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Introducing my upper elementary 4th and 5th grade classes to the concept of app smashing is something I had wanted to do for a while. Being able to do so with a creative, engaging, holiday-inspired, nothing-short-of-fun project was the goal and St. Patrick's Day was perfect timing!
We started our St. Paddy's Projects with a fun, free, St. Patrick's Day Mojo Masks app by Image Metrics. The app uses a type of augmented reality through the iPad camera to overlay one of three styles of masks on the face of the user. Once the user chooses the mask they like (in this case either shamrock glasses, green ribbons, or a full-face Irish flag) they can either record a video or take a still photo with the mask appearing over their face.
Because of it's use of augmented reality, this app was a perfect, fun start to the project since I have been exploring augmented reality technology with all my students, the older grades in greater depth.
After masks were chosen and applied, students were instructed to take a "selfie" with the mask using the app, and save it to the camera roll on their iPads.
At this point, they thought the project was over. They had, after all, made a nice little St. Paddy's Day photo and this was a St. Paddy's Day project. What else was there to do? ...
App Smash, of course!
With their masked photos saved, students were introduced to another fun, free, holiday-themed app - the St. Patrick's Day Photo Booth. With this app they were instructed to upload the photo they had just saved to their camera roll and add to it in any way they chose - options included Irish-themed stickers, hats, beards, shamrocks, word bubbles, stamps, etc. Once they finished doctoring up their photos with this second app, they saved this latest creation to the iPad camera roll.
For the final app of the project, I wanted students to create a short video using their photo and what better tool than ChatterPix?
Several of my younger students have used this app for various classroom projects, but the older students had not. This provided the two-fold opportunity of teaching them a new, usable technology tool and engaging them with a fun, creation project that took advantage of several creation apps/tools in the making. Win. Win. Win!
Though they had never used ChatterPix, the app is very user-friendly and they required little, if any, instruction on uploading their photo, creating the mouth slit, and recording a short audio message.
This St. Patrick's Day technology project with App Smashing was a quick, engaging, creation project that was tons of fun and allowed students to not only learn about new creation tools, but also practice following specific instruction, use applicational procedures, and get a new look at a technology their obsessed media specialist has harped on for months - augmented reality!
While I know they had an absolute blast creating these fun projects, they also learned about using the wealth of apps and creation tools they have at their fingertips together as a means to create truly specific, original work. This was their first encounter with App Smashing and it was successful in showing them just how creative they can be in presenting information and knowledge, not only for fun, holiday clips, but also for informative educational projects.
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