Our 4 image stories -- the process

As many of you know, I am taking a fantastic ETMOOC  course with about 1,000 other (mostly) educators from around the world who are interested in technology.   Inspired by all the Digital Storytelling that I'm seeing from my fellow ETMOOCers, I was ready for our students to create their own "4 image stories."  This lesson is somewhat based on the "5 photo story" I first heard about from Wes Fryer on his website.

Before we started this project, we had been reading memoirs and talking about why their authors would pick to tell their tales.  For this 4 image story, students picked one memorable moment from their lives that they thought they would want to remember years from now.  They might pick the story everyone always told about the funny uncle, or the story about the time when everyone ended up eating sandwiches for Thanksgiving dinner.  The story just had to be about something that was important to them.

The students first wrote their memories down in story form, then they were asked to imagine how they would illustrate that story with only 4 images.  This wasn't easy.  Students had to consider which parts of the story were most important and they had to carefully consider the story sequence.  There were many "redos."  After everyone had quickly drafted some ideas on paper, they were given art paper to draw the 4 images for the project.

Once the drawings/images were finished, the students used our first paid app (thanks to all of you who donated to Walk With Pride!), Explain Everything, to import their images into a continuous story.  The images were imported via the camera roll, then students added a minimal amount of text to each image and audio of themselves reading the text. 

Here are some pictures of the process:

Mapping out a rough draft of the 4 images

 

Drawing the final 4 images

Getting ready to take photos of the images for Explain Everything.

Adding text.

Recording audio.

Sharing what we created.

About half of the class has finished their projects already and they are very excited about their work, if a little uncomfortable hearing their own voices in the recordings!  I hope to post their stories soon, so stay tuned!

Haiku Deck (for teachers)

This post is about, Haiku Deck, an app I found through ETMOOC, a huge massive on-line open course I'm taking with about 2,000 other students. I'm so excited about this app that I decided to go ahead and post about it now before we have used it in the classroom since most of what we have concentrated on this year has been math-related.

The example below is one I created for my ETMOOC class in about 30 minutes.

There are several things I really like about Haiku Deck:

1. It is really easy to use. Click to add short bits of text. Click to add images from either the app or the camera roll. Click to add a new page. That's it.

2. The images are beautiful and easy to search.

Unless you choose to use your own images from the camera roll, the images gathered by the app originate from Flickr. Flickr is one of my favorite image sources because there are so many beautiful photographs there, and because they are so searchable. You can search using the searches suggested by the app or you can create your own searches. Searches can be literal, such as "sun." You can also search more general terms, such as "joy." Both will generate streams of photographs.

3. The images are all Creative Commons images that have the image credits embedded in them when the Haiku Deck in created.

I love this as a teacher! We spend lots of time in class talking about how important it is to give credit for images taken from the internet. When you create a Haiku Deck this work of proper attribution is done for you. All the Haiku Deck images have the image credit embedded in them so that when the image is viewed, the viewer can click on the CC logo at the bottom of the screen and view the image photographer and details of the Creative Commons license. This can be used in class to introduce Creative Commons licensing, to talk about proper attribution, and/or as a springboard to students creating their own image-based works.

4. Sharing may still be an issue in elementary classes since sharing is via email, Twitter or Facebook.

However, students could create Haiku Decks on a teacher iPad or on a home iPad with email. Once they are shared in any manner, an embed code is created so that the Haiku Deck can be added to a blog or website. Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad<

Geoboard (free)

Geoboard is another free app that is great to use when learning about fifth grade fractions.  It has two virtual boards, a small 5 x 5 peg board and a larger 10 x 15 peg board, multiple colored rubber bands to use on the boards, and it allows for the possibility of filling in shapes.  It is easy to use once you get used to "hooking" the rubber bands on the pegs and, always a plus with a big class, virtual clean up is a breeze!

As usual, students were introduced to the app first and given a few minutes to experiment with what they could do with it.

Then, we used Geoboard to understand dividing fractions.  Students were able to create wholes, then easily divide them into fractional parts to really understand what they are doing when they divide whole numbers by fractions in this instance.   This can help them understand why, when dividing a whole number by a fraction, they can expect the quotient to be larger than the dividend, rather than smaller as would be the case with two whole numbers, usually a perplexing idea!

 I could have paid one student for a public service announcement for our class and the iPads when she said, "no wonder you didn't understand this when you were a kid (I didn't), you didn't have a teacher as good as you are and you didn't have the iPads."  Thank you my dear!  This is why we teach!

Our app list as of the new year!

