O'Neill Elementary's 3rd Grade Reading class, under the direction of Mrs. Julie Pistulka along with help from Katie Morrow, ESU 8, recently published their latest version of an annual community history research project. This year, the creative student authors compiled and shared their information in the form of an alphabet book.
Using a Pages template, each "letter" consists of 3 pages:
1) a stanza of poetry and photo gallery on the topic
2) written report from student research
3) student-created artwork
template created in Pages and distributed to student iPads via Apple Classroom
Students added audio narration for all the text with the newest feature of Pages books - Audio Recordings.
Last week, I was delighted to find this book delivered in my mailbox from Amazon.
"If I Were A Wizard" (hardback) by Paul Hamilton
At first glance, it looks like another delightful children's book, doesn't it? In actuality, "If I Were a Wizard" by Paul Hamilton teaches readers young and old all about computational thinking and coding concepts. And it does this without intimidating terminology (and yet provides connections at the end).
When I talked with Paul this July at the 2018 Apple Distinguished Educator Institute, I was amazed by his humility. It struck a chord with me when he mentioned that humans are drawn to story, but true connections are made via characters. Thus he created Hazel. And Hazel is more than a beautiful mouse on the pages of the book or the digital swipes in iBooks. Hazel is a relatable comrade for all those who get to know her. Students can "meet" Hazel and experience her world through Augmented Reality with the free app Wizard AR. While exploring this magical world, teachers like Katie Gardner can capitalize on creative writing opportunities. Or simply enjoy an original title track performed by a beautiful young vocal wizard. Teachers can build closer relationships with Hazel by visiting the wizardcodingbook.com website and downloading the numerous free educational resources-- writing, math, art, and even more beyond just coding. It is clear to see that Paul has created more than just a coding book!
It is hard to debate the value in teaching coding concepts in today's primary classrooms. With "If I Were a Wizard" young children of all ages and backgrounds will be inspired to consider today's reality-- that they, too, can code. And I will continue to be inspired by the author's dedication to education that matters.
Building Word Wizards with Creation Apps (NETA 2018)
Use the power of iPad to transform students into vocabulary wizards in the K-12 classroom. Learn about 10 creation apps that will move your students from consumers to creators and empower them to expand their word wizard skills. Walk away with ideas and apps to use immediately in your classroom. Bring your iPad and create some ‘magic’ along with us.
Don't abandon printed projects... just enhance them with technology integration!
This was a driving force in a recent project I had the honor of working on with the West Holt 4th grade classes. Mrs. Shirley Rossman wanted to create a class book to demonstrate their collective knowledge of Nebraska history. And the 150th anniversary of Nebraska's statehood was the perfect backdrop.
Excitingly, she reached out to me looking for ways to infuse digital media into the printed, bound book that she envisioned as a class product. We collaborated to design an augmented reality experience for the reader, where each student's two-page spread could be brought to life with AR.
This was our process:
1. Text development
Students selected their Nebraska topics, researched them, and wrote their text narrative for their page. The pages of the book were mapped out on large classroom posters. To preserve the authentic student-authored look and feel, Mrs. Rossman had each student hand write their text onto one of the page templates to go to the Schoolmate Publishing Company that she had selected to produce the class book.
2. Create trigger images
Students created original artwork to accompany each page of text, again drawing by hand on the book template pages. I used the iPad to take a quick photo of each student's page of artwork so that I could designate each one as a trigger image for the augmented reality we planned to build in.
*Side Note: I applaud the originality and creativity of the students' hand-drawn images. While it would have been easy to find images online or even create them digitally, the authenticity of these students' illustrations makes the book extra special.
3. Create media assets
Each student had the opportunity to create at least one media asset to accentuate their topic. We talked about bringing their research "to life" and trying to enhance the content in a creative, not simply redundant way. This was truly where student choice and voice could shine. App which I demonstrated as suggestions to choose from included:
Chatterpix
Tellagami
Toontastic/Toontastic 3D
Puppet Pals 1&2
WordFoto
iMovie
DoInk Greenscreen
Nearly every app was new to the students but the definitely jumped in and learned quickly! Some student seven created multiple assets that could be selected when readers scanned their image. Mrs. Rossman did a wonderful job of coordinating additional parent volunteers, para professionals' help, and simply workspace on the days we reserved for media production.
We did post all the video assets on a YouTube playlist, just as a secondary way to showcase the students' work and creativity.
4. Blipp-building with Blippar
While Mrs. Rossman sent away the physical pages of the book to be printed and bound, I began working to develop the augmented reality interface.
I selected Blippar as our AR platform because of its reputation with education, in addition to its free price. Teachers can sign up for the Blipp-builder dashboard and create unlimited "blimps" for their classroom, completely for free. Blippar, the app which readers will use to 'scan' the pages, is free as well, and available from both the iTunes and Google Play Store.
While the blimps created with an educational account aren't "public" they can easily be viewed with a simply "campaign code." This is a 5 digit number that users enters into the settings of the app prior to scanning. We put these directions as the pregame page in our book:
The Blippar dashboard asks you to first name your campaign: West Holt 4th Grade NE History Book and then create a blipp for each student by uploading their trigger image.
To add to the interaction, you have several options. The student's media asset can be displayed on initial startup. Or you can add a "button" for the user to tap to initiate the media asset. Sometimes I used generic buttons from the Blippar library, but often I used a custom logo that I created for the project and uploaded to the Blippar library.
Various actions can be accommodated on each tap. Ones we primarily used included:
play video (either uploaded directly to Blippar or linked online)
view image gallery
go to URL
open PDF
Each blipp needs to be saved and published individually, but all can be accessed with the one campaign code in the app.
It seems there is a world of untapped potential to blips-building and I have a feeling that we only scratched the surface with this project!
