They Will Want You to Share Their Videos

Check out this new awesome app called YouTube Capture.  It allows you to shoot video directly from your iPhone or iPad and upload directly to YouTube.

✓ Easy, fast recording
✓ Touch up videos with color correction, stabilization, trimming, and music tracks
✓ Upload to YouTube, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously

Teachers Will Want an Organized System for Using the iPad

In the next few weeks, iPad carts are arriving in our K-2 classrooms.  As a desktop replacement, each K-2 classroom will be receiving 5 additional iPads in their classroom.  Today's post focuses on how to manage a collection of iPads.  Please check out this Pinterest board with several ideas for managing the iPads themselves and organizing the spaces where children are using them.

As you are exploring, we would love to hear from you.   What classroom procedures and routines are you putting in place to make your iPad journey successful?  Be sure to add comments here!

They Will Want to Explain The Steps in a Math Problem

Students in Mrs. Phillips's class at Concord used the Educreations app this week to explain how to solve double digit multiplication problems. Check out this example.

They Will Want to Build Words during Guided Reading Centers

Check out these students in Mrs. Porte's 1st Grade Class. This is the beginning of their guided reading lesson. The teacher is working with this small reading group and the focus of the lesson is on making words focusing on the beginning and ending sounds. She had one iPad and the 2 students were working together to build words. As you can see in the video, one student added the beginning letter and the other added the ending letter.

After this activity on the iPad, they were asked to create a sentence on sticky notes that would reinforce the sounds they worked on with the app. They partner checked each other's sentences to look for capitals, punctuation, and spelling. Here is a sample of what the students would see.

If you are interested in testing apps out, please feel free to submit your reviews of various apps here.

They Will Want to Use it for Digital Storytelling

Today Kennerly teachers spent their Professional Development time learning about Digital Storytelling using the iPad.  Here are some of the apps they explored and some sample projects they created.

Storyboard -  It is best practice to start with a plan before having the kids jump into the app.  Use this template to plan the story prior to recording.

Educreations - Teach what you know.  Learn what you don't.  This app allows you to create and share amazing video lessons from your iPad.

***Download the app here.***
Create a free account to make the uploading of your projects a snap.




Sample Creations:
Lewis and Clark
The Water Cycle
Character Development

Screenchomp - (scroll down the page a bit) An app that lets you create bite-sized video nuggets everyone can learn from.

***Download the app here.***






After Recording:

• The video will be sent to the ScreenChomp cloud
• Click the Share button on the bottom of the screen
• Email or copy the link
• Add to your blog or facebook page

Sample Creations:
Digital Kindergarten

Puppet Pals - create your own unique shows with animation and audio in real time!

***Download the app here.***




After Recording:

• Save and add a title.
• View the video.
• Export the video.
• The video will be in your camera roll on the iPad.
• Email or add to your YouTube account.

Sample Creations:

 Teaching Characters in a Story

Toontastic - Creating cartoons with Toontastic is as easy as putting on a puppet show - simply press the record button and tell your story.  Before you get started take a look at the teacher guide.  This will help you plan how to use the app in your classroom.

***Download the app here.***



After Recording:

• Enter the teacher's email.
• The first time you enter the email it will send you directions to create an account.
• Follow the directions in the email to complete the steps.

Sample Creations:
My ICT Journey

They Will Want to Post to the Classroom Blog

Students in Ms. Teri Keutzer's class at Concord are busy writing for their class blog. Students LOVE composing on the class blog as guest authors for the day.

Click on this link to check out what students Molly and Carrigan have to share about their class happenings.

Did you know you could blog and include pictures directly from your iPad?  First, you would want to create a blogger account at http://www.blogger.com/ if you don't already have one.

Then, you'll want to add the blogger app to your iPad.

Next, just sign in to your account and click the pencil icon to start editing a post.

To add pictures use the icons at the bottom of the post to add pictures from the camera roll or to take pictures right with the iPad.

Writing on the blog provides students with an authentic audience.   Taking pictures of the day's activities encourages students to evaluate the essential skills of the lesson.  

They Will Want to Use the iPad to Listen to Stories

In Mrs. Kaeser's Kindergarten classroom at Kennerly, students are enjoying using the iPad as a listening station. She found this headphone splitter by Belkin which plugs into 1 iPad and allows up to 5 students to listen together.

These students were using the Scholastic app "Storia." First, the teacher downloaded the Storia app on the iPad (there is also an app for the computer) and then received 5 free books to download upon signing in using the Scholastic account email address and password. Additional eBooks can be purchased with bonus points or dollars. To learn more, visit scholastic.com/storiaclubs

Within the app, Storia bookshelves can be personalized for individual or group student reading. The engaging read-alouds help build reading confidence for the youngest readers. In addition to listening to the stories, many of the eBooks contain interactive elements that engage readers with fun learning activities.

These Kindergarten students were working together to read a book and interact with the enrichment activities.

Whether you are working together as a whole class or students are enjoying an eBook on their own during independent reading, the Storia app can work with your PC, iPad, or other Android devices. You can use your same account on up to five different devices at once.

Students Will Create Lessons to Teach Their Friends

In Mrs. Kapodistrias's 5th grade classroom at Crestwood Elementary, students are creating lessons to reteach skills they learned previously in the week.  Their teacher lets them sign up to teach a lesson by putting a sticky note on her desk.  They choose a topic such as antonyms, homophones, etc.  They are then able to use the Educreations app to record their voice and illustrate their lesson.  Here are Abby and Faith to tell you more about how they use the app.


Click here to see a sample Educreations project created by Abby and Faith on how to.

In order to replicate this in your classroom, you will want to create a free account at the Educreations website.  Once the project has been created using the iPad app, you will then be able to share publicly by emailing the link or copying it.  Take this project to the next level by sharing your Educreations on your public portal such as your Schoolwires website, Facebook, or classroom blog.

Sharing the end result helps support student engagement by:

• Providing review for students who are absent.
• Providing an authentic audience.
• Strengthening the home/school connection as parents help with homework.  

Students Will Create Mental Pictures of Their Reading

For today's lesson, we were focusing on visualization.  The goal of the lesson was to have students create a mental picture of what they were reading and then to illustrate what they were visualizing as they read the text.

In their small reading group, I gave each student a different piece of the story Where the Wild Things Are.

They read the text and then used the iPad to draw what they were visualizing while reading.   They used the app Doodle Buddy to draw an illustration to match the assigned part of the text they read.

We were then able to share our illustrations and retell the story to the other members of the reading group.