The minds of our youngest learners are brimming with creativity and imagination, but it can be difficult for teachers to facilitate an environment that stimulates this creative energy. The iPad serves as a powerful tool for teachers and students to create a dynamic and rich learning environment while at the same time building a living document of their classroom experience that they can share with the school community and with the entire world. My presentation focuses on how teachers can use the iPad to channel students’ creativity in order to push the boundaries of creative thinking within each individual student as well as to extend the footprint of the classroom beyond the classroom walls.
1. In the world of iPad apps…it can be overwhelming, for me it’s like being a kid in a candy store
2. Making choices isn’t easy!
3. So where do I start?
For me, the journey usually begins with Twitter & my PLN
The people I follow have always given me inspiration & ideas for great tech integration if you’re not on Twitter join NOW
*animate* STILL, the world of Twitter can also feel like information overload
To trim away that excess noise and get to the stuff you’re really interested in
Do a little research and start following #hashtags
…I would highly recommend…
Meet every other Tuesday at 6:30pm SG/HK time
Next chat is this coming Tues on Blogging
We’ve expanded and have participants who teach middle school, upper elem…check us out!
When choosing apps to use there are a few key ideas and goals I often have that help me decide whether or not it is worthwhile.
I’m going to go through these with you today and share some examples with you. Hopefully there will be a few things you can take back with you to your setting.
One of the greatest things that technology has done for our youngest students is allow them to have an audience beyond their school and family.
Providing students with a VOICE and an awareness that they can share beyond their classroom walls is very powerful.
Now that many schools are blogging, of course, one of the best apps to provide little ones with a global audience is Easy blog Jr or Easy Blogger Jr.!
Who here is in a PYP or inquiry-based setting? Forget your action board, your blog is your action board! Explain…
Another example of student initiated action…they chose to create lego snails and explain the parts of the snail they had been learning about.
Another way to give your kids a global audience is to sign up for global ed projects. #MysterySkype and Skype classroom, Globalclassroom has quite a few too.
A bit of self promotion here: Traveling Teddy Bears
From 7 classes we now have 50 classes in 23 countries worldwide involved. Special thanks to Easy blog Jr for sponsoring us!
To learn more you can visit travelingteddybear.com and we’ll be opening up signups for next school year in August 2015!
Technology is opening up our classrooms to the world in more ways than one. Global ed projects are great, but they are still projects and they are finite.
I went to talk with Silvia Tolisano and she made a very interesting point: that it is important to create a global mindset in our classrooms by embedding these concepts into our daily routines.
Like how I used Easy blog Jr. to allow students to know they could publish to the world. I also had a class instagram account…
A twitter helper of the week
A google maps helper
A blog comment checker
Any other examples of how you encourage the growth of a global mindset in your classroom?
Moving on…another reason why I love iPads in early childhood is because it allows young children who aren’t reading or writing yet to *Animate* Show their learning.
So when choosing apps, this is probably one of the most common reasons I will use it in the classroom.
For instance, Draw and Tell by Duck Duck Moose is a wonderful early childhood app with a variety of draw tools and stickers plus an easy record button that counts the child down 3, 2, 1, go!
Share phonics example & princess/superhero versions
Duck Duck Moose has also come up with Chatterpix
Explain examples
ThingLink is a wonderful app that allows you to add interactive hotspots to a still image. In this case they are all videos but text can be added, a link, or another image.
Explain story of sand and field trip. Mention Character example in first grade.
Beyond just showing their learning and understanding, the iPad can help us to *Animate* capture their thinking and show us things that we would not have seen otherwise unless you were right next to them. It also later can act as an assessment or documentation. Take a look at these examples…
Last year I had my kindergarten class measure the surface area of objects around the classroom with non-standard units of measurement. They recorded their process in partnerships and showed how they figured out the area together. Here is the first example…now take a look at this next example
Play video…The first group counted in ones (fine) but this child chose to count in 5’s. I wouldn’t have gotten to see this process if it wasn’t documented this way. Another thing that I got to notice by using whiteboard apps is exactly how my students were forming numbers and letters.
Explain task
Involvement of digital citizenship and creative commons
Visual literacy, vocabulary, review
Commenting on each others
There are then those times when the iPad becomes an essential tool within learning.
Or when you need that extra something for those kids that need an extra push
So one of my favorite ways to think about iPad apps is *ANIMATE* how can this help extend and stretch thinking?
In this project I used Doodlecast pro as a researching tool to inquire into the concept of CHANGE. Explain.
At the end: draw record observations for each day then draw conclusions. This child chose to study the sky and clouds.
This was a social studies project on timelines
Use of Skype to document and compare timelines in real time.
integration of shared writing
Could we have just walked over? explain.
Tell about this: story prompt or speaking prompt tool
Free version: 1 author and limited access to pre made prompts that come with the app
Full version: Multiple authors (add your class) and access to all the prompts from the app
Write about: for older kids who do written responses (save to camera roll)
Beginning of the year, learning school rules.
PYP/inquiry: have kids create prompts and then leave it in a center for other students to respond to. Research tool.
EAL team looking into using it for oral assessment collecting responses from multiple students on one prompt.
Interactive play time!
You have to have a prompt created AND a response to it to get a code!
Moving on. The iPad is a great tool for collaboration. Especially in classroms that aren’t 1:1, working together on one ipad fosters so many skills.
One of my favorite ways to use the iPad collaboratively is stop motion animation.
This particular project we used iMotionHd
Past tense.
Show action, show the word, show time passing and then the word in past tense.
When apps make learning interactive, that is always a plus. Especially in early childhood where kids still need that element of hands on.
For this purpose Augmented reality can be an interesting tool to use.
Check how many are familiar with Aurasma
most popoular AR tool that’s been integrated into the classroom
explain this example
App smashing Chatterpix as an overlay to make a photograph talk
Explain her observation of these two types of paper.
New tool coming: BLIPPAR (education soft launch in Jan of 2015)
Drag and drop interface
Peel away function
Chroma Key
Animated buttons
lots of opportunity for appsmashing & design thinking
Explain interface.
Watch out for my blog post in January when they launch their product for educators!
Yes, the iPad is great in many ways for learning, but sometimes, it’s important to just have fun too! Here are a couple ways I’ve used the iPad that is a bit more driven by the fun factor!
Avatars: doodle buddy, explain everything, adobe ideas
photo, trace, remove photo or change background to white
if you don’t believe kids can do this check out these kindergarten and first grade examples. *animate*
