As the school year is drawing to a close, lots of student projects are still streaming in. I’ve noticed that many of these projects really have no technology involvement. And that’s OK. Technology should not be used for technology’s sake. If a student built diorama or growing a live plant gets the job done for the content objective, that’s fine. However, what I would like to propose is how we can document this great learning that is taking place with these projects. Sure, pictures can be snapped and stuck in a portfolio binder or made into a quick slideshow to be viewed by the class or even parents who visit during an end of the year sharing day. Putting together a slideshow in iPhoto is fairly simple. Music can be added. Great. But what if you wanted to take it a step further without a whole lot more work? Even get the students involved in capturing their learning? Allowing more student reflection to take place in the process?

Today, I read a blog post on Richard Byrne’s iPad Apps for School about 30hands. This is an app for iPads and Touches that lets you create slideshows quickly and share them easily. What I envision is having students snap pictures of their projects or portfolio items using our iPod Touches and then recording their voices explaining their projects and learning. This app allows the user to make simple drawings as well right in the app. Therefore, diagrams and important points can be made into visuals right in the presentation (usually we have to find another drawing app or hand draw and snap a picture of it to insert). The app also seems to be very forgiving of mistakes. Perfect for younger students! The presentations can be sent to Camera Roll and uploaded to our Dropbox account for easy sharing from a computer/projector set up. These presentations also could be posted and shared on a wiki or blog. All without an account to 30hands. Again, perfect for elementary age students.

Here is a tutorial of the app:

You also can download a similar tutorial to watch right within the app. It even highlights updates to the app.

So something to think about in these last few weeks… The Touches are waiting to help you!

Tellagami came across my radar again last week. And the timing was right. I had a few minutes to download the app on our iPod Touches and within a minute I had created an avatar that appeared to be standing in Abbot School computer lab, dealing with printing issues. (Check him out here.)

OK- not an epic story, I admit, but it made me think of the curriculum integration possibilities…

Luckily, for me, an unsuspecting teacher was across the hall and available to hear my sales pitch. Again, timing is everything. She told me that her students were in the middle of animal research, and we decided to give the app a test run by having the students record a fact or two in the form of a Gami. Students also would choose a background for the avatar as well as make some character and style options. The Gami would be saved to the Photos app on the Touches, and then emailed to me for uploading to a wiki/blog.

Here are the fruits of our experiment.

As you can see, the character options are male or female with a little room for personalization. (Personally, I think having limited choice sometimes is a good thing, and an avatar can be less intimidating than having your own picture or video footage.) Some students chose to use snap a picture of a book as the backdrop while others took a picture of bulletin board in the classroom- simple and easy to do. The app allows for either recording your voice or typing text for the narration. The audio recording only can be 30 seconds while the text maximum is 440 characters. The teacher chose the voice recording option as it would be faster and there would be less editing. (Of course, having the two ways for narration is ideal for meeting different student needs.)

To help things run smoother during our short amount of time dedicated to this endeavor, students were given a planning sheet to write the facts/script and make notes about what the background would be prior to receiving the iPod Touch. Furthermore, a direction sheet to help guide them step-by-step was utilized as they used the app. The app is pretty intuitive; however, to keep students focused and on track especially with the sharing aspect (since the final files had to be in the correct format for our wiki/blog), the sheet was extremely helpful.

The next step is to have students visit the wiki/blog this week to watch and comment. Not only will students have an opportunity to learn a new animal information, but they will be expected to give specific feedback on the presentation. This feedback and the overall experience is setting the students up for our next endeavor: to use the Tellagami app to create a weather forecast. This action will demonstrate their newly acquired knowledge from science class that will be embedded in an overall weather presentation (PowerPoint).

Do you have any ideas of where a Gami could aid your students in telling a short story, explaining facts or even making a public service announcement?

A few months ago, I suggested the idea of using the Scan app on our iPod Touches in a post about QR Codes. In the spirit of sharing and being open, let me tell you what transpired with a QR Code Scavenger Hunt experience in a grade 5 classroom.

