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Showing posts from October, 2015

The Aftermath

Sorry for no posting last week. The show and a busy mom life, left little time for blogging. As foreshadowed in last week's post, last weeks post would have been a small post because of show week. This week we are making our trek back into NextGen land and I get to share some Dance and Media projects, so I am very excited about that!! Last week, DAMCOM (Dance and Media Communications) students worked on, finished, and shared their final photostory projects. They got to explore a multitude of photo editing apps and choose from various video/photo story editing apps. Some of their top favorite: Photo Knockout, Snapseed, Color Effect, Photo Editor, Animoto, and iMovie. Below is a mix of some projects that were showcased in the lobby at Intersection. After their projects, they connected to a Google Form in Google classroom to answer a series of questions called "Artist Reflection" giving feedback on the technology, project, class, and their group. We th

The Calm Before the Storm

Well next week the students of the Cedar Ridge Dance Dept, along with Westwood, Ridgeview, CD Fulkes, Chisholm Trail, Grishman, Hernandez dance students, will be performing in weekend #2 of the annual district dance show "Intersection." The performances take place this coming Saturday, October 24th at 10am, 1pm, and 4pm at the RRISD PAC.  Dancers from Dance 1-4, Ballet 1-4, Jazz 1-4, and Ballet Folklorico will be split between the 3 shows, with projects projections in the lobby from the new Dance & Media Communications course. All of our students have worked tremendously hard and would love to see RRISD come out to support them. The shows are FREE, with a small donation of your choice appreciated. What has that meant for NextGen Dance? I bit of quietude on our devices. With dress rehearsal only 4 days away, we have had to focus more on stage readiness. Piloting NextGen in performing arts classrooms with inevitably go through periods like this before and during

Let's Warm Up

Whether it is a writing warm-up on the board or a physical movement of some kind, "Let's warm up!" is a phrase that many teachers start their classes with. This week I am happy to say that 5 of my 6 classes have been smoothly transitioned to their written warm ups (journals) directly to the iPads where some of their work can be done before even before attendance is taken or transitioning to the dance portion of class. Efficiency (when it's working) is another way that technology has helped with both class  and time management. My Jazz 4 class has found the iPad to be a fun way to physical warm ups too. They asked to try different abdominal and lower body workout apps to get an efficient and fast warmup before needing to buckle down for our dance rehearsal for our upcoming show. We used the iPads to film our practices for easy access to view and practice outside of class. Next week we will be using our slow mo apps to analyze their technique. With only 1 week of

Get your Journals Out

"Get your journals out" is something that I say multiple times a day, as each class starts with a written journal component that gives us our vocabulary for the day as well as journals prompts for practice free writing. I started the year with 3 of my 6 classes doing journals in Google Classroom and vocab directly into Quizlet for easy quiz review. I am happy to say that 2 more classes have put their spirals away for the last time (or until wifi goes out LOL!).  Dance 2 and Ballet 1-3 got loaded into accounts for both apps and started our new adventure. By the end of the week, engagement in the activity was already increased and I think they realized that this is a pretty cool thing. Two upper level classes that did Quizlet for the 1st 6 weeks, started our new vocabulary a little before the new 6 weeks started. As we study Production Vocabulary for this unit, many of these students have been in productions before, so....instead of me giving them the vocab words, their ta