I truly believe that everything that we do and everyone that we meet is put in our path for a purpose. There are no accidents; we’re all teachers – if we’re willing to pay attention to the lessons we learn, trust our positive instincts and not be afraid to take risks or wait for some miracle to come knocking at our door.
Marla Gibbs

fall4

 

 

Good morning everyone!

This is the middle of November and we are all feeling more than a little stress for a variety of reasons.  It has been a challenging start to the year, but we are underway and some of the factors that have caused stress in the school have been resolved.  At this point, we need to look for ways to step back a bit and do something that reduces the stress that we feel.  Whether it is taking some time for yourself or adjusting your expectations for yourself, it is really important to be mindful of how you are feeling and respect that and base your actions on your need for some renewal.

Friday is an occasion for us all to reduce our collective stress.  Whether you are at school or at another workshop, it is important to make this a good day, a day with a different routine and a chance to learn a few new things.

At school, we  are going to work on a few things together, but the objective of the day is to celebrate what we have learned, spend some creative time together and learn a few things together.  Let me be clear about this – learning is a journey, especially when you are learning really new things.  Wherever you are with Discovery Education – give yourself a break.  The purposes of the Discovery workshops is to introduce you to all the wonderful material you can use.  It can take years to get really proficient with this program so please give yourself a break.  

Wherever you are is where you should be.

We will have one webinar with Atomic – a learning platform that we have invested in to help you with your own learning journey.  You need a good, reliable place to go to to learn things.  There is so much happening in education now that, in my opinion, every teacher needs access to excellent training that they can access when they have time to learn the things that they need to learn.

After Friday’s workshop, the structured workshops should be done – except for a possible webinar on the Science Techbook – we will see about that.  The rest of our PD budget will be given to you to use to learn more about the key programs that have been introduced this year.  By Friday, I will be able to tell you how many days each of you has.  Your job is simply to use them for your own learning.

I will come up with a simple Google Form you can use.  I will keep a record of your learning so that I can add all of this information to our SIP.

At the end of the year we will all assess if this model works for us before we move on.

So, enjoy the day, it looks like another beautiful one.  Friday will be relaxing and fun, something we can all use!

Have a great day!

 

Paul

Yoga is a great way to reduce stress, but maybe not this class

 

St. Anthony Today

Paul away this morning – Board Office

Mona away – OPEN

Angela away – OPEN

Eco schools Green Club meeting Angela, Meg, Teresa Room 8

Paul at traffic survey meeting in the community with Counsellor Catherine McKenney

Waste-Free Wednesday

 

 

November 17

The SAN Script – Tuesday, November 17

 

Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, “This is my body,” and made it so by his word, is the same that said, “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.” Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.

John Chrysostom

fall5

a beautiful fall day!

St. Anthony Today

Paul in late – meeting at University of Ottawa

Stephanie away – Nicole in

Paul away -1:30 pm

Table Tennis – 3:15 in the gym

Dorothy Stanyar, volunteer, in Mrs. Rupnik’s class PM only

Orkidstra starts today! – 3:00 in the Learning Commons

3 Fantastic Things about the new Comic Strip templates in Book Creator

Just when you thought Book Creator couldn’t get any better, BOOM, it does. The ‘boom’ is particularly relevant in the opening sentence as the app in question has stepped into the comic book world with its latest update. Book Creator is one of the most widely used and appreciated app in schools today. It brings a unique angle to the creation of a book. By combining the multi-media functionality of an iPad with the simplistic formatting of a digital book, the app has created an engaging and innovative place to build a book. To learn more about the basics of using the app, please read ‘10 Ways of Book Creator‘.

 

As we all know, comic books are bigger than ever. Every other film is a super hero movie. I’m sure that many young children will be dressed as their favourite comic book character as they walked the Halloween streets. Even older children and adults get a kick out of the Marvel Extended Universe or the Dark Knight movies. Therefore, it’s fair to say that the comic book world sparks the imaginations of many. In turn, this brings a whole host of learning opportunities to the classroom. Children may well be more engaged with the concept of writing a comic story than writing a fairy tale. They may be more interested in reading a graphic novel than reading a traditional fiction book. Whether you agree with that or not, the fact is that the comic book might be the route to a wider enjoyment of literature.

 

Book Creator have managed to open their app up to this idea with their latest update. You can now choose from three different comic strip templates that bring their own specialist options with them. Below are just three benefits of this addition to an already awesome app.

