Playing on Pixie

One of the goals I shared with my parents during curriculum night earlier this month was my interest in learning and helping kids learn about Pixie. Tonight, I decided to get started. I dug through my resources about pixie and visited tech4learning.com where I watched a few of many tutorials that would help me first explore it. I then (because I don't have the program on my personal laptop) downloaded a 30 day trial program. With some big ideas we have been reading about, discussing and creating (our class promise), I created this single page representing those ideas about leadership. I learned how to use the paint tools to create boxes on a page and then the paint can to fill the backgrounds of specific areas. I played with the text box tools and the font size. I figured out how to import pictures from iphoto and place stickers on the page. Last, I searched for a picture on the Internet, saved it to desktop (big al) and finally placed it on the page. Oh yea, then I learned how to save the slide as a jpg so that I could post it to my blog. Whew!!

You wouldn't believe how much more there is to learn about this software. I want to learn to add sound, add music to slides, create slide shows and use the many tools for colors, fonts and effects.

My students have played on Pixie once this year and a few times last year. The time that we spent was truly exploring. I want to make sure that this year, that we set up our time on the lab or with the laptops with a bit of a workshop approach. This week, I modeled using new tools for a mini lesson and sent the kids off independently but we didn't debrief to share and learn from one another. I want to also think about how knowing certain features of Pixie will allow us to create and share a piece with a message in mind. For now, we'll keep exploring!