Purpose: To create a digital resource "book" of Internet websites. Individual projects can be combined to create a large and comprehensive resource. 

Focus: 3 categories of websites have been designated in this project - interactive websites for use by students, reference sites for use by students, and reference sites for use by teachers. At the moment, the project could be used as a staff development tool addressing the Internet, information literacy skills, multimedia authoring, and basic computer skills all at one time. Changing this to a student exercise would take little effort - see Adaptations below.

eZedia Skill Level: Beginner

Overview: The project has nearly everything done for the end-user already. Individuals simply need to cut and paste their commentary on each website into the text boxes that have been set up. Additionally, they will need to cut and paste (or type) the address for the website they're discussing into the GoTo object for each site.

Advance preparation: Set up a simple text file in a word processor with the 3 categories of websites. Have a heading for the name of the site, the commentary on the site (which we limited to 75 to 100 words), and the address (URL) of the website. That way, students can quickly do a spell check on all of their work at once and they can also do a quick review of their writing. Our estimation is that students can then complete the eZedia part of the project in about 30 to 45 minutes. We'll update this as it is about to get a real world test. The time estimate assumes we are working with beginners who aren't quite used to doing copy and paste - which is another skill that is addressed in this project. Also, you have to discuss information literacy skills with your audience in terms of determining what makes a quality resource.

Why not just do the project as a webpage to begin with?

Good question. We've set this up as a beginner project to introduce participants to the potential power of multimedia authoring for themselves and their students. As skill level and interest increases, individuals could shift the focus of this project a bit and include a video clip commentary on how they used it in their class. Better yet, the students who use an interactive website could be interviewed and the kids could add their own video commentary. Teachers could also include vr's of their classroom in terms of how it was organized to handle the various projects that made use of the websites so that other educators could get a sense of some of the ways to simplify classroom management when doing these activities. The options to go further with the project are endless. However, it has to start somewhere and that's why we've kept this fairly simple.

Design: All of the elements for this project were designed and developed strictly in the eZedia environment using only the tools available. The idea was not to take a lot of time to do this. Also, I'm not an artist - though you may guess I'm fond of the color purple!!

Adaptations: Change the categories of websites, even make the project smaller by eliminating one or two categories. By changing the titles for the categories, you could adapt this to any student project. Teachers in a school or district could also take one single subject and topic and commit to finding a series of web-based resources so that this becomes a very focused project that would contribute to staff development around curriculum and technology at the same time. When things can be combined, it works out for the better, as teachers don't have time to keep adding things on. One thing to consider is that the graphic I've used as the background image (a picture I took in George Bush airport in Houston) may be a big sophisticated as an image if this project was used with Grades 3 to 5. You might want to consider a different background - or better yet, have the kids design one that they will use in common.

NETS for Teachers ( www.iste.org ):  I. A, B; II. C and potentially D & E if adaptations are implemented; III. A., B; V. A, B, C. 

NETS for Students (www.iste.org ):  3. Technology productivity tools; 4. Technology communication tools, 5. Technology research tools.

Purpose: To introduce the concept of creating a simple digital storybook using graphics created using the tools within eZedia and by bringing in graphics from other sources. 

Focus: Students can create entertaining and creative digital storybooks with eZedia, even at a very young level. This is just a single frame project that shows the use of combining graphics from different sources and adding a path animation object to the frame to create movement. A counter has been left visible so that individuals can see at what point on the path they might want to have another action occur like the sudden appearance of a cat because at the moment, I have a graphic of a dog moving along the path. 

eZedia Skill Level:  Beginner

Overview: The project is only meant to show the potential for the ease with which students could create digital storybooks. These could even be story starters that students create for each other. Older elementary students could create these for younger students. The idea is that the process is fairly simple. 

Advance preparation: Assemble your graphics. Are the students going to use their own artwork which will be scanned in to be used in the project? Are the clip art collections that will be used? ALWAYS have your materials assembled and ready to go. As one teacher to another, we know that being organized in advance cuts down on classroom management problems and makes sure that instructional time is not lost while we try and gather things together. This is the same rule of thumb we use whether we're incorporating technology or doing a simple lesson.

Design: The background was designed using the tools available in eZedia nearly a year ago. I also brought in some simple clip art images to show how it could easily be combined. 

Adaptations: Here's where you can really take off with a ton of teaching ideas. As I already mentioned, these single frame projects could be story starters. By adding a few more frames, students can develop their own stories any way they want. Think about the possibilities if you put a neighborhood photo in the background instead of clip art or if you use clip art and then put a photo of the student in the front and using the edit graphic power in eZedia make the background in the photo transparent and have the student walking through this imaginary neighborhood. They can add narration, music - anything they want. Also, make use of the ability to layer objects in eZedia to make it appear that things are going in and around objects.

