Using the camera to document

This year I am teaching Kindergarten! It is a new adventure and I am learning how to use the iPad effectively to play-to-learn with my students.

Everyday we spend time outside. We are currently learning about patterns. We decided to take our iPads outside and work together to document patterns we created using nature. Below you can see the patterns students made. Students used the iPad to take a photo of the pattern they created with their partner. I used the Pic Collage app to put the photos all together to be displayed below. We also used them to discuss patterning once we were back inside the classroom. The Pic Collage app is one of my favorites to use to document because it allows you to put a bunch of photos together and add text very easily. Photo creations are then saved to the camera roll.

Having the visuals of things we do in our day make conversations about them more effective. It helps to provide a point of reference for students. We enjoy smiling and laughing as we discuss the things we have done together.

Patterns

Documenting

 

 

Dropbox and Workflow

Yesterday my class took a field trip to a local park/beach for an end of the year celebration. Today, they wanted to blog about the trip. I started off by finding some online images of the park. I dragged and dropped them into my Dropbox folder. I guess I should back-up a little bit....We have 25 shared school iPads. We a school dropbox account that all the teachers have access to. I created a division folder for everyone in the school in addition to our non-enrolling teachers (LAC, ELL, Music, Library). In my class folder I created another folder for every student and then a few other folder for things like images. So to continue I searched for images online and then dragged and dropped them into my images folder in my dropbox class folder. Then working in partners, the students opened the image of their choice and saved it to the camera roll. Once in the camera roll they logged on to Kidblog and wrote a blog entry about our class trip and added the image from the camera roll.

        
School Dropbox account with all folders for different divisions and teachers

My class folder

My images folder

This is how you save to the camera for use in other applications such as Kidblog

Ava's blog about Cates Park

Kate's blog about Cates Park

Sarita's blog about Cates Park

Garbriel's blog about Cates Park

Haiku Deck and Butterflies

I had a small group of students play with this visually stunning app to create a little presentation on butterflies. Three students worked together and searched through the images on the app for their presentation. Haiku Deck is a great app for visual literacy. The app contains a bank of amazing photographs. It also has a great website resource for educators and anyone wanting to use the program. Once complete, presentations can be shared on the web for others to see.

Check our the presentation my students created! Les papillons par Ava, Rowan et Alyssa

My Story and the Life Cycle of the Butterfly

I have had an amazing student teacher these last few months so I have not been teaching as much. Therefore, I have not updated this blog for awhile.....

We have butterflies in our classroom (like to many of our primary friends) and we are observing the life cycle. Students wanted to make a book using My Story to show the life cycle. They all chose to draw the pictures themselves but they could have taken photos or used ones found on the web. Students worked together with a partner to illustrate, write and record the life cycle of the butterfly (in French). Below I have linked in a few examples (from their blogs). Once they were complete they posted them on their blog site on Kidblog. It was the first time students posted a link rather than a picture with their work. I also had students send them to their Evernote notebook so I could keep a copy in their eportfolio.

Le cycle de vie du papillon Par Ava et Alyssa

Le cycle de vie du papillon Par Faith, Stella et Lola

Le cycle de vie du papillon Par Jackson et Luca

Le cycle de vie du papillon Par Sarita et Braeden

These are two screenshots of the whole story but the writing is not visible under this setting in the app. Follow the links above to view their stories.

Pic Collage and Initial letter sound

Today we decided to use iPads to practice and reinforce the different things we could think of that started with a specific letter. First, I put students in groups of two. Then, I assigned each group a different letter of the alphabet. Students walked around the class finding different objects and toys that started with their letter. Once complete, students sent the collage to Evernote and then posted them to Kidblog.

MoMa Art Lab and Kidblog

 I have not posted for a long long time.....sorry.

For the last few months my students have been using Kidblog. They each have their own blog on our class blog. Everytime we use the iPads to create something they post it to their blog on kidblog. Parents, grandparents and friends can view the blogs and leave comments. The best part about kidblog is I as the teacher have all the control. Every post and every comment must be approved by me before it can be viewed. Kidblog is such an easy blogging site that my grade ones can use it independently!

Today we used the MoMa Art lab app to have some creative time. It was the first time I had used this app with my whole class. I put the music on and allowed students to make a picture of their choice using this app. During the lesson, we stopped a few times to do a gallery walk and see what classmates were creating. I also asked students to mirror to the screen at the front to show others what they were doing while everyone was working.

Once complete, students saved the picture to the camera roll and emailed it to my Evernote and then posted on their blog. You can check out the blog to see examples of the picture students created.

