Microcuentos in SSL and Premiere Pro

Some of the SSL students wrote a microcuento (100 word story) and then recorded the story. Later they added graphics to illustrate the plot. This lesson took six class periods to complete.

World Explorers and iMovie

All the 8th Grade Social Studies students worked in groups and wrote scripts about specific historical events related to their unit on World Explorers. These scripts were written in Google Docs. Later the students acted out the scripts and filmed the scenes. Their video was captured with iMovie and then edited according to the teacher's specifications. In each group, some students recorded separate audio tracks in Garage Band that were later imported into iMovie. This project took 8 classes to complete.

Persuasive Speeches and Garage Band

Some of the 7th Grade Language Arts students wrote a draft of a persuasive speech. Then they polished that draft and recorded it in Garage Band. Finally they exported their persuasive speech as a podcast and dropped the file in their teacher's drop box. This lesson took three class periods to complete.

Microcuentos and Premiere Pro

All the 8th Grade National Spanish students wrote a microcuento that followed the rules of the literary contest, Santiago en Cien. Once finished with the writing, the students then recorded their stories at home and brought them to school. In the computer lab, the students imported their recordings to Premiere Pro projects and added text, graphics, transitions and effects to create a movie version of their microcuento. This project took five class periods to complete.

Poetry and iPhoto, Word and GarageBand

The 6th Grade Language Arts students began this project by writing poems in Word. To those documents, they added photos that they edited in iPhoto. Later they recited their poems in GarageBand and exported them as podcasts. Finally, the students uploaded everything to their teacher's wiki. This project took four class periods to complete.

The Ancient Greeks, GarageBand and iMovie

Some of the 6th grade Social Studies students made a movie of a TV panel show about famous Greek leaders that they acted out and filmed in their classroom. The teacher used two cameras to film the presentation, so the students had to compare the footage from "Camera 1" and "Camera 2" in the Clip Browser and then select the best clip for the situation. Later the students added text and voice overs to clarify any points that weren't clear from the audio. Finally, they imported mp3's of the intros and outros that they composed in Garage Band. The project took five days to complete.

Persuasive Writing and Garage Band

Some of the 6th grade Language Arts students used Garage Band to record themselves, while reading a persuasive essay. These recordings were exported as mp3s and then placed in their public folders, where classmates could access them, and record feedback as to whether the essay was persuasive or not. This lesson took two class periods to complete.

Lightning, Garage Band and Flash

The 8th grade Science students used Flash to create a model that explained how lightning is formed. Students used movie clips with masks to create the lightning graphic. They also used Action Script to create interactive buttons. They recorded their voices in Garage Band, which they later exported as mp3s, to narrate the model. This lesson took four class periods to finish.

Flash CS3 and Chemical Reactions

The 8th grade Science students used Flash to create models of different chemical reactions that they studied in recent lab activities. First they created symbols of the elements they needed and then made motion tweens to illustrate how the atoms recombined. The students also added buttons to navigate between movies. Finally, they narrated one of the movies with a recording that they made in GarageBand. This assignment took three class periods to complete.

Essay Writing with Six Traits and Garage Band

Some of the 6th Grade Language Arts students used Garage Band to record their written essays, so they could be evaluated from a different perspective. After the students recorded their essays, they exported a copy in mp3 format to their public folder. At that point, another student accessed the public folder, opened up the essay, did peer editing, and recorded suggestions on a new track in Garage Band. The peer editor exported the copy with suggestions as another mp3 file to their own public folder. Finally, the author listened to the comments, made any necessary adjustments in a new audio version of the essay and added appropriate sound effects before exporting again and dropping the final work into the teacher's drop box. This assignment took four class periods to complete.

Bullying Projects

For the first two weeks of November (during the 6th grade trips) the 6th grade students who were not in Lagunillas worked on a seven day project that addressed the issue of bullying. During the first two days of the project, they did collaborative research in Google Docs, gathering information from teacher-approved web sites. Once they had information that addressed their research question, the students had three different choices for presenting their solutions: a poster made in Photoshop, a slideshow presentation made in Google Docs, or a podcast made in Garageband.

One of the research templates that students worked on collaboratively when preparing for their presentations.

One of the Bullying posters made in Photoshop.


This is a slide from a presentation prepared collaboratively by one of the student groups in Google Docs, and then downloaded as a ppt document.

A sample podcast about bullying made in Garageband.

Radio Theater Recording & Performance

The 8th Grade Social Studies continued their project by using Garage Band to record parts of their script. The instructions specified that the narrator, minor characters and sound effects could be recorded and the principal parts would be spoken live during the performance. Students learned to record on different tracks, how to create fade ins and fade outs, as well as how to use ducking effectively.