DreamExtreme Class Blog

Keeping Track of the Oil Spill

Since April 22nd we’ve spent a little of each day learning and watching the latest news about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We followed along with each failed attempt to stop the oil leak, as well as sent in a few of our own ideas to BP. This link to the New [...]

I’ve Got Those Chains on Me

I had a couple of requests from students today to post Isaac’s video about the book Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. I’m really glad that so many of you enjoyed the video. It was a lot of work, but Isaac did a great job and I’m really happy with how the project turned out. Here, [...]

Incredibox is Incredibly Cool!

While poking around on the interwebs this evening I stumbled across a very fun interactive music composition tool. Incredibox is a loop creation tool that provides you with a sweet collection of individual components you can mix, match, cycle and recycle as you build a musical passage that grabs your happiness. The sounds are divided [...]

Video Content We’ve Been Watching

Over the past couple of weeks, we have viewed several video programs and clips which connect with the content we’re studying. In this post, I’m embedding several of the videos we’ve seen. Please understand that I – as a teacher – and DreamExtreme – as a class – are not fully endorsing these videos. They [...]

Dance Off: Cha-Cha Slide

We have been officially challenged by Mr. Franklin’s 5th grade class at Lone Pine Elementary. Never ones to back down from a worthy opponent, the DreamExtreme crew needs to get our groove properly aligned. We’ll get together with Mr. Franklin’s class via Skype sometime in the next few weeks. Lone Pine has chosen the Cha-Cha [...]

Visual Effects: 100 Years of Inspiration

This week, we’re looking at how special effects in movies are created. Here is the video we watched in class this morning.

Remix/Mash-Up Culture

This morning, I watched a fascinating video on YouTube. It came to me in the form of a tweet from fellow educator Joyce Valenza. The video draws inspiration from a Ted.com talk by Larry Lessig about the nature of creativity and copyright law and looks at the way our culture uses mash-ups and remixing to [...]

Finding Music in Green Places

Diego Stocco – Music From A Tree from Diego Stocco on Vimeo. I love happening across some unexpected and delightful corner of creativity. This weekend, as I shuffled through a couple dozen websites using the discover tool StumbleUpon, I came upon a video of a musician and composer named Diego Stocco. Now, I love music [...]

Artistry Through Technology

Lately, the DreamExtreme class has come across some very fun and interesting technology tools that could lend themselves to learning projects. Students have already used some in class work, and have only just begun to explore others. I’m including links and screenshots in this post to give you a launch pad to do some exploration [...]

Xtranormal Animation

Students in the DreamExtreme classroom have been exploring a web-based tool called Xtranormal.com. Xtranormal allows a person to use text to create an animation sequence. The user is able to select a character, background, voice, and other video and audio elements. It also allows you to add actions, camera angles and other semi-cinematic elements. Above, [...]