Pic Collage

As a class we get together on a weekly basis with our 'big buddies' (grade 7 students). We work together on a variety of projects from things like reading together, to more complicated projects such as building towers out of recycled materials.

My students love to work with their big buddies. They look up to them and enjoy saying hi to them outside the classroom. I could go on and on about the positive aspects of this relationship and how it is building community within our school but I will move on to the project :)

Recently, we made a collage using the app Pic Collage. Students took photos, and drew pictures, and added text to create an 'all about us' collage. Below you can see a few samples with the faces blurred out.

I have also used this app to share with parents a snapshot of what we are doing at school. You know the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words", well it takes me about five minutes to take some photos of students at work and then create a Pic Collage that can be sent home to parents as your class newsletter. Below are two samples. One is from our 100 day celebrations and the other is a daily update as we build roller coasters.

I have also seen this app used to demonstrate a number of things. You could:

• document patterns they seek in the classroom
• show the same number represented a number of ways
• show the steps they took to build something
• take photos of things that start with the letter _ 
• take photos of things that rhyme
• there are endless possibilities.......

Student created surveys and Screen Chomp

I have been reading some amazing ideas on twitter and pinterest on the use of iPads and math. My students are currently learning about data collection. We have been making all sorts of surveys, learning the different ways to collect the information, and comparing the results.

Today I told the students they would create a survey with a partner using Screen Chomp. Screen Chomp is an interactive whiteboard type app. There are a ton of great apps like this one but I find this one very user friendly for my grade ones. We can also email the files to our Evernote eportfolios when we are done to be viewed later.

Students created a question, a diagram to collect information and then recorded themselves and the information they learned.

Here is a screen chomp video -Remember it is in French :)

The Camera and Magnetic Poetry

Today I decided to do one of my favourite writing activities. I call it 'magnetic poetry'. Do you remember those magnetic poetry kits you could buy for your refrigerator? I remember fondly writing very creative verses on my dormitory fridge in university. Anyways, my 'magnetic poetry' lesson is a play on this.



On a piece of paper I have a chart that contains a number of simple sentence starters. Students use these and the blank pages included to create a few sentences on their desk. This allows for the students who struggle with putting pen to paper an easier way to get their ideas down.
I gave students a chart full of different sentence starters and connecting words that they are familiar with. Then I encouraged them to 'write' three interesting sentences. Once they were happy they read them to a friend and took a photo with the camera app. Once the photo was taken they emailed it to their Evernote account.

Popplet and Bears

We are at the end of our unit studying bears. Over the last few days the students have been working in pairs to demonstrate their knowledge on a specific bear. We used one of our favourite apps, Popplet, to create mind maps that contained images, pictures, and words. Below are some examples of the Popplets my grade ones created.

For the most part I am happy with what we did; however, there are a few things I would do differently. I began by leaving the activity very open-ended. I encouraged students to pick a bear and then to use all the different resources in the classroom to add all the things they knew/we had learned about that particular bear. As my students are in grade one and French immersion, they were having trouble writing the words to go with the photos and pictures they had drawn or taken. This made it difficult to interpret the Popplets.

After the initial phase was complete we all sat down together and discussed the Popplets and decided things we liked and things that we needed to revise a bit. The students decided that they needed to add some words to explain briefly the pictures and they also decided on a list of criteria that should be included in their Popplet like; what they eat, where they live, habits during different seasons, information about hibernation, their appearance, etc... After these revisions the Popplets provided better evidence of learning. As you view the Popplets please keep in mind that they do still require the voice of the student creator to explain their connections and some of their images. This oral language component is so essential for students to develop-especially in a French immersion classroom :)

Puppet Pals and Oral Language practice

Today we decided to practice our oral French and record simple conversations. I created a conversation to show as a sample. It included things like; Hi, how are you? I am fine thanks and you? What is your favourite thing to play with etc etc... (in French). Then I let students be creative and choose their characters, setting, and props. This inspired them to have some very unique and creative conversations. I gave them about 20 minutes to create, record, and save their conversations. Then we all came back together and shared our recordings using Air Server. Each student took a turn to mirror their iPad. This app seems to have a glitch. The mirroring seems to turn off when you open a show, but when you start to play it the iPad will mirror once again. We got in the habit of playing each show twice. Once students viewed what their classmates had created they got even more ideas. They are pretty excited and want to try this again soon. I wish this app could export to Evernote. I don't want to use YouTube or Facebook to post our videos at this point in time....