New Year's Apps

It might seem like a funny thing to say, but even though we’ve got iPads in our classroom, we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about apps.  Our idea is that we are using iPads to allow the students to have the opportunity to work in real time with technology, to work collaboratively on projects, and to exercise their creative muscles.  Fortunately, they can do these things using relatively few apps.  We don’t have to try to keep up with the new best apps – as if we could.  And we don’t have to spend a lot of our limited educational dollars on apps, because there are a lot of free apps that can do what we want to do in our classroom.

Since friends, parents and curious others have asked, here’s a list of the apps that are currently loaded on our classroom iPads.  There’s no magic to this list, it’s just the one that works for us right now.  The list changes every few weeks, and I’m planning to add our first paid app, the screencasting app Explain Everything, this weekend.  It’s a little tricky to redeem paid apps as a school using Apple’s Volume Purchase Program and Apple Configurator; but, hopefully, the students will be telling their families about Explain Everything by the end of the week when they are working on their Five Picture Memoirs.

Although there are less than twenty apps on this list, even this short list of predominantly free apps highlights the versatility of the iPad.   What can be done is limited only by the curriculum, planning time, and imagination of teachers and students.

General Purpose apps:

Edmodo – Edmodo is an online learning platform that, among other things, allows teachers to curate work from student iPads.   We will be learning how to use this in the new year.  It may be one way to work around students having emails.

iTalk Recorder – Students have been using the iTalk Recorder app to practice their fluency in class.

Nearpod – Nearpod allows teachers to create lessons that students can study on their iPads at their own pace.  Mrs. Dowlen has been experimenting with using Nearpod with math lessons.  

Popplet lite – This is a brainstorming, mind-mapping tool which can be used in any curriculum area.

Scribble Press – This is a simple book making app which is really fun to use.

Skitch – This is an app that can be used for multiple purposes.  We often use it in class for  annotating images from the internet so we can give proper attribution when we use them.

Student Clicker – Socrative – This is a fun way to give in class quizzes.  Don't tell the students, but there is a glitch in the app and I never got the final grades for one of the quizzes we took in class.

Vimeo  - This app is for video creation.  We haven't used this yet, but so far have been happy with making videos on the iPad itself.

Screencasting apps: In my opinion, screencasting is one of the GREAT things about the iPad.  We do lots of screencasting in class and will do more of it.  I can’t wait to use Explain Everything.  Of all the screencasting apps I've used, it seems to be the best for classroom use.

Explain Everything (coming soon)

Educreations Interactive Whiteboard   This app is very easy to use, but has some drawbacks.  The students aren't able to review their work after they have recorded it, and there is no way to edit.  Until these features are added, and they may well be, a paid app may be a better answer for us.

Math apps:

Chicken Coop Fractions Game

Geoboard  Since we don't use Geoboards in class often, it's hard to justify keeping them in the closet for the few times they are used, especially since the rubber bands get old and break.  Now that we have this app, we don't have to.  The app allows students to manipulate the geoboards without the storage issues or the rubber bands.

My Math Flash Cards App

Virtual Manipulatives!  See the earlier post about our lessons using this app.  It is great for working with fractions.

Social Studies apps:

Geomaster – US States  We don't play a lot of games in class, but this is a fun way to practice the states.

Google Earth  See the earlier post about our beginning forays into using Google Earth.  I've seen numerous ideas for lessons that I hope we have time to try.

Language Arts Apps

Dictionary.com

SpellingCity 

Rainy day Google Earth

What do you do when it's yet another rainy day recess? 

If you are lucky enough to have a relatively new class set of iPads, you pass out the iPads, ask the students to investigate the Google Earth app and see what happens.

Last week, during a rainy day recess, I decided to give the students 20 minutes to use the Google Earth app any way they wanted to.  I didn't have any plan in mind.  I hadn't even used Google Earth myself.  It was just one of those moments that happens sometimes in a classroom that turned into a great lesson with everyone working together to find out where we live on this planet, and then finding other places of interest - historical sites in our country, the White House and Wrigley Field - and in other countries.  There were discussions about Salinas, Prunedale, Hawaii, Colorado, Japan and Ireland.  Some students spent time looking at Germany, Sweden and Denmark since we are currently reading the novel Number the Stars.  There was a student who figured out how to look at the topography of the oceans.

I had read that there is no need to spend class time teaching (somewhat pre-vetted apps) to students because they will quickly learn what they need to know and then teach each other; that was definitely the case with Google Earth.  The class quickly figured out who the experts were (there were many) and students went to the student experts for help.  I was not the teacher, but more of an educational consultant.  I got to spend my time answering questions about how a student could calculate the distance between Germany and Denmark, how to find the spelling of a city in Ireland, or how to learn more about deep ocean trenches.  It was clear after 20 minutes that there was much, much more that we could do with Google Earth, we had only started to touch the possibilities.  Students were finding topics that interested them and things that they wanted to find out more about out. Maybe we can do more of this at school, and maybe they can do more of it at home.  We shall see!

