4 and 6

I enjoy writing stories, so I was immediately drawn to Chapter 4- Digital Picture Books. BAM! Immediately there is mention of The Magic School Bus books and I read on no matter what comes next. I loved those books and the cartoons as a child, and this article explains how the series could be a forefather for today's educational computer games.
The process of creating a digital picture book is intriguing to me. Although most of the activity will be completed on the computer, the students have to have a solid understanding of the basics of writing to start out with. Therefore, this keeps the importance of language arts always prevalent.
Another thing i really like about this activity is that it can fit easily into a learning focused school, which is what most schools (at least in this area) are these days. From what I've seen, LFS's like to use cross curriculum projects, so the fact that in an English class the students can be making books about math, science, or social studies is a great idea. Also, in an age where technology rules everyone's lives, this could be an activity in which the students could truly succeed at and take true pride in.
Chapter 6- Integrating video,verbal, and audio texts is about another topic which holds interest to me. I enjoy poetry a lot. When I was younger (and much more dramatic) I would dabble in writing poetry and read aloud to my parents and friends. However, I realized a few weeks ago when the students in the 8th grade classroom where I am observing were listening to the teacher read a poem, that they were not interested. So, this article on placing poetry in creative videos, this strikes me as something that is defiantly useful in the classroom. The author recognizes the whole process and discusses how the students must understand the writing process in order to understand the filming process, as well.

I truly enjoyed the articles. They give very detailed guidance on what to do and what is to be expected and avoided. I hope to utilize both of these ideas in my future classroom!