Book Week Update Wednesday 29th February, 2012

Spanish Book Drive - A collection box is set up at the front of the LRC for Spanish language book donations.  So far it is completely empty! :-{  

Please drop off your old Spanish children’s books. It is for a great cause.

The Book Fair continues tomorrow and Friday from 8:00-3:00. There is a great selection of books to choose from so come along and check them out.

Character Day is on Friday- Dress up as your favourite book character (or come as Harry Potter on his summer holidays).

Book Week Update

Book Week Update!
Thank you to all of you who contributed to the  Book Assembly. If you want to join the Hobbit Bookathon but were unable to see Mrs. Garcia please make sure you see her or Mr. Keslake tomorrow and we will arrange a catch up session. We will continue listening each afternoon for the rest of the week, so do come along.

The Book Fair starts tomorrow Wednesday, and will run for the rest of the week, from 8:00-3:00. Come see and buy!

Come along to the LRC today and on Friday to create digital Flip Books with Hilda. Finished books will be published on the web, printed off and bound so that they can be donated to a local library.

Check out our Book Week photos and join in on the fun. Pose for a poster. Check out all our great photos at

Check back for regular updates.

The February Newsletter is Out!

Please click on the image below to access the full newsletter.  We hope you enjoy it. We would love to hear back from you, so please take a minute to write us a comment.

Mrs. Garcia

Special Reminders for This Week!

Here are some important reminders for you.

 Please remember that the Internet Safety Competition comes to a close this Friday. If you intend to participate, please email Mrs.Garcia today and bring your poster and/or video submissions to the LRC by this Friday 3:00.

Book Week is Coming up Fast! Please fill in the form in your email or by clicking here   and share the title of one of your favourite books with us.

 

 

 

Augmented Reality and SketchUp

I am in SketchUp mode right now, as we are working with the program in our 8th grade lessons. The students have been given a special task. They are to create a room based on a descriptive piece they wrote in English lessons, entitled a Character's Mind as a  Room.

It's the second time we have done this project in two years the culminating activity for which,  is to create a SketchUp video of the models. Yesterday the plans changed a bit something new and exciting appeared on the horizon. I came across a slide share presentation posted by Martin Burrett on augmented reality. The presentation lead me to AR-Media's cool plugin for Google SketchUp. I needed to check this out, one because I have never really investigated augmented reality (except for the time I tried to get it to work in Zooburst, failed and gave up...[Note to self: go back and try this again]), but more importantly because it would be an exciting activity to do with our kids when they complete the unit. They could even screencast themselves manipulating their models.

All anyone needs to do is to download the free plugin from AR-Media then build or open an existing  model. A working webcam is a must, most computers come with built in cameras today, as is a print  off the marker from the AR-media folder in your computer library.

To get a better idea, watch the very short inexpert video demonstration I put together. There are plenty more of these peruse, including one produced by In Globe Technologies, which demonstrates layers management, real time sections and more.

The January Newsletter is Out!

Here is our January Newsletter. Do have a read when you get a moment and feel free to comment back to us on this blog.

This is a snapshot. Please click here to read it online.

When Glitches Bring Gain

                             http://www.islabit.com/6789/corriendo-world-of-warcraft-en-un-iphone.html    http://otrapartida.com/ya-a-la-venta-la-version-completa-de-minecraft/10776/


Each Monday our World of Warcraft group meets to discuss our readings, blog posts and work together in-world. Unfortunately yesterday afternoon, WoW was experiencing difficulties with user log-ins and after a few tries we gave up. The kids then resorted to their next favourite game, Minecraft and a discussion soon began. Some of the students had found out on Twitter that on the 18th (tomorrow) Minecraft might be allow online users to play the complete game for free. They were very excited about this, and since I don't play Minecraft and couldn't access my WoW account,   I decided to delve into it further.

It turns out that many online services have planned activities, amongst these "blackouts" to protest SOPA. We weren't terribly familiar with what that was, so we dug further and found out that it is a piece of US legislation that is meant to protect against online piracy- called the Stop Online Piracy Act. There is a great deal of public opposition to SOPA and as a result many online services have planned a blackout. 

  

http://ml109.deviantart.com/art/STOP-SOPA-279366889

What is your Opinion on SOPA?

The kids, our learners of the remix generation, were genuinely interested in what SOPA was and why Wikipedia, Minecraft and many others were so unhappy with it that they would go to these measures. I don't think I have ever had 6th graders ask me to send them news reports before. Yesterday after a brief discussion, many of them requested that I forward on the information to them.