The students received no instruction from me. In fact, I had only downloaded Google Earth using Apple Configurator the night before, so didn't know any more than they did about it.

The students quickly helped each other to find the app and learn how to use it.

The first thing most of them did was find their current home, then former homes.  For some this was easy, for some it was more difficult.  Some had to find landmarks, such as the school, and then find the way they would walk or drive from there.

Here is a picture of the states map on the blacktop at the back of our school.

Then students started to look for places of historical importance, like the White House.

This student found places in Ireland where he had been on vacation.

Virtual Manipulatives - a real winner

For our Fractions Unit, we have been using an app called Virtual Manipulatives! and it's free.  Here are a few screen shots to show what we've been doing in class recently. 

Students can compare fraction strips to find equivalent fractions.  When they want to start over, they press the blue "new" button at the top and the fraction pieces are re-shelved in the tray.

Students can manipulate fractions to add and subtract fractions.  Then can use the whiteboard feature of the app to do the  problem on the whiteboard as well.  The eraser to the far right of the tool bar acts as an "undo" button.

Manipulatives aren't new to the math classroom, but our classroom sets have only 10 tenths, 8 eighths etc, which made working with mixed numbers tricky.  It was hard for students to model 1 3/4 plus 4 1/4, for example.   With the app, students can keep adding as many ones, eighths, tenths as they need.  They aren't limited to the amounts in the tray.

Another big plus with the Virtual Manipulatives app is that the manipulatives are virtual. There are no tiny bits of paper or plastic to clean up after a lesson and there are no incomplete sets of manipulatives with only 8 ninths or 5 sixths in them.

The greatest thing about this app though is something I did not anticipate.  It was hearing, "Can I stay in at lunch and help the students who were at instrumental music?"  and "Wow, can we stay in and do more math during lunch?"

On the day we first used Virtual Manipulatives, several students missed the part of the lesson when we used the app because they had an instrumental music lesson.  When they returned, it was time for lunch.  One of the iTech helpers for the week asked if he could stay in at lunch and tutor the students on using the app.  All of the students who had been out of the classroom happily agreed to stay in.  They not only learned how to use the app (which was easy), but they also caught up on the lesson content.  The iTech helper did all the instruction without any input from me.  He answered questions about the app and about the lesson.  Soon everyone was working together to solve the sample problems.  Everyone was caught up and ready to go the next day.

Woo Hoo -- Day 1 with the iPads

Oh yeah!

 

Do you see the empty cart and the completed iPad check out list?

In October, we finally got to use the iPads we’ve been talking about piloting since the beginning of the school year.  Most of the delays in our pilot were good ones --  we went from waiting for a few iPads to be ordered and delivered, to waiting for our whole class set, and then for our cart, and then for our covers, but still, we were starting to feel like we’d been waiting to get started for a very long time.

The excitement in the room was palpable when our fifth graders found out the time had come to use the iPads and that only increased my anxiety.  I had hoped that we would be able to afford stout cases, such as the OtterBox Defender, but they just weren’t in the budget.  I am putting my trust in these students to be very careful using these iPads with much less robust cases.  The students were very respectful as we went over the shortened version of the iPad rules they had agreed to in the iPad Use Agreement signed by each student and their parents:

                                                  This is the short version of the rules

Before the students came and got their iPads, they also learned about the iPad cart procedure.   The cart is a great improvement over managing the iPads individually, but it takes some management to get 29 iPads checked out and distributed to the students.  For now, I want a written record of how often we actually use them.  We may find a better way as the pilot progresses.  The students were very careful as they disconnected the power cords and took their iPads back to their desks:

                                                      The students were very cautious

On this first day, our goal was to have the students start to learn to use the iPad tools that they will be using when they start creating content.  The students started taking photos with both the document camera and the face camera. (Thanks to Suzy Brooks for the naming convention.)  They could take as many photos as they wanted, but could only keep two photos of their silent reading book and two photos of their face on their iPad.  Hopefully, the students will learn from the beginning that they need to keep track of what they are storing on their iPads.  As you can see, taking the pictures was lots of fun.

                                                Learning how to use the iPad cameras

Once the students were proficient with iPad photography, they were able to use GeoMasterUSA (free) to practice their states, which is very timely since they have their 50 states test this week.  They were also able to practice their math skills using My Math App (free).  As you can see from the photos, every child was fully engaged in practicing their basic skills with these apps.

                                                      Social Studies and Math Apps

None of us were ready to put the iPads up when it was time to pack up and go home.  The students were asking, “Can we stay after school?”  “Can we do more math tomorrow?”  “ Can I play that app again?”   I know they won’t want to keep practicing basic skills forever, even with these apps, but the honeymoon sure is nice!