Development Updates

Well class today was a whirlwind! We had so many final ideas and suggestions to do to our website after hearing what others in our class had done. We are even meeting up outside of class to finalize some new ideas! We just need to make sure we’ve dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s in all of the specifics of the website. It’s exciting to see all of our hard work coming together in such a tangible manner. We’re so close to being finished!

We are finishing the final touches for everything! We’ve all contributed to the script that we’ll use to narrate during our 60 second infomercial. We plan to have this finished ASAP! Currently, we’re going through all of our links in our lesson plans and additional resources to make sure everything is up to date and running smoothly. Our website is almost ready to make public, and everything will be official! We can’t wait to have everything finished and sparkly for the public to see!

How do we make an infomercial??? We’re quirky, we’re funny, we keep laughing and don’t have much of a direction? We’ve managed to get our website looking fabulous but how do we sell it to all you average Joe’s? All we know is that we have to get it finished in less than a week. Where to start? Where to end? We’re brainstorming, but it’s mostly storming, and not much brain at this point… Eek!!!

Today in class we decided to focus on our video project. We are planning on doing a combination of video clips and images to launch our advertisement for the world to see. We know this project needs to be killer, and the best, and hopefully we’ll figure out how to do that. By the end of class today we plan to have our script written. Over the weekend we will all be updating the website with our various individual contributions and making sure everything is ready to roll. On Tuesday we’re all going to be looking fabulous because we will be creating the videos for our team advertisement.

Today it’s miserable outside, way too hot and we are happy to be in an air conditioned room! Over the weekend Katherine made the Scratch instructional video, Catherine wrote up her lesson plan, Kaitlyn worked on her Prezi and Caitlyn started the final project checklist. We have all been working on our individual final projects and discovered how to properly work our team website. We plan to nail down the goals for lesson plan #5 today and to start brainstorming what to do for our team video. The end is near and we’re closing in on the finish line!

It’s been a rough week. We are all feeling the impending doom of finals approaching and tuckering through our assignments. Due to the fuel known as coffee we were able to find some aliens that students will be able to choose from in creating their own Scratch planets. Katherine is searching for time and silence to record “How to make a Planet”. Catherine has found our science outcomes, from Indiana. Caitlyn has created our hypothetical students worksheets for their own alien. Kaitlyn finished lesson plan #3. Eryn is currently working on lesson plan #2. We are making good progress and nailing down lesson plan #4 and what we need to create individually over the weekend. Go team Solar Sisters!

Well, it’s hailing outside and that means our focus is a little distracted. But that’s okay! Caitlyn has made the student worksheet for Lesson 2. Catherine was able to figure out the sound issues with our Scratch project, yay! Katherine has taken the lead with How to Make a Planet within Scratch video project. Eryn is rockin’ Lesson 2 and has done the Prezi,and is going to write up the lesson plan as well. Kaitlyn is working tirelessly on Lesson 3’s lesson plan and we are making great progress. Before meeting up Thursday we will have found a tileable background for our website, sound that works in our Scratch, and curriculum outcomes related to science and third grade.

Over the weekend Caitlin and Catherine finished the Scratch project required for Lesson 1. Eryn got a comprehensive draft completed for Lesson 2’s Prezi technological component. Kaitlyn was responsible for finishing the Jeopardy game for Lesson 1 and Katherine created an official lesson plan for Lesson 2. Today during our work period we will be nailing down lesson plans for lessons 2 and 3, and figuring out who needs to do what in order to keep our project moving forward. At this point we think that we might be able to finish things a little early which will be great for looking over our project and fine tuning all the small details.

This week we have been working on Lesson Plan #1, about the Solar System. We are in the middle of creating a Scratch project to introduce the planets. We are also making a Jeopardy game to help motivate the students to learn their space facts. Our goal for the weekend is to finish Lesson #1 entirely, minus the Scratch project and to make the Prezi for lesson 2.

Our group is mapping out the details for the five different lesson plans that tie together with kids creating a scratch project.

We’ve made five separate notebooks for each lesson plan and are deciding what kind of information we want to teach, and what our goals for the students are. We set a date to finalize these lists by Monday, and will begin making our lessons through scratch and other resources.

We created a new scratch account that we all have access to, and have a goal to upload our sprites by Thursday.

Just working out the kinks and figuring out exactly how we want this to look!