1st Graders Use Photo Booth and Big Huge Labs to Preserve Their Image...

Recently I sat down with ISD194's Digital Learning Coordinator, Trish Harvey, to discuss a plan for our students to begin collecting for a digital portfolio that would contain their digital projects from 1st through 5th grade.  Wouldn't that be great!  Students could look back over their elementary years and enjoy their progress and their accomplishments!   Part of that plan would involve having our 3rd - 5th graders create a Google website, which we have already begun. (Read about our Google website work in an earlier posts - Google Sites - Digital Portfolios & 5th Graders Make the Mark Using Google Sites)  For our 1st graders, I would like to begin gathering their work throughout this year.   As we near the end of the year, we will have them store their work by saving it into their Google Drive.   Then when they are a little older we can have them create their website and add the items they stored when they were in 1st grade...isn't Google Drive a wondrous thing!!  

I knew it would be really fun if we could add a 1st grade picture to their future website.  So last week, I introduced students to Photo Booth on the iMacs.  I always take an entire lesson to introduce Photo Booth to 1st graders.  Even though it doesn't take very long for them to learn how to take their picture, once they see all of the "Effects" (Mirror, Twirl, Stretch) that they can do to their image...I loose them.  The room instantly fills with lots of chatter, laughter and "Look at This!" and "Look at That".  They simply want me to leave them alone so they can have time to explore. 

During this week's lesson, we used the photo they saved from last week, importing it to a great website, bighugelabs.com to add a nice fall finish to their photo.  BigHugeLabs, their motto is "Do fun stuff with your photo" is a great site when you want to create a quick and easy photo finish. Our 1st graders now have a wonderful picture for their future websites!!