Tech Takeout goes to Seven Pines!

Last Friday, the Tech Takeout team visited Seven Pines Elementary! The fifth grade teachers noticed that students needed some review with the fourth grade SOLs 4.7 and 4.8 (the solar system) with a connection to their fifth grade SOL 5.6 on oceans. Everyone was super pumped for a Science themed Tech Takeout, because who doesn’t love Science?? Mrs. Gross, the librarian was kind enough to let us use her awesome library to host the three classes and we worked with laptops and IPads that are housed in the fifth grade classrooms. Special thanks to Mrs. Hall, Mrs. Marazzo, and Mrs. Bottari for letting us borrow their fantastic fifth graders on Friday morning! #SevenPines is a great place to be!

In Miss Aquilina and Mrs. Robinson’s group, students used the PicCollage app (in freestyle mode) to create an inspiration collage. We pulled in photos from a Comemories site, added a selfie, and played with the background and stickers. Then, we saved the photos to the Camera Roll on the IPads and opened the ChatterKids app. We pulled the photo into ChatterKids, drew a mouth over our selfie’s mouth, and record some narration of the photos. Most fifth graders chose at least one ocean photo and one solar system photo, which was cool! It was so hilarious to see our selfies talking; everyone had a blast with this activity! Here’s Michael’s:

Students in Mr. Covais’ and Ms. Browne’s group focused on how the Earth’s tilt in relation to the sun create seasons. Using Google Slides, the students imported pictures of the sun and Earth. They duplicated the slides and they then selected a sticker to place on the Earth. After rotating the picture to demonstrate the tilt of the Earth they downloaded the slides to their desktop and imported them into Windows Movie Maker. Finally they copied and duplicated the slides to make the movie about a minute long. The students published the movie to share with classmates. Everyone did a great job!

Students in Mr. C’s and Mrs. Green’s group created 3D models of the solar system using Tinkercad. They used different resources to gather information about the relative size of each planet. Then they logged into Tinkercad using their HCPS Google information and started tinkering! They referenced their resources as they built to make sure that the sizes, colors, and order was correct. Take a look at this awesome example:

To celebrate Computer Science Week, the student in Mrs. Hues & Mrs. Taylor’s group used Scratch to code the movement of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. They were provided a template with the sprites, but they had to add the background image, code for each sprite, and voice recordings to explain their model. When students were finished, they shared their projects and uploaded them to this studio. Check out this great student example!

Thank you again to Mrs. Hall, Mrs Marazzo, Mrs. Bottari, Mrs. Gross, and Mrs. Mothershead for having us for an awesome TechTakeout at Seven Pines Elementary!