From a math perspective, I had 9 year old Girl Scouts spontaneously enter into a discussion of the upper and lower limits of a variable when they were using the path object as they tried to work out how fast or how slow something could go if it was put on a path. This was their idea, not mine, but it does show how children will start to go further than we thought when given the tools. By the way, these girls were just average students who hadn't had much to do with computers and who were seeing eZedia for the very first time without formal instruction. This occurred in the first 40 minutes that they were using it.

These projects could also be connected to social studies or science where students create digital books about a country, a place, a plant, or a process. The options are pretty much endless.

As soon as you start bringing in the path object, you are starting to engage students higher-order thinking skills. Add to that the branching object and you are opening up a whole world of advanced, yet easy to understand, critical thinking skills for students who might otherwise not experience them. From my perspective, digital equity is also a state of mind and all students need the opportunity to experience these more challenging, and engaging, opportunities.

NETS for Teachers ( www.iste.org ): I. A, B; II. A,and potentially D & E if adaptations are implemented; III. A., B, C, D; V. A, B, C; VI. B. 

Purpose:   The My Story project can be used to teach classroom management skills of technology through the use of wells and placeholder objects in the project which provide a way for young children to do more sophisticated projects without having to navigate around the hard drive and without having the teacher at hand every second. The placeholder object and the wells are two of the best friends teachers could have in designing simple templates for student projects. Placeholders act like a magnet so that images being dragged out of the well and into the frame will slip into place just where you want them when the students let go of the mouse. Of course, students can re-size items after, if they want. The wells facilitate the process of organizing the resources to be used in the project. No more hunting for where that graphic went!

Focus: There is a strong emphasis on developing career awareness in children at a very young age. This project is intended to have them explore that in a simple manner and could be used with a regular lesson focusing on career awareness. It is a 3-frame project that has them write (1) their name; (2) a short sentence about what they like to do; and, (3) a short sentence about what they want to be. Self-knowledge is a critical skill so the idea of thinking about what a person likes to do and then transitioning to what they think they want to be is purposeful. In addition to career awareness skills, this project produces a digital story about the individual child. It is meant to be used with students in approximately grade one. Originally, I had thought the children might only use a single frame project, but actual use in the classroom by a regular classroom teacher at that level has shown that students can handle a 3-frame project. Students could explore other topics the same way. 

eZedia Skill Level:  Beginner

Overview: Like the "Dog Going for a Walk" project, this is a simple project designed to introduce the concept of a multiple frame project. In addition, the area of classroom management of technology is addressed through the use of wells in this project.  

Advance preparation: At the beginning of the year, get a digital camera and take pictures of your students or scan regular photos (watch out for file size!!!) and create an eZediaMX well with all the photos in it. You will find this handy throughout the entire year. More than one well can be opened at a single time. Park the well that holds the items for Frame 1 right next to the document frame. Take the well that holds the pictures of what they like to do and park it next to that - following a left to right sequence. You can probably guess where the well for frame 3 is supposed to go in this process! In doing this with a couple of classes, I went to www.ditto.com (which I found at the eZedia site) and was able to gather up the pictures of what the students liked to do and wanted to be within a few minutes. Better yet - have the kids take pictures of each other doing what they like best. Sometimes this could be tricky and it might be necessary to ask family members to help out. Kids could always play "dress-up" and portray themselves as they would be dressed in their future career. Get the camera out, snap the pictures (again - let the kids do it) and create a well from the photos.

Design: Everything was created entirely within the eZediaMX environment.

Adaptations: Using wells and placeholder objects allows teachers to adapt this simple project for any subject area. The original well used to create the project has been included for download so that people can change the text in the titles, etc., without having to start from scratch. I would be inclined to dress up the background of each frame by adding an image and then using the transparency option under edit graphic to lower the transparency level of the photo and then add it to the background. It's just a simple trick that has such amazing visual impact. 

NETS for Teachers ( www.iste.org ): I. A, B; II. A,and potentially D & E if adaptations are implemented; III. A., B, C, D; V. A, B, C; VI. B. 

NETS for Teachers ( www.iste.org ): I. A, B; II. A,and potentially D & E if adaptations are implemented; III. A., B, C, D; V. A, B, C; VI. B. 

NETS for Teachers ( www.iste.org ): I. A, B; II. A,and potentially D & E if adaptations are implemented; III. A., B, C, D; V. A, B, C; VI. B.