Screen Shot 2015-10-27 at 15.01.26

 

1) Structure and Form Screen Shot 2015-10-27 at 14.55.54

Firstly, and maybe most importantly, choosing a Comic Template enables you to access ‘Panels’ within the ‘Add Items’ list. You can then choose from a list of structures for each page of your comic book. Essentially, this does a big part of the formatting for you and enables you to concentrate on the content. However, it can also offer a unique way of learning the separate components of a story structure. For example, you can choose a panel that contains three boxes. The three boxes in this case could contain images that highlight a beginning, middle and end of a story. On top of this, the formats could even lend themselves to different types of writing like newspapers or information texts. This little addition makes the app even more accessible in my eyes. Images can be lined up in a coherent order and the writing can be added underneath.

 

2) SimplicityScreen Shot 2015-10-27 at 14.56.39

Of course, the ‘Panels’ add a layer of simplicity to the creation of a comic book. However, the entire usability of the Comic Strip Templates is much more simplistic in general. The initial set of features that can be accessed on the ‘add item list’ are a little less complex than on a standard Book Creator template. For example, when you ‘add text’ to your comic book, a list of four fonts appear. These four are in keeping with a comic book feel and so it’s easy to choose a good option for your writing. Speech and thought bubbles are there in the list, making them easy to access and paste on your pages. Having said all of that, you do still have the option of accessing all of the more in-depth options within the ‘add item list’ by tapping on ‘more’. Therefore, you can go on to add additional images and videos as well as drawings to your comic. These are features that have been around on the app for a long while and they add another layer of possibilities to a comic book strip.

 

3) Room for DifferentiationScreen Shot 2015-10-27 at 14.56.54

You might think that with the addition of easy formatting panels and a simpler set of initial options, the Comic Book templates are only suitable for lower attaining pupils. However, all of the aforementioned features can be adapted and edited. Therefore, nothing is locked down and everything can be changed so that children can really make their comic books their own. In turn, this means that this part of the app is very open to differentiation by outcome. By tapping on a ‘panel’ box and hitting the ‘inspector’ (little i in the top right hand corner) you can edit said box after tapping on ‘unlock’. This enables you to re-position and re-format like adding shadows or changing the border width and so on. Obviously, the ‘more button’ in the ‘add item’ list is another way of customising a comic book creation. Other than the features like ‘photos and camera’ that have been around for a while, you can also access ‘stickers’ and ‘shapes’ in the ‘more list’. The ‘stickers’ provide a child with comic book style imagery and words. These elements not only add a real sense of comic book aesthetics but can also highlight a higher understanding of a story’s tone. There really is a lot of room for children to play to their abilities.

 

 

The nice thing about the latest update is that the Comic Strip Templates are an ‘addition’ in the simplest sense of the word. If you do not choose one of these new templates then you will be faced with the same old Book Creator. Some updates on some apps seem to completely change the way that you interact with them. Book Creator do very well to update without alienating anyone. They seem to add features and functions in a methodical way. The app developers are also very good at adding entirely relevant and enhancing options to their updates. On top of all of this, Book Creator has always and continues to be extremely connective through it’s camera roll interaction. In other words, anything that can be created and exported to the camera roll on any app can then be picked up and used in a Book Creator book. The examples below have been enhanced by an app called Comic Art in that I was able to make all of the images look as if they were drawn in a graphic art style. This kind of connectivity not only adds to the differentiation possibilities, it also adds to creativity possibilities. A child can integrate all sorts of elements from all sorts of different apps. There is a reason why Book Creator is held in such high regard. The bar just got higher.

Screen Shot 2015-10-27 at 14.55.27 Screen Shot 2015-10-27 at 14.55.40

 

Nick Acton

November 15

The SAN Script The week of November 16 – 20

the cup

Congratulations to FDK One – winners of this week’s St. Anthony Superstars Award for teamwork!

 

 

voice of the day

If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time.

But if you have come here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

– Lilla Watson

prayer of the day

O God of Israel who rescued your people from slavery, you have shown us the true meaning of solidarity through the incarnation of your son, Jesus. You showed no fear in binding yourself to us; give us the courage to do the same when we see our neighbor struggling for freedom.

discovery

 Streaming Canada Plus – you can use some of these in preparation for November 20th

Getting ready for November 20th PD Day

coffee and snacks ready by 8:15

webinar – Atomic Learning 9:15

Discovery Lessons – (see below for prep) 2 and 3

working lunch – lunch provided by social committee

afternoon – experiment with some Atomic Learning materials

individual and group planning time