This week we used Inspiration 8.0 to make a story board of an animation from the ABC 'Dust Echoes' series. This is a great way to get students thinking about different ways that they can explore stories, and present their ideas in a creative and interesting way. I feel that its also a great way to gently introduce thinking about other cultures, in particular, Aboriginal culture, and to discover what the students would like to explore in that topic. Using already created multimedia and presenting your own interpretation of that to a group of people is a great way to get ideas flowing and create interesting discussion.
Brolga is a story that explores what a 'dreaming-body' is, and why it is important to indigenous Australians, who believe that long ago, the earth was inhabited by supernatural beings, resembled by the native animals we see today. However, in those days, the animals were human-like, or were even huge people. These beings had their own songs, beliefs, laws, ceremonies, and stories. They roamed the earth until one day they became the native animals of Australia. This is the reason why indigenous Australians say the native animals are sacred. They consider these animals to be the communicators for our ancestors. According to indigenous Australians, everyone has a 'dreaming-body', or a being that lived thousands of years ago, and everyone has a knowledge of who their dreaming body is.
In this story, we follow Victor, a respected elder who goes on a journey to find his 'dreaming-body', singing the Brolga song along the way. He encounters many animals, a goanna, a barramundi, a kangaroo, and an emu. They feel sad for him because he never knew his father or grandfather. He feels that their is no hope and breaks down in tears, praying for the chance to speak to his fathers. Then he sees his father's and grandfather's image form in the clouds, then a flock of Brolga's come flying out from the clouds with a message from his fathers.
Click on the link below to see the film for yourself:
M&Ms Pie Chart
This week we also created a pie chart using Windows Excel. By creating this pie chart we saw how Maths and ICT can be integrated into one lesson (which is also fun for kids). It also gives students the opportunity to be creative in the design of their data representation, whether its a pie chart, bar graph, etc. Students will also be required to think about the best possible way to present the information they have gathered. A good way of doing this is by asking students to represent the same information in a graph, but they must come up with a chart/graph/etc that they think best fits that information. Then they can present their graphs in a powerpoint presentation and discuss why they feel theirs was the best representation.
Below is the pie chart that I created, however i feel that this is just a basic example.
