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Integrating technology with curriculum in a creative manner is one of my goals as a School Technology Leader. I am always striving to find ways of doing so in a manner that reinforces learning rather than serves as a game-like activity at the end of a lesson. In doing this, I hope to also model to classroom teachers how they can use technology as a teaching and creating tool and not an afterthought because they are being asked to incorporate more technology in their classrooms.
To this extent, Kindergarten is both an open landscape of possibilities and a unique challenge as most students are either completely new to technology or have limited experience with it. iPads are a wonderful tool to start with, however, and I have been searching and thinking and biding my time to develop a suitable lesson for incorporating iPad technologies in a creation project that would produce an end product within a limited time frame and with such young students. With ScribbleMyStory, I was able to do just that.
Kindergarten, as well as first and second grades, have been exploring story elements in the library for the past few weeks. This particular lesson was the opening lesson about characters.
ScribbleMyStory, a free book creation app, was the application. After a short discussion about books and reading and characters and the other things that make up stories, I asked students to wear two hats - that of illustrator and main character. The ScribbleMyStory app was perfect for this lesson as well as for the young age level. It allowed freedom of creation and design within the confines of a short, 3-page, pre-written story. All students had to focus on was their main character, which was the exact purpose of the lesson. The ScribbleMyStory app allowed them to focus on one story element, but still create a self-manipulated, individually creative product within that focus.
Students were asked to use the “All About Me” book template in ScribbleMyStory to tell a story about their main character - themselves. We talked about our artistic license and how we as both the illustrator and the main character could be anything we want to be, in the realm of a character. We could be human or animal or object. We could have brown hair or pink hair or purple, polka-dotted, paisley hair. We could be a boy, a girl, a unicorn. The possibilities were limitless. They understood that they were in control and they harnessed that control with a creative verve that easily allowed me to assess how well they completely understood the concept of character and of creating a character of their own.
ScribbleMyStory is a awesome app that my students have revisited on a number of occasions since this initial lesson. The free version features 4-5 short book templates similar to the “Just About Me” template plus there is a longer blank book template that allows the user to both illustrate and write the story. The app is perfect for the primary age level as it is easy to navigate, simple, and straightforward. As always, students are quick to learn the nuances of manipulating colors, pulling in clip art, etc., which only allowed their creativity to soar.
In addition to my professional goals in this position, I have a personal goal as a media specialist and a teacher and that is to be open to learning as much from my students as I teach them. Teaching and learning are reciprocal relationships, after all, and as educators, we simply have to have our eyes and our minds open to the daily lessons our students teach us. We have to be able to recognize the lesson and be able to relate it to what we need to learn.
What I learned from my students with this project was a reinforcement of what they had already taught me...if you put technology in student hands, they will create and learn in ways you could never have planned. They will use critical thinking to figure out how to use the technology application and how to create tangibly the thoughts and images they have in their own imaginations.
And then... well, then they will absolutely amaze you with those wonderful imaginations, their sincere creations, and the sheer depth of their understanding.
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