App Smashing St. Paddy's Day!

(Originally posted March 26, 2015 on Greenwood 50's Technology Leaders and Coaches in Action! blog at: http://kidblog.org/stls/823673c8-64ee-4e47-81b0-aca3e1d5b807/app-smashing-st-paddys-day-because-everyone-is-irish-at-least-once-a-year/ )
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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.

 

Christmas With the Storybots

(Originally posted December 18, 2014 on Greenwood 50's Technology Leaders and Coaches In Action! blog at: http://kidblog.org/stls/823673c8-64ee-4e47-81b0-aca3e1d5b807/christmas-with-the-storybots/ )
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The week before winter break is always more than just a little hectic.  My strategy for containing some of that chaos in the library  was to provide a technology based activity that was creative, engaging, and most importantly, fun.  It is the holidays, after all!  When I found the StoryBots Christmas app, I knew I'd found the tool I needed to accomplish my goal and get in some extra technology practice while having a lot of holiday fun.  And fun, it was... (Think amusing kid selfies atop oddly animated cartoon bodies.)



StoryBots is a Web 2.0 tool and iPad app that allows the user to become part of a ready-made video or story.  I used the technology in a collaborative and cooperative lesson that had students working together in groups of 4-5 to create and cast their group videos.  Working as a group, they had to cooperatively take their own or each other's photo and then individually manipulate them into the space for the face on the app.  Then they had to collaboratively cast the video by choosing who would be which character.



I completed this lesson this week with every grade level, kindergarten through fifth grade, with the exception of first grade, which I did not have because of special activities.  The kindergartners required a bit more hands-on assistance at first, but quickly picked up the art of taking their own photo and placing it appropriately.  With the help of the kindergarten assistants, I walked them through the first round of videos, instructing them on using the app/iPad camera to take their photos and then using two fingers to pinch and manipulate their photo into the correct place.  I was thrilled to see that with the time they had left after finishing and viewing their first video, they were taking their own photos and casting a second video all by themselves.  Their ability to pick up technology is always so amazing to me.



The only drawback wasn't really a drawback at all, but actually a positive.  StoryBots is a KidSafe app/tool from JibJab Bros. and as so, requires an email login.  I simply set up my own account and then logged the iPads the students would be using on with my account.  We used no more than 8 iPads in each class, 4-5 students per iPad, so the process wasn't as daunting as it sounds.  The positive part was that because each group was using the same account (mine), every photo head synced to each iPad, which allowed students to see their classmates photos as well as their own.  It also allowed me to go in and pull faces from each class to create a video to share with each of their classroom teachers, introducing the app while showing them what their students had been doing in the media center this week.  Needless to say, the videos were a huge success with students and quite a hit with their teachers as well.  Overall, it was a very fun holiday activity that required students to work cooperatively in groups and practice and/or add to their technology skills.

Primary Story Elements with ScribbleMyStory

(Originally posted December 17, 2014 on Greenwood 50's Technology Leaders and Coaches In Action! blog at: http://kidblog.org/stls/823673c8-64ee-4e47-81b0-aca3e1d5b807/primary-story-elements-with-scribblemystory/ )
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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.

A picture is worth a thousand words... and a little extra Thanksgiving gratitude.

It's a short holiday week, but we are still learning and using technology to express familiar ideas in not quite so traditional ways.  Today my 3rd and 4th grade learners worked on iPads to find ways to express the things they are most thankful for during this Thanksgiving season.  In planning this lesson I thought of the myriad of ways students are often asked to express themselves and/or present their ideas.  For this short project, I wanted the focus to truly be on them.  I wanted them to be able to express their ideas in as individual a manner as possible.  What better way than a self-portrait?  We used aTypo Picture, a free and simple to use word photo app, to create self-portraits highlighting the things they are most grateful for this Thanksgiving.  This was one of my favorites, from a very expressive and creative 4th grader...