Winter Holiday Cards & Animations

With Winter Holiday break just a few weeks away, it can be tough to keep students engaged in their work.  It doesn't matter whether they celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or just being off school for two weeks, they need something fun as we head toward break that still benefits their learning.

This year, I expanded the lesson I usually do to offer a few more choices for students to create a holiday greeting.  Their choices include creating a standard, printable greeting card in Microsoft Word or creating an animated greeting using PowerPoint or Kizoa, a cool new FREE (no need for download!) Web 2.0 tool.  

I have the benefit of each student having their own computer in my room, but all these options could also be completed in partners or on iPads.  

Animation has my 8th graders fascinated this year after an earlier unit where they wrote and animated a Choose Your Own Adventure in PowerPoint.  Lots of them wanted to do more with that and have chosen PowerPoint for this project, but I also have a sizeable percentage that want to try something new in animation and have opted for Kizoa.

If you'd like to do use this with your own students, you can get the full lesson here.