Students Learning Technology at Carver M.S.
Carver M.S. Technology Class: Science and Comic Books!
As Carver Middle School starts the new school year, CDTechLink continues it’s great work with Vernon-Central schools to bring 21st Century Skills to students through project based learning.
Shawn Mitchell, CDTechLink Program Director and Carver Middle School 6th grade teacher, Mr. Stephens, have planned a real fun project for their technology class – Comic Books! After a few weeks of learning graphic design to create projects around ancient Egypt and self portraits, students have now jumped into the Natural Science standards by creating Science Comic Books.
In order for the Science Comic Books to be created, the students were placed into small groups with an assigned topic, like Pangea, Sea Floor Spreading and Plate Tectonics.
This project is being completed as follow:
Students have developed a story around a topic assigned, incorporating themselves into it and created a storyboard. Once the storyboard was completed they took photographs of themselves in poses specific to the actions and frame of the comic.
The students are now required to do research for their project by searching the internet or by taking specific background photos to use in their projects. They will later manipulate the images using a graphic design software on the their computers – this work will make the images look real. After this step, students will then apply a comic book type filter to give it that comic look.
Completed designs will then be finalized using a comic book publication application to create layout and add the dialog and story information. These Comic Books will be printed and shared with peers. Comic Books will be available at LAUSD’s INFOTECH 2011.
School projects like this one have been part of CDTechLink’s focus for nearly three years. Funding for these projects are provided by the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF), and United Way of Greater Los Angeles.