First of all, I will be very upfront and tell you that the project did not go the way we had envisioned. I fully admit that there were technical difficulties that could not be resolved in the moment; however, you know something still worked when at the end of the block the classroom teacher has a smile on her face and the students are chatting about the activity – in a good way; not complaining about what didn’t work, but rather what was really cool and engaging about it. I even had a student after school shout out to me as I was heading out the door: ‘Ms. Sanderson, that was such a fun activity today!’ And even more than the fun aspect, the content objective truly was met with this activity. Students thoroughly reviewed for their weather benchmark during the process. The perks: it was done in an active and game-like manner. It didn’t feel like a review to students at all.

This is the gist of what we planned to have happen:

Armed with an iPod Touch, students in teams of two would start at a QR Code somewhere in the school building. They would scan the code and receive a weather question on the Touch’s screen. They would discuss and formulate an answer with their partner, and then use the built-in Notes app to jot down the answer. This answer would be emailed to the teacher from the Touch, and the teacher would respond via email back to the students. If an answer was correct, students would receive a clue to where the next QR Code could be found in the building. If an answer was incorrect, the students would be asked to try again. If after two tries, students were unsuccessful, the answer and the clue to move on to the next QR Code would be given by the teacher. Students would be given a time limit on when they had to be back to the classroom, finished or not.

The classroom teacher during this activity was going to be at “mission control” in the classroom. She would be sitting at her computer fielding the emails and keeping track of student responses. On a spreadsheet, she would note what stations (questions) students had accomplished as well as what content they needed to make sure that they studied more. More adults would be needed, of course, since the students were out and about the school The instructional technology specialist (me) would float around assisting students as needed as well as any available teaching assistant.

To make all this happen, a lot of preparation took place. The classroom teacher created review questions and used the QR Code Generator Tool (from Classtools.net) to turn them into QR Codes. The codes were mounted on construction paper. The classroom teacher also had to choose locations for these codes to be “hidden” throughout the building and then put them in place before the big hunt. Clues to the next QR Code location had to be crafted. To make the hunt more interesting (and to slow students down a little), the clues were designed as riddles. A map of the school had to copied for each pairing of students to help them as they deciphered the clues. The teacher also had to assign partnerships (pairing students of varying abilities together) and write on a “top secret” post-it note for each group where they would be starting. To make the “mission control”task of answering emails easier and faster for the teacher, several electronic files were crafted by the teacher to reference answers and copy & paste clues into the body of the email communications. The teacher made a chart/spreadsheet of the groups and stations to keep track of what questions (QR Code stations) students had completed. Likewise, notes regarding if students had to be given the answer could be recorded. This information would let the teacher as well as the students know what still need to be studied for the benchmark. Finally, the classroom teacher anticipated for some down time as students waited for the email communication. She made sure a weather word search was on each team’s clipboard.

The instructional technology specialist had preparations, too. A direction sheet that explained the order and how to use the various apps to be successful during the hunt was created. Each iPod Touch had the Scan app loaded. Each iPod Touch was checked that its shared Gmail account was functioning. In order for the classroom teacher to know what group and question she was addressing in the email, a system for the subject line was established. A Notes page was set up for each team on the devices. Because the Touch’s share the same Apple ID, the Notes pages are visible on all of the Touches. Having the pages preset would make it less confusing to students and help with the subject line system. Furthermore, the teacher’s name and email was added into Contacts on the devices to make emailing the answer more efficient and accurate. Because there are many new Airports (Wi-Fi spots) in the building with passwords, the iPods were taken out prior to the hunt and made sure that they all at network access. (Directions would be given about how to check and access Wi-Fi on the direction sheet just in case.) In an effort to micromanage, I even closed all other apps running on the devices prior to the Scavenger Hunt, thinking it would be easier for students to double click the Home Button to jump right into the apps they needed.

After all of this work, the teacher and I were very excited to give this little review experiment a try. We even made a back up date in case the weather did not cooperate!

What happened:

On the day of the hunt, the teacher and I did a dry run during a planning period. Materials were put out for easy distribution. When the time came, I gave a 10-15 minute overview of expectations and walked students through how to read the direction sheet. Both of us reminded students about this being a privileged activity (walking around the school on your own), too. And then they were off and running. As I checked in with groups within the first five minutes, they were champs at scanning the codes, finding their Notes page and emailing an answer very quickly to the teacher.

