Alphabet Adventure Gallery

An interactive Internet site for kindergarten

Before You Get Started?| Project Phases | Additional Information | Preview | CEMIS

Steps to Proceed

Before you get started:

Have a look at the Alphabet Adventure Gallery from last year. This will give you an idea of what you can do with your class.
Click on the "Preview" button.

I also suggest that you have a look at the Little Explorers site. At the top of the "Little Explorers" home page you will see the alphabet. Click on the letter that your class has been assigned and if you click on a picture (e.g. B - bag - click on the picture of the bag) you will be provided with an activity to go with the corresponding picture. You may wish to use some of these activities when you are doing your letter with the class.

Now that your class has been assigned a letter, or a few, you are ready to proceed. The time line for the project is indicated in brackets next to each of the project phases. The timeline is only suggested so feel free to proceed at a faster pace.

PHASE 1 - SCANNING, PHASE 2 - SOUND, PHASE 3 - FTP, PHASE 4 - ON THE WEB

PHASE 1(Mid October - mid November)

THE PICTURE:
  • After having discussed and done activities associated with your particular letter have the students draw a picture of something beginning with the letter (preferably a noun). Please have the students identify what the picture is in writing. Make sure that they DO NOT do this in pencil as the scan will not come out as well. (see the Preview)
  • DO NOT have the children print their names on the pictures.
  • These pictures should then be scanned. You may wish to do a few with the class so that they can make the connection between the scanner and the computer.
  • Things that are essential when scanning -
    ALL IMAGES MUST BE:
    • Placed in a folder entitled: Scans-W (replace the letter 'W' with whatever letter(s) the class is assigned)
    • Scanned individually as separate documents and saved in the Scans folder
    • Scanned at a resolution of 75 dpi to keep the size of the file as small as possible ("dpi" stands for dots per inch. The higher the dpi, the higher the resolution, and the more memory the scanned image will take up).
    • Saved so that name of the document (the scanned image) reflects what the drawn picture is. That is, if the student draws a whale, the document should be named whale followed by the format type.
    • Saved in GIF format .

    PLEASE NOTE: The last two points are very important. If the document is not named properly it will be very difficult to match the scanned image with the sound file when the web master puts them together on the Alphabet Adventure Gallery web site.
EXAMPLE

 

The scanned image will be called - whale.gif
and placed in the Scans-W folder.

PHASE 2 (mid November - mid January)

  • Mac users can use a free software called Sound Recorder. To download it just click on the Sound Recorder icon right.

    It will automatically download on to your desktop. If it does not download automatically - click on the icon and
    hold down the mouse until you get a popup menu, then select "Save as..." from the menu and it will save on to your desktop.
    SOUNDRECORDER DOWNLOAD

  • PC users can use a similar software also called Sound Recorder which comes with Windows. Click on the Job Aid on the right to find out how to locate it OR do a "find" and type in "Sound Recorder". To use it, you must have speakers installed on your computer.

RECORDING SOUND:

Now that the scanning is done it is time to record the children's voices. For this an external microphone is recommended for both Mac and PC users (although it is not necessary for Mac users because recent Mac computers have built-in mikes). An external mike usually provides for better sound quality than built-in mikes.

 

  • The recording should be the student explaining what their picture is. For example, "'W' is for whale..."
  • PLEASE NOTE that the picture must be saved as a "wave" with the name of the picture followed by the format type (e.g. whale.wav). This format is required in order for the sounds to play on the web.
    Email me all of the documents - both the scans (gifs) and the sound clips (waves).

    How to use the software:

    For Mac users:

    Click here for a job aid on how to use SoundRecorder.

    For PC users:

    Click here for a job aid on how to use Sound Recorder.

     

    These job aids can be either downloaded or printed out.

At no time are teachers required to insert sound into the scanned image document. The web master
will merge them when they are placed on the Alphabet Adventure Gallery web site.

PHASE 3 (Mid January - beginning February)

PHASE 4 (February, March)

Additional Information

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