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.

MLK, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Information Literacy

What do Martin Luther King, Jr., Old Crow Medicine Show, and information literacy have in common?  A lot, if you use a multidisciplinary approach to teach fact verification and information seeking skills through music and technology.

I have always been a huge music fan and I've always loved all kinds of music.  Most often I'm drawn to a song because of the lyrics.  The first time I heard Old Crow Medicine Show's song "Motel in Memphis" - a song about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - I knew that I wanted to use it in a lesson someday, somehow. The song lyrics touched me in a way that made me see the assassination of this man in a way I had not before.  The mere words to the song brought a piece of history to life. I hoped it would do the same for my students - make them view the life and death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a way that would provoke a new appreciation for his legacy and for the many reasons he is celebrated and recognized with a national holiday.

But I don't teach music and I don't teach history.  I am a media specialist.  I teach information literacy skills - how to locate information, how to evaluate information and authenticate sources, how to be responsible users of information, and how to learn from the information we find.  What could that possibly have in common with this song, the man, and the fact that we celebrate his life with a national holiday?  

Everything...if you go about it the right way.

I started with the song lyrics that had so moved me and thought about how, like myself, my students were not present when Martin Luther King was alive nor when he was so brutally murdered.  Like myself, those lyrics could bring new meaning to a part of history they had often heard about, but never experienced.  And so I did what I love to do and found a way to incorporate technology and music to teach a lesson about a great man using a thoughtful song with historically specific lyrics to engage my students in a information seeking/fact authentication and verification mission. 

I started by using "Motel in Memphis" as the background music for an Animoto photo montage video depicting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life, assassination, and funeral. The lyrics to the song were printed on a worksheet for students.  Third and fourth grade students were asked five questions specific to facts in the lyrics and instructed to use research and fact verification skills to answer and/or verify the answer to those questions.  

I allowed a little more autonomy with my fifth-graders, asking them to use information from the lyrics to learn more about specific details illustrated by the song.  For example, one line from the song reads, "Were you there with Mahalia wailing at the funeral?"  Students were to use the information in that lyric to learn by using their research skills that the "Mahalia" referred to was Mahalia Jackson, a gospel singer and friend of Dr. King, who sang at his funeral service.

Through both of these activities, students learned multiple cross-disciplinary lessons.

• They learned that music and music lyrics tell a story and that sometimes that story is a historically factual one.  
• They learned about a great man by starting from the day he was assassinated and working back through his life to discover detailed information about the equality and civil rights he fought for.

I used technology and music as tools to paint the picture for them and they used technology through online research to locate, verify, evaluate, and develop what I know was a greater understanding of the history and the man.

But most importantly, they used their own natural curiosity and inquisitive behavior as a catalyst for responsible information seeking and fact verification. 

What I learned was that I wasn't alone in being touched by the song, I wasn't the only one to see history from a different perspective because of it's lyrics, and that given the opportunity to interpret factual and artistic expression through music lyrics, students were led to not only find and verify the factual information, but also to dig even deeper to satisfy their personal curiosity about the facets of this particular history that most fascinated them.

Learning Technology Organically

Working with K5 kindergarten students on iPads is always one of the most incredible things.  To see these young, innocent beings willingly and excitedly dive into technology is amazing.  They aren't afraid.  They haven't learned that fear, yet.  They take chances and they make mistakes.  But it doesn't phase them.  They simply start over and learn from what they did wrong.  They're fearless in the best ways - wide-eyed, excited to learn, and innocent.

I love working with kindergartners and technology - particularly iPads, which are so wonderfully tactile and make the process and experience of learning incredibly multidimensional.  In my opinion, they represent hands-on learning as an active pedagogy.  Students are active in their learning - engaged, involved, and present, using higher order thinking skills easily aligned with Bloom's Taxonomy.  In later projects we will work towards higher levels of the cognitive process with creation projects and self as well as peer evaluations.

But today...well, today we played.  We played productively and learned how the iPad works. We learned tips and tricks to navigating the technology.  We learned how we should use it respectfully and responsibly.  We learned by actively doing.  And then we learned through explorative play, choosing any app and practicing our navigation skills until we discovered the app we most liked and wished to explore further.

My favorite part of a lesson like this is watching how each of these little learners "play" with the iPad - from the way they learn to use their fingers to navigate the touch screen to the apps they are most attracted to.

Learning is a process.  It is planned.  It is discovered.  And it is created.  It's a pretty special process to participate in and an even more remarkable one to witness when it happens organically.

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...