I think this project would be appropriate for 3rd-5th graders. The teacher used the 7 ipods during her UA time, for students to record their speeches, and then we went to the computer lab and put them into Garageband. After seeing Paul Erickson's Story Structure examples, I will definitely try using Sonic Pics with them next week on our next project. We used Garageband, and it was a bummer I couldn't get them to export with their pictures. They all put some thoughtful and historic pictures with their speech. That would have been a great visual to accompany to oral report they recorded.
Here are some sample biography speeches.
mlopez
May 7, 2010 10:37 AM
After looking back at my 2 entries, I realized I needed a clearer description of the project.
First students read biographies and realistic fiction selections in HMR Theme 5. Then they chose a person to research. They assembled the information they found into the form of their own biographical writing. They used the ipods to record in italk. They then transferred their recordings to Garageband, where they edited the spoken recording and added pictures, music and sound effects. Then students used a rubric to evaluate each other's recordings and choose the ones to submit to the EYMF.