Thing 12

Wow! I loved this assignment. In fact this might be a two part post for me as well because there are some things that I have explored, but want to be able to use with a class and won't have the opportunity until after break. I spent several hours and days looking go through Karen Bosch's Slidshare. If you have not looked this over and you are using IPADs in your classroom, this is a must view Slideshare. I have more ideas and apps that I know what to do with.

While watching Karen's Slideshare, I previewed all the free apps that I thought would be a good fit with some of the lessons that I do with classes grades K-6. I  first started with the paint and draw apps. Kindergarten is my only scheduled class and I work with them a lot. Since most of them can't write or even recognize their letters at the beginning of the kindergarten year it is hard to get them to do much more technology wise than KidPix on the computers. When I started the year, I was trying to get them on the IPADS more than the computers since they didn't need to login and it was more intuitive. However, the app that I was relying on most was DoodleBuddy and I found that it was not very reliable. I can't always get the entire page to clear fully and lots of time it completely freezes on the students. So, I was very excited to explore some new drawing apps. The two apps that I explored were "Wow Paint" and "Hello Crayons". Both of these were simple and straight forward, but did not include a text option. However, I did explore the "A+ Signature" App that I can use to have them write their name on their work, which I think is pretty basic as far as app smashing goes. Once the students get a little more skilled I could also have them create and draw in "Hello Crayons" or "Wow Paint" and then have them add their work to "PicCollage".  I loved the idea of having them draw a picture in the drawing apps then going to Pic Collage and creating a poem with their drawing or adding information about their field trip. I could see having my Kindergartners draw a picture of an animal they researched on PebbleGo with "Hello Crayons", then going to "PicCollage" and adding a fact that they researched. They could also add a fact using "A+ Signature".

After exploring the Paint and Draw apps, I moved onto the next section of the SlideShare, which was Photo Apps. Wow, there are a lot of cool photo apps! Many are a lot alike, but I tried out some new ones that I wasn't familiar with. Again, I only viewed the free ones. I started with "Orange Camera", which allows you to draw on your pictures. I thought this would be a nice feature if you were doing a science experiment and you wanted to label parts of your experiment (observations, parts of the image of study, steps. etc). Another option on the App is to change the appearance of the image. So it can be seen as black and white, vintage, etc. One of my favorite options is that you can view an image on ruled paper and the image is sketched on the paper in black and white. I thought this could be an excellent way to create story starters. Students could take images and then exchange with a partner and they could use that image to start a story. I also explored "Face Stamp", which I thought could be really fun to use with all of our geography projects that we do throughout the grades. We could create a higher level thinking project where students had to guess where they are sending a letter to, based on clues from that location. The students creating the clues would really need to do some research to prepare the clues and then the students trying to determine where their stamped letter was going to would need to do some research to determine the significance of the clues. The last photo app that I used was "Animoto". I use "Animoto" on the computer all the time and I was excited to know that there was a free app. It was super easy to use and I built a powerful and beautiful presentation of my students having fun at our "Holidays in the Library" after-school program. I was so excited to share it on the library website, the only problem is that it doesn't provide you with html embed code, just a link. That was a little disappointing because it isn't as appealing to have a link on your webpage that takes them off your site. I was able to share it on Twitter though, which is more conducive to having a link. In case anyone is interested in my Animoto, here it is: https://animoto.com/play/eRncllLIrDrrY30dl1LWvQ. One more final note on the sharing options, you are able to download the video if you purchase a monthly or annual membership.

Finally, when it came to the recording Apps, I explored many of the Apps. I was very intrigued by the 30hands app. I could see this app as a multipurpose app. I think it would be very useful for me or any teacher to create  something almost like a screencast to explain how to use different apps on the IPAD. I could also see it as a great tool for students to create short and meaningful presentations on topics within the curriculum. I am definitely, going to challenge myself to use this app with at least one class this year. I also explored ScreenChomp which seems like a great tool for math, but I was struggling with how I might find a use for it in the library. Then I thought, since I am able to add pictures from the photo library I could take a screenshot of the Overdrive website and give troubleshooting tips when students gets stuck on certain steps. Here is my example: http://www.screenchomp.com/t/boIcRPeQy. I have also added it to my website: http://lakegeorgelmc.weebly.com/resources.html.

The last recording App that I played around with was "AudioBoo" and I already have a project lined up with the 6th grade classes using it. The sixth graders are working on literary essays. Once they write their essays they are going to record themselves reading the essay with Audioboo and then they are going to create QR codes that link to their recording. We are then going to post their QR codes in the library so that when students are considering books to read they can listen to the literary essays on specific titles that the students in the 6th grade read and wrote about.

Overall, this was my favorite "thing" that I have completed so far and I will be continually revisiting Karen's slideshare for ideas. I look forward to reading others ideas and being inspired by all of you as well.