2017 Music Teachers Collaboration Day was held at ESU 8 on Monday, February 13, 2017. Some key takeaways may be beneficial to share beyond this local group.
1) Blended Learning : Station-Rotation model
Participants learned through a station-rotation blended learning experience.
2) Movement + Music : Inspiring Music Educator Kristin Lukow
We connected via Zoom with +Kristin Lukow from Adams Central. She inspired us with her energy and ideas for incorporating movement and multiple learning modalities into her music classroom. We all tried "Bouncing to the Beat" of one her elementary student routines.
Two great events at ESU 8 schools were held this week. As we visited with teachers there, they were looking for ways to better integrate iPads in their elementary classrooms. The following site of resources was a collective effort from the ESU 8 team to share our ideas with our schools.
Learning about story arc and then applying each story element to our own writing.
This was the goal for a recent technology-infused creative writing lesson with 4th graders. This lesson is simple to replicate and adapt to a variety of educational purposes. Here is how we worked through the process:
Introduce the topic of a "dream shoe" to the students. Allow students to design their own sneaker using the printable from Quivervision. *Disclaimer: The printable and the Quiver app are both free. But in order to scan the shoe, you have buy an in-app purchase of $2.99 to unlock the Quiver Vol. 1 set. Other printables from Quivervision that ARE free would work just as well, including "Dot Day" to accompany the Peter Reynolds' book The Dot.
3. Use the Quiver app to scan student shoe creations and watch them come to life.
4. Project the Toontastic app for the class to see and use the introductory media in the app to learn about story elements and the story arc.
5. Discuss the story arc/story elements that exist in "Those Shoes." Optional: Students could use these planning pages to reinforce discussion.
6. Challenge students to use their own creative ideas to come up with a setting for their shoe, a character name, a conflict, a challenge(rising action), a climax, and a resolution/solution.These are meant to be short shoe adventures, so encourage brevity!
7. Next, using their story elements plan, students draft their shoe story on the drafting pages.
8. Now students create their shoe "character" and their scene backgrounds in the ToonTastic app in order to bring their adventure to life. Students can create their shoe and or setting(s) by:
Taking an iPad photo of their coloring page
Drawing a shoe with the built-in drawing tools in Toontastic
Use a character template in Toontastic and add features (a car can be surprisingly similar to a shoe!)
9. Students should add an audio recording from their story draft pages at each stage of the story arc. Adding narration is what truly brings the story to life! Also possible is the choice of adding background music as well.
10. To complete the project, students save the finished Shoe Stories to the camera roll. They can either Airplay the final product for the whole class to view, Airdrop to a teacher's iPad, or share in a gallery-type format where students rotate around to watch each other's stories.
It was quite the celebration at the Norfolk Public Schools Technology Center last Tuesday, April 26, 2016.The group that gathered celebrated a final “Tech Tuesday” session for the current school year. They celebrated NPS’s own Lisa P., and all her service to the district and beyond. They celebrated new staff, eager to join the team. And most importantly, they celebrated a successful NETA Conference and the technology integration ideas that everyone who attended brought back to share with the group.
The following are a few of the highlights:
Quizlet Live
This brand-new formative assessment classroom game works with any current quizlet set of at least 12 unique terms and at least 6 students with devices. https://quizlet.com/help/how-to-use-quizlet-live
*The really cool thing about Quizlet Live is the collaboration that it fosters. Each student sees unique answer choices on his/her device; therefore teamwork is required to find the correct answer together.
Add creative filters, video effects, and the oh-so-popular “Face Swap” to your 30 second videos.To “hack” the 30 second time limit, simply create multiple videos, save to camera roll, and combine in iMovie app.
QR codes continue to have numerous applications in educational settings.
The group expressed a liking to qrstuff.com, specifically in the formatting capabilities of the code itself. Also shared was a site to create multiple QR codes (up to 100 at once) in a batch creation using QRExplore.com
The group was reminded of a great online collaborative tool that has been around for awhile known as Padlet. http://padlet.comFormally named WallWisher, the teacher creates the “bulletin board” and shares the link with anyone who wishes to contribute. There is no need for learners to sign in, simply double click on the board and add their note, complete with URL or image, if they desire.
Holograms
The group discussed using the Keynote app for student-created “hologram” videos. See an explanation here: https://slate.adobe.com/cp/JFqt5/
Also suggested was a free app called Holapex Hologram Video Creator
Recently I have had a few teachers ask about how to use their iPad to control their SMART Board. The desire to be able to interact with SMART Notebook lessons while being mobile is with merit. If a teacher simply uses Airplay to project their iPad screen through their project, then they aren't able to take advantage of the interactive features of the SMART Board... namely in SMART Notebook lessons. So here is one possible solution:
Use the Splashtop Remote to display everything from your laptop, but control from your iPad. It is a free setup as long as your iPad and your laptop are on the same local network (in other words, both are at school, rather than one at home and one at school, etc.) Here is what you should do:
You should get an email alert that your splash top account is being accessed by a new device.
3) Back on your iPad: you should see a connection to your laptop on the main screen of the Splashtop app.
If for some reason it has a satellite icon on it, that means that both devices aren’t signed in to the same network. Once they are, you should see a connection without a satellite icon. Click on that and wait a minute or so. Now you should be able to tap on your iPad and have it control all your “clicks” on your Mac. So anything in SMART Notebook will work just like you are physically standing at your SMART Board, but you can walk around the room.
An alternative is to buy the SMART Notebook app for iPad. It is currently $5.99 in the App Store. But then you are loading your Notebook files into it, and I’m unsure as to whether everything converts perfectly or not. I’d try the Splashtop setup and please let me know if it works or not.
