kathleen.johnston

This term I have been working with Janice and P3/4 to explore different ways to Create and Present. P3/4 have been using the ‘Flat Stanley’ stories as a theme within several curricular areas, allowing lots of links between areas and a fun approach to learning.

As part of their enterprise topic, the children were making Flat Stanley stories of their own and creating Big Books to give to the Infant class to read. We decided to use the stories and explore different ways of presenting them using ICT.

Our first venture was to use ‘Comic Life’, and create a cartoon Flat Stanley adventure. The children worked in groups of two and three to make up a simple storyboard of their adventures. Each sketch represented a digital photograph. The children took their laminated Flat Stanleys and photographed them throughout the school and in the playground. Some of the murals and playground markings served as super backgrounds for
Stanley – in one adventure he hitches a lift with a giant butterfly, in another he is searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The photographs are remarkably effective and a super stimulus for imaginative writing.

Next the children transferred their photos onto a laptop. Now, this is where things almost came unstuck! As we had used several cameras and we were using several laptops, there was a bit of confusion over which photo was on which camera and on which computer! Let’s just say that during our feedback session we decided that we needed to be more organised next time! We talked about writing down on the storyboard which camera was used (they are all colour coded), and also which computer was being used by which group.

 Suffice to say, we got there in the end! Last week Janice worked with some of the groups who were using Comic Life, and I took some children to use the Digital Blue software (see last entry). We imported some of the Flat Stanley photos into the software and started making a presentation. The photos can be dragged out of the album and into a timeline. You can then add text and sound effects. We recorded one wee guy saying, “Help, I’m stuck in this jungle!” (photo of
Stanley strategically placed in a bush in the school playground!). Needless to say we ran out of time, but I can’t wait to finish the story, and neither can the children!