Tessellations, StoMo, and iMovie

Well, it has been a while, I won't lie since my last post, but I'm going to set a goal to post more frequently onto my blog. Recently, I began taking a Web 2.0 course and to be quite honest, I am slightly disappointed because I am running a 1:1 iPad class and my course acts like I have never encountered Web 2.0 tools or used them in my classroom. I sit at my computer doing the assignments thinking I can teach the course better and I could do it in a more interactive way. In return, what I have is the drive to write what I do in my class because honestly, I get more ideas from blogs than I am from the course I am taking.

Last week, like many other teachers, I began focusing on what I was going to teach for the upcoming week. In math, we were getting ready to reach the math lesson on tessellations. Every year, I have the children create their own tessellation and I always have children who will do a beautiful job and those that just wanted to be done with the assignment. So, I thought to myself there has to be something more I can do to showcase the students' creativity and bring. So, I began searching to see what other teachers are doing and came across Tessellations Revamped for an iPad. This is a blog posted by Chelsie Meyers for a lesson she did with her students on tessellations. The students design a tessellation, and using the StoMo app and iMovie app on their iPads they create a movie of their work. Here is an example, 

Today when I introduced tessellations and this project to my class, I received a much different reaction from my students. They were excited, in fact they shared this excitement on Edmodo with 34 comments in one minute. I would say this project is a success!

Well, I certainly would love to write more, but this school year I adopted the cutest little dog, Sadie. She shares a love for technology, and unfortunately I have to compete with her to be able to use my own computer and ipad.