Lower School Art Students Design Inventive Creations

6th Grade Student Makes Digital Model of Cell as City

R DiDonato a 6th grade student made this three dimensional rendering of a cell city using a free software called Sketch Up building each element without the assistance of models or pre-loaded template structure.  Maura Saurman, MS Science Teacher reports "After learning about the parts of a cell and how they function like parts of a city, the students were required to make a digital model of a cell city.  They were allowed to use Google draw or sketch-up. Robert put a lot of effort into his and it showed in his modeling which was very sophisticated. Applying the use of 3D rendering tools to traditional learning modes really help students to understand complex ideas in a tangible way."

Upper School Design Day

Earlier this fall, the students and faculty in the Upper School spent the day using the design thinking process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test) to imagine a new school schedule.  Student and faculty leaders facilitated the work insuring each portion of the process from brainstorming to presentation provided opportunities for ideas to shine!

Lower School Ipad Collaboration on Autumn Expressions

Autumn Expressions: Collages, Sounds, and Words – 2^nd graders collaborated in music, art, and literacy to create an autumn project. In art they used their visits and iPad photos from the Preserve as inspiration to create autumn landscapes. They created paste paper in reds, oranges, yellows, and browns. They created a horizon line and drew basic shapes in pencil and used watercolor to paint their background. 2^nd graders used their colorful paste paper to collage their trees, grass, cattails, and other natural items. In music class, they recorded rhythms on the Green Ribbon trail using rocks, stones, leaves, and the creek. 2^nd graders also created poems about autumn. Look for a video compilation of this project in the New Year!

Audio Commentary in the Academy Monthly

Making the Invisible Visible is a new content area on The Academy Monthly digital Magazine site that presents student opinions on a variety of topics.  Using the webtools on SoundCloud, a Swedish online audio distribution platform based in Berlin, Germany, students upload, record, promote, and share their originally-created sounds.

Educreations App Turns Students into Animators in Middle School History

 

Students in Bayard Templton's history class are using the Educreations Ipad app to build media projects for assessments.

"As part of our Williamsburg project, I asked students to submit a creative project as evidence of something they had learned.  There were a variety of choices, some involving writing, others using visual or audio.  The animation above was submitted by Jake who had worked with  Educreations in the Lower School.  He explained that he loved working on the interface so much that he contacts the creators to report bugs and make suggestions," reports Templeton. "Other highlights, from my classes, included three music videos, several songs, and two sets of store signs made via woodworking."

Educreations is built expressly for the Digital Classroom allowing students and teachers to share video lessons in a safe and private classroom environment providing rich feedback on student work. The best part?  Videos are automatically saved to the cloud for anywhere anytime viewing.

Design Thinking with Lower School Parents

 

Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test - the stages of Design Thinking - a problem solving process was introduced to parents at the recent Lower School Life meeting. Using simple prototyping materials they helped each other design their ideal wallets following the guidelines of Design Thinking which was developed by David Kelley at the Stanford Design School and has been practiced at GA in a series of Design Days with students across the school.