INTRODUCING THE PREP GEMS

Welcome to our blog.

We are the Prep Gems and we are so happy to be continuing on the blog started by the original 1M Little Gems back in 2007. That's the year some of us were born!

Some of us have older brothers and sisters who have been GEMS, and we've heard about how they blogged about their learning and connected with people all around the world! 
This is the start of our blogging journey.
We don't know where we will go but we know the journey will be exciting.
We need you to be part of it so...


PLEASE LEARN WITH US. COME JOIN THE CONVERSATION!

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

IT'S 2008...

and the 1M LITTLE GEMS are now the 2M GEMS.

You can find us here.

COME JOIN THE CONVERSATION!

GOODBYE FROM THE 1M GEMS

As our school year ends today, this is our last post as the
1M LITTLE GEMS. 
We have had an amazing year blogging.

We have learnt things we never even knew we could learn!

We never thought that we would have our own blogs...
we never imagined 'talking' to someone on the other side of the world...
we never thought we would use ipods at school...
and we never thought that we would be doing this
ALL BY OURSELVES!
We would like to thank EVERYONE who visited our blog - our parents, other family, teachers, friends and people from all around the world.
We would especially like to thank Mrs J and our blogging buddies in 6J. Without your help, we would not have our own blogs and would not have learnt as much.
You were great teachers and VERY patient with us.

We also want to thank Mrs D for being our blogging friend and coming into our room and challenging us .
And lastly we want to thank Mr S for loaning us all the Macs.
We had SO much fun working on them - we'd LOVE to borrow them again.

We are not going to take this blog down. It will stay as a reminder of all the amazing learning we had as 1M LITTLE GEMS in 2007.

We hope you'll come follow us on our blogs in 2008.
Until then....
GOODBYE and THANKYOU
:>)

VOICES OF THE WORLD ARE STARS

As you know, our VOICES OF THE WORLD task for this month was to sing 'Twinkle Twinkle'.
The slidecast below gives a preview of what we can expect to hear when everyone's final product is published on the November's Task page of VOTW.

We were lucky enough to be included in the preview. You can sing along with us on slide 5!Try singing with the children from Norway and Estonia too!

| View | Upload your own

MRS M'S STUDENT OF THE WEEK!

Today we gave Mrs M an award instead of us getting the award.


When Brooke and I were on 'walking bus' we got the idea to give Mrs M an award. We spoke to Mrs J and asked her to help us write the award.


We kept it a 'big secret' and Mrs M was really surprised when her name was called out. This is what the award said
Presented to Mrs M
For being the BEST blogging teacher. We are going to miss you!


We wanted to thank Mrs M for teaching us how to blog.
by Johanna

SUPERHERO COMICS - THIS WEEK'S EARLY EDITIONS

Two new Superheroes...
two exciting new comics for you to read.

Check out the adventures of Turtle Girl and SuperBook Girl by clicking here!

A DOUBLE TREAT!

You are in for a treat with Issues 2 and 3 of our Superhero Comics released today!

The Amazing Electricity Man is our second issue.
Written, created and produced by Jarvis, this crackling story tells of Electricity Man's battle to save the planet.

Does he have the 'power' to stop the 'energy wasters'?

Click on the cover to go directly to this issue.


In our 'red hot' third issue, read of Waterman's Raging Battle with Flameman.


This sizzling issue was written, created and produced by Flynn and Noah.

Will Waterman put out Flameman and his fires for good?

Click on the cover to read the full issue.

In future issues out soon: Turtle Girl fights a battle against 'Rubbish' and Superbook Girl saves the day for booklovers - so watch this space!

LOOK AT US TWINKLE!

Here is our contribution to VOICES of the WORLD for November.

Our task was to record ourselves singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle' using a backing track Mrs Tonner gave us. Then we had to create pictures in Paint and upload them with our music track to One True Media.
We chose the 'bubble' slideshow because it reminded us of looking at stars through a telescope.

What do you think?

Don't forget to click on the 'speaker icon' as well, so that you can hear us singing along with the slideshow.

Free MySpace slideshows, photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

HELLO FROM SYDNEY

Hello 1M!

Yes, lots of you guessed correctly - I'm in Sydney!

I flew down with Virgin Blue (good observation skills, Jarvis) and I had a good flight, even though I was nervous to start with because I hadn't been on a plane for 27 years!

Unfortunately I haven't been able to see much of Sydney as I'm in workshops all day and my hotel, the Stamford Plaza, is right near the airport. (you got that one right, Johanna)

Today I shared what we have been doing with our blog and all the teachers were amazed at how clever you all are. We might even have some new buddies to connect with in a school in Western Australia!

You were all very clever at reading the map I made for you...and the question that had the answer 1 1/2 hours?

Flynn was the one who put on his thinking cap - the question was 'how long did it take for me to fly to Sydney?

Strangely, my flight home is only supposed to be 5 minutes less.

So how long will that be?

Can't wait to see you all Wednesday.

Mrs M :>)

THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH

Our SUPERHERO COMIC pages have been added to our LEARNING PODCASTS site.

If you love SUPERHEROES and comics, then this is the site for you.

Our first issue is THE ADVENTURES OF GREENBAG MAN - THE BATTLE WITH PLASTIC.

