We are drawing pictures in Paint which we will import into Powerpoint to create weather animations. Some of them have done this before on a normal PC but being able to do it at their desk has been great! Will send the animations when they are ready!
My class (and the class next door) LOVE the data loggers. We held the probes near the air conditioner, took it outside in the shade and in the direct sun, and 2 boys even took theirs up to the ladies in the office and asked if they could hold the probes in their refrigerator for a minute!
The graphs were saved and will be imported into their Eduweb homepages next week.
I will get photos tomorrow!
This week in Reading groups, each group had a turn at using Inspiration to design a mind map about Weather. I loved the cooperation and teamwork! 2 of my least-motivated boys worked so well together that they were first in the class to complete their mind map. They would love some clip art to import into it. (They are used to using it on the Smartboard where they can manipulate the text and change it to a pictorial representation).
We have now had the NOVAs in our classroom for just over a week. I have NOVA monitors. (Jake took it upon himself to fix the daylight saving time on each of the NOVAS on Monday morning…he’ll do!)
Jake is not usually so interested when asked to sit at a PC. The idea that he could do it at his table and still interact with his peers might have been a plus for him! Our digital natives usually like to work in the vicinity of someone else, at least! We have had a problem connecting them to our Novell network (apparently there are some tech-heads who are on the case!) In the meantime, we put 1 different sticker on each one to identify them. This week, the kids have saved their work locally but tomorrow they will save to a USB stick until my Novell problem is sorted. Jake has also taken it upon himself to put them back on the charger each afternoon (without being asked). Surprising but inspiring! My class are studying weather so each morning another little group attach the temperature probe, air pressure and light meters and off they go to measure the data. We are comparing the digital data with our Australia Geographic Weather Station which is set up outside the room! The data is written on the whiteboard for all to see. All students are recording the data and today we all took it in turns to take a NOVA outside and record the data on MultiLab and save to the NOVA. We will copy over to our network at the end of each week until our network problem is solved! I demonstrated to 5 children in the neighbouring class how to use Multi Lab and they spent 10 mins recording data. Then they had to come in and demonstrate to someone, and the cycle repeated itself until all students had used Multi Lab!
I should have taken a photo of one of my Stage 3 boys who sat down on the concrete outside the Computer Lab and watched as a South westerly front approached. The air pressure dropped as the wind picked up. He was fascinated!
Our teacher chose four people to do a special prject on the NOVA . And guess what,one of those people was me.The project we were to complete was to design a cereal box that has the features of an elephant. First we brain stormed the parts of the elephant and what it would be used for. Then we went on NOVA PAINT to draw up our design of our elephant .
Next we went to other classes to survey other students to ask them which design they liked the best. when we found the winner we graphed our results .After that we made our box and made an advertisment. IT WAS HARD BUT FUN!
Our teacher gave us an assignment to design a new type of cereal box called Elephant pops using the features of an elephant.To do this we used NOVAS.There were four people doing this project and I was one of them.First we went on text maker and planed what each of the elephants features could be used for.Next we went on paint and drew a draft picture of how the elephant pops box might look like.Then we went and surveyed a few classes.As we surveyd the classes we graphed the scores.Then when we found the winner we made the box which was their design.After that we had to make an advertisment using the Elephant Pops Box.Then we wrote our information on the Blog site.It was a bit hard, but I had alot of FUN!
The NOVA5000 is a completely new concept in digital learning for students. It combines the simplicity and economy of a hand held computer with many of the advanced features of a laptop. This blog is a place where students and teachers can share their first experiences with using the NOVA5000.