And then it happened, we had a glitch. We discovered that the students could send out emails easily, but retrieving the replies was another story. The Touches were all giving the same error message that the username and password were wrong when the devices looked for new mail. Having the same email account was working against us. Students were not able to hear from the teacher if the answers were correct. Therefore, they couldn’t move forward because even if they were to write the answers down on the back of the word searches, the only way they would know the location for the next QR Code (question) was from the teacher via email. These clues were not anywhere else for them to discover independently. Realizing that the email solution was not a quick fix and not wanting to have the technology impede the purpose of the activity, students who were beginning to collect all around me and the other assisting adults were told that we were going to have to do it another way. Fortunately, some of adults that were floating around had been given a copy of the answers and the clues in case a team was stuck and needed a few hints. Now, students were instructed to check in with these teachers when they had an answer for a station. The assisting teachers would give feedback and read them the clue to move on. I then alerted the classroom teacher who was back at “mission control”. She had noticed that things had been a little quiet after the initial influx of emails. She printed out some more answers and clues sheets and joined us in the hallways. Some students continued to email the answers to the teacher as a record of their attempts, but they understood that they had to get feedback face-to-face.

As stated earlier, in spite of this tech snafu, it all seemed to work out. I asked the teacher which way she preferred: sitting at her computer or floating around as the answer/clue supplier on the hunt. She said that she liked both ways. It was fun to be interacting with the students via email, but it also was nice to talk directly to them. The down side that I could see of having students do a face-to-face check in is that students had to travel around to find a teacher even though we were roaming around to find them. Often they may have noticed another QR Code as they looked for an adult, taking away from some of the mystery of where the codes were hidden.

That night, from lessons learned, I created a unique Gmail account for each of the devices. I also decided that I didn’t need to micromanage the apps. Students found them fine. I, however, still would set up the Notes pages in the future as that seems like it was helpful.

Here is a visual of the Notes app being shared with the Mail app:

This experience is a good example of the good and bad of technology in a lesson. So much preparation and anticipation went into this activity, that if we had not been able to pull it off in the end, it would have felt like a major fail. For this reason, I can understand how teachers can become frustrated and unwilling to try new things when it comes to technology. I have written this post in hopes that others can learn from our trials and tribulations. Please feel free to use our materials and ideas, and any suggestions, feedback or your own recounts are welcome. I’d love to hear how you have made the activity your own and even better!

Thanks, Mrs. P, for being a risk taker and a sharer!

Resources to help:

Weather QR Code Questions and Answers

Weather QR Codes for Printing

Weather QR Code Room Clues

Weather QR Code Scavenger Hunt Directions For Students

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Twenty-three movies that demonstrate how to solve fraction problems were developed by fourth grade students recently.

Please click here to learn more about this project as well as view the finished products. All of the movies were created using the iMovie app on iPod Touches.

What I really like about this project is that it put the tools into the direct hands of the students. Students were their own videographers. With a few pointers, it is incredibly fast and easy to make a video using the iMovie app. It also is motivating. Students were excited to develop these movies and post them on a wiki/blog to share with an audience. Even better is that this project is coming full circle because students now are attempting each other’s math problems and then accessing the videos for answers as well as help with strategies. It’s almost a mini Kahn Academy.

Please let me know if you have any questions and/or inspirational ideas about using this tool to meet your curriculum needs.

Looking to try something new in 2013?

How about getting your students out and about with a QR Code Treasure Hunt (a.k.a. Scavenger Hunt)?

First off, you may be wondering what a QR Code is? You probably have seen QR Codes on flyers or in stores. Simply put, it is a type of barcode. When the barcode is scanned (with, for example, a smart phone), the device will be directed to a website where a message, picture, audio file or even coupon awaits you.

How can this technology be used in the classroom?

Here’s the gist:

1. Come up with questions (and answers) on any subject.
2. Make the questions into QR Codes.
3. Put the codes around the school.
4. Students find the codes, and using a device such as an iPod Touch (with the Scan app), students will “read” the codes a.k.a. questions. Students then will answer the questions via paper and pencil or even email the answers to the teacher from the device before proceeding to the next code.

