Join the Pages of History with Instant Alpha

If given a choice to time travel to a specific point in history, what, who, or where would you choose? Lincoln's Gettysburg Address? Making a call with Alexander Graham Bell? Taking a stroll with Neil Armstrong on the moon? What about going back in time to meet your great great grandparents?

Little Miss with her great great Italian immigrant grandparents.

If you look carefully, you can see that Little Miss is actually "sitting" on top of her great great aunt in both of these pictures!

A creative way to do some time traveling with students is to use a green screen and the instant alpha feature on Pages or Keynote.  When Little Miss was over recently, I had her pose so I could try this out. She was super cooperative (turns 3 in June) and very photogenic! Using some paper for the green screen, I took a number of pictures of her as well as the basic background I wanted to use.

After erasing the green with the instant alpha feature, I layered her pictures onto several different background choices. I found that it can be a bit tricky to erase all the green without erasing part of what I wanted to keep. Enlarging the picture helped some.

This is such an interesting way to get students engaged in history! You will definitely want to consider having your students jump into the pages of history by adding this creative layer to their studies. 

My 4th grade class used our annual trip to the school forest and the focus on Wisconsin lumbering history to create some pretty cool illustrations for our fictional narratives.

Students gained background knowledge from the various activities at the school forest such as using a crosscut saw and visiting the logging museum that showcases a plethora of lumbering tools and vintage pictures of Wisconsin Jacks using them back in the day. Students learned about the many jobs that fall under the umbrella of a Lumberjack...cruiser (walks the forest to find good trees), teamster (works with the oxen), crackerjack (uses dynamite to break up log jams), skybird (loads the sleigh with logs), Hayman (spreads hay to slow sleigh on the icy tracks), chickadee (you don't really want to know), and many others.

Along with this new learning, students participated in a lumberjack meal that includes oatmeal, flapjacks/stovelids, squealers (sausage), sinkers (donuts), cluckers (eggs), and spuds. Lumberjack relay races are played in the snow with the bragging rights going to the winning team. It's a big day with lots of learning, lots of memories, and yes, lots of fun too!

After our school forest experience, students wrote a fictional narrative that features themselves as the main character. This narrative is based on having students choose a Lumberjack or Lumberjill job and to write a descriptive piece about their first day on that job. Within this writing they included tools they would use, some lumberjack words, and a lumberjack nickname they give themselves, along with the beginning, middle, and end of their first day.

To go along with this piece of writing students made a Lumberjack/Lumberjill in their authentic mackinaw jacket, boots, and hat.

Then we added the creative layer to this project using Pages and the instant alpha feature with the green screen to place their figure in the pages of history. I took lots of pictures during our field trip as well as found some vintage lumberjack pictures for students to use as background. 

An example of a student narrative accompanied by a vintage picture of what could've been some "River Pigs", the name given to the of dangerous job of those riding the logs down the river.

A narrative with a Lumberjill hanging out at the school forest and looking forward to a breakfast of "cluckers" and "sinkers".

Doing some crosscut sawing with a Lumberjill buddy.

Now here's a bright spot in this vintage lumberjack camp!

This Lumberjack and his big smile are ready to saw in his
bright red-checked mackinaw jacket.

Students could also use the instant alpha feature to have pictures taken of themself to be placed in any vintage setting. Imagine having your students standing next to Martin Luther King, Jr during his famous I Have a Dream speech, in flight with the Wright brothers, or sitting next FDR during his fireside chats. The possibilities are endless!