This 'good versus evil' tale was written, created and produced by Jacob and Patrick, with expert support from some of our Year 6 blogging buddies.

Will the world be overrun by Plastic or will Greenbag Man's environmental message prove too powerful?

So what are you waiting for?
Just click the cover to view our exciting first issue!

A SNEAK PREVIEW

Here is a 'sneak preview' of some scenes from
'Turtle Girl- No Rubbish Allowed'

Emily and Talia are busy working their way through the creation of their images of Turtle Girl and Rubbish Girl in ArtRage.


What do you think is happening in each picture?
What are the characters thinking?
Why are they behaving the way they are?
What could happen next?

Leave your suggestions in a comment.

You'll have to wait for the 'premiere'

to see what adventures and battles Turtle Girl gets up to.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Well done to the 1M GEMS who are making the effort to join in a 'blog conversation'.

We are contributing to the conversation on our class blog and our classmates' blogs.

Many of us are also joining in the conversation on the blog of our buddy class in Canada. Click on the pictures to read some of our comments.

Some of us are even starting conversations by putting up posts at home.

Have you replied to this one?

I am very proud of ALL who are joining in the conversations.

A 'SPECIAL MENTION' must go to Ben, who showed what a REFLECTIVE, SELF-DIRECTED LEARNER he is when he left a comment on the Voices of the World Animoto blog.

Check out what Ben said on the French Anthem Animoto.

Très Bien, Ben!

MRS M :>)

While you're there, listen to our ANIMOTO and leave a comment to tell us what you think.

VOICES OF THE WORLD NOVEMBER TASK

We are well on the way to completing November's task for the Voices of the World project.

This month's task is for everyone to sing 'Twinkle, Twinkle' in their own language, using a backing track that has been given to us.

We are creating images of 'stars' in PAINT, KID PIX and ARTRAGE to go with the song.

Our images and audio will be uploaded to One True Media to create a simple presentation.

We think the final slidecast will be 'sparkling'!

INVESTIGATING ODD AND EVEN NUMBERS

Today we were investigating odd and even numbers.

We discovered that if you can sort a collection into groups of 2,
then it is an EVEN number....

and if you can't and there's one left over,
then it's an ODD number.


BubbleShare: Share photos - Delicious Christmas Recipes.

We discovered that EVEN numbers end in a 2, 4, 6, 8, or 0.

ODD numbers end in a 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9.

So 36, 852 and 2,657, 126 are EVEN numbers and

47, 671 and 3,999 are ODD numbers.

So give us some numbers and we'll tell you whether they are ODD or EVEN.

Just leave them in a comment and we'll post about them!

OUR STORYBOARDS ARE COMING TO LIFE....SLOWLY!

There is SO much planning involved in bringing our stories about our
SUPERHEROES to life.

We've had to look at each panel in our storyboard and decide how we are going to 'create' the picture or pictures for that panel.







We wrote our 'image notes' on the back of our storyboards.

For some panels, we might need to 'google' some images, like these ones for the GREENBAG MAN story.

Or we might need to 'act out' some of the scenes and take a picture.

Here's a picture for a story about not playing properly with the toys at lunchtime.

We've had to really use our IMAGINATIONS and think hard about 'poses' and camera angles...

like for the battle between GREENBAG MAN and PLASTIC MAN.

Many of us are going to use ARTRAGE to paint over or add to a picture.

Here you can see Rubbish Girl in prison and GREENBAG MAN flying.

It's amazing how an ordinary picture can be turned into something incredible!

PLAYING WITH NEW APPLICATIONS

Before we can start bringing our Superhero stories to life in Comic Life, we actually have to have some pictures!
So we have been 'playing' with two applications that will help us create great pictures.
They are PHOTOBOOTH and ART RAGE.
We've spent A LOT of time 'playing' with them.
That's how we've learnt what they can do and how to use them.

Our Macbooks have an inbuilt camera, so we can use PHOTOBOOTH to give our pictures 'special effects' like

comic book...

light tunnel....

and thermal camera.

There's heaps more effects. Taking pictures on PHOTOBOOTH is so much FUN!!

It's PERFECT for SUPERHERO and VILLIAN pictures.

ARTRAGE is a paint program that lets you create 'paintings' and 'drawings' that look like 'real 'paintings' and 'drawings'.

Here's one Mrs M did of a 'superhero'

It's really hard 'drawing' and 'painting' with a mouse but we're getting better.

You can get a FREE starter version of ARTRAGE.

Just click on the icon to go to the download page.

Email your ARTRAGE artwork to 1mgems@gmail.com

We'd love to see your creations!

VOICES OF THE WORLD OCTOBER TASK

The Voices of the World task for October is complete.
Each participating school had to create an ANIMOTO
of their National Anthem.

You can see all the ANIMOTOS by clicking on
the VOICES OF THE WORLD banner.
There are many anthems from around the world.
Ours is the 12th one down. It's interesting that the three 'Australian' animotos are very different!

ENJOY WATCHING AND LISTENING!
DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE A COMMENT.
YOU CAN LEAVE ONE HERE AND ON THE VOICES OF THE WORLD SITE.

WHO ARE THESE?

Are these new members of 1M?

NO!

These are just some of our WeeMees - a virtual image we have created of ourselves.

Can you guess who's who?

Keep watching our blogs. Each will have a WeeMee soon!