At Lewis Elementary, our music/technology teacher Tony Jamesbarry has been introducing his students to Comic Life. The students are using Comic Life to create how to guides for school routines and procedures. Things such as guides for checking out a library book, lunch recycling, and how to use the rotary dial classroom intercom phones. (which is harder than you may think for students who have never seen a rotary phone dial... ) Students story board their procedures and then use digital cameras to shoot the scenes and then use Comic Life to create the guide. As an extension to this activity, Tony is now having his students export their Comic Life pages to iMovie where they are adding narration and soundtracks using Garage Band.

This year Tony has been working in our computer lab with mostly 4th and 5th grade students. We are fortunate that next year Tony will be working full time at Lewis. He will continue to teach music classes and also offer band, recorder and marimba half time, and the other half of his work will involve leading teachers and students at grades 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the use of technology as a tool for story telling, music creation and communication. We are hoping to find some funds to purchase midi keyboards and software so that he can also begin to teach piano keyboard in the lab to our 2nd grade students.