app share

Today's app:

• Faces iMake

My students flipped out when I showed them this app!  They love Hanoch Piven's books, so they were all about this app before they even got their hands on it.  I've always thought making Pivenesque mixed media representations of student writing would be fun.  This app proves that to be true! 

We've used the app in several ways...
We first modeled creations after Piven's My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks.  Students chose a family member, spent time looking through the app's objects, & wrote similes combining the two. 
Students really couldn't get enough of this app & wanted to also create self-portraits. 
We've used this for the past several days & it is already a class favorite.  I'm thinking it will also be fun to use the app to create favorite book characters.

app share

I feel extremely blessed to have an iPad for every student in my classroom.  Talk about motivation!!  I've been keeping a list of all that we've been doing & have decided to post about a different activity everyday this week instead of lumping them all into one huge post. 

 

Today's apps:

• Instant Poetry
• Pictureka HD (iPad version... which was on sale last week... score!)

I combined these 2 apps to make a word wall activity.  Instant Poetry has several features that immediately interested me.  Students are able to choose their own background, input their own word choices (in addition to default word groups), & change the color & size of the words. 

First, students opened the Pictureka app and took a screenshot of a game board.  Next, they chose that screenshot as the background in Instant Poetry.  Once the Pictureka background was set students searched the screen for an image that matched one of their 15 word wall words.  They added the word, then placed it on the corresponding image.  I gave them time to get started, then walked around & asked them to explain their reasoning.  They LOVED it!  I've used the mini travel versions of Pictureka in this same way, but the apps made it spectacular.

glorious dev"I"ces

I spent a little bit of time this summer exploring my new iPads & thinking up ways to use them in my class.  Well, I guess saying a little bit of time everyday this summer would be more accurate!  One of my top interests was publishing.  I felt the iPad would really motivate my reluctant writers.  My first thoughts of publishing started circling in my brain after Tony Keefer's session on digital literacy at the Dublin Literacy Conference in February, before I even had iPads.  One tool his students use for publishing is Keynote.  For our first iPad project (after a couple of pure exploring sessions) I decided on a "Welcome to our Room" presentation.  I asked them to take 5 pictures that represented something we had done during the first weeks of school.  I loved seeing what they chose to capture!  We have the basic work done & will finish up the "sparkle" tomorrow.

Some students preferred to prop the iPad up on one of the docking stations while creating.

Some preferred the wireless keyboard instead of the on-screen keyboard.

Reader's notebook cover. Loved that they captured those images!

You Wouldn't Want to Be books & Graphic Library (some of their faves).

"Read to Self" guidelines.