What a great way to hook students into reviewing for a benchmark! Or perhaps, even at the beginning of the school year, going on a hunt in order to take a tour of the building while creating teamwork.

Intrigued? Here is a generator from ClassTools.net to get you thinking and designing your own hunt. And of course, let me know if you would like to collaborate.

To finish off my App-tober posts, here is a sample of an iMovie app project.

In Grade 5, students are being asked to write sentences using key vocabulary words from their reading. Every other week, the students are working in groups to make these sentences into movies. The movies are being created right in iMovie on the iPod Touches using the built-in cameras. Motivation to make these movies is very high. I have witnessed groups of students who are usually not excited about vocabulary actively participating in the work and conversations necessary to show what they know about the vocabulary words. This project certainly appeals to different learning styles: visual (picture taking) and verbal/auditory (voice recording the sentences) that are not addressed with the traditional paper and pencil vocab sentence submission. The teacher’s end goal is for students to develop more content rich sentences. I think we’re heading in the right direction.

Want to revisit, the App-tober posts?

App-tober #1

App-tober #2

App-tober #3

App-tober #4

We may never buy a “regular” camera again. Come to this week’s App-tober session to find out why!

For a preview, please read a previous iPod Touch post about its built-in camera.

After the session: Need help with the iMovie app for iPod Touches (4th Generation)? Here are the FAQs from Apple. The Help button in iMovie also is great to get you started:

Please stay tuned for a future post about how iPod Touches and the iMovie app are being used in a grade 5 classroom for ELA.

Since we only have 35 minutes at this week’s App-tober session, this post will serve as preview, notes and reference for what will be demonstrated.

A while ago, I wrote a post about BrainPOP and then more recently one about The Mixer. I’m going to continue to highlight this very popular and effective service (that we do purchase), but in a new arena: the BrainPOP app that is made for iPod Touch and iPad. The app is free, and with it, a student may access the free movie of the day. This alone could perform as a great extender for students who may need a little extra and the topic does not matter. However, if you have a BrainPOP subscription, there is a log-in option on the app. This feature gives the user the ability to search all of the movies and quizzes that can be found via a desktop or laptop with a subscription, making it a great way to connect with your current curriculum on the Touch or iPad.

For the most part, BrainPOP tends to be accessed as a whole class activity with a classroom projector at our school. Sometimes, students gain entrance to the movies individually in the computer lab to deepen their understanding of a topic or review concepts before a test. I am big on accountability. Often in various activities, I witness students fast forwarding and even skipping through what they are supposed to be reviewing through a movie or game, not really focusing or giving it the proper attention deserved. Sometimes there is a sense that what they are doing “doesn’t count”. Of course, we can dialogue the purpose, but a concrete task associated with such activities seems to go along way to having students pay closer attention and get the most out of the exercise. For that reason, students may be asked to complete a reflection based on what movies s/he has watched. This reflection usually is in the form of a 3 2 1 summarizer, and it’s most likely on paper (although a Google form could be utilized as described in this post).

I would like to take this opportunity to suggest a few ideas of how to use the BrainPOP app on iPod Touches with some evidence of learning.

• Write a reflection using the built-in Notes app.

On an iPod Touch, you can not toggle between the BrainPOP movie that you are watching and Notes without the movie starting over. However, a student could watch the movie, go to Notes and begin to write a reflection (that will save). Theoretically, the student could go back to BrainPOP and fast forward through the movie to remember, and then continue the reflection in Notes. The beauty is this: the Notes reflection/writing can be emailed directly to the teacher by the tap of a button right in the app. Having a dedicated email associated and set up on the Touch, lets the student send this work right to the teacher. The teacher’s name has been pre-set in Contacts on the device making it simple to send his/her thoughts to the teacher in an electronic format. Imagine the paper saved! To manage this new system, a teacher could set up email folders to archive student work. Having the student type in an agreed upon username in the subject line along with a keyword makes it easy to identify in the teacher’s inbox. These type of reflections let students communicate their understandings as well as be held accountable and document for their learning.

•  Take a screenshot.

There are several ways that screenshots can be utilized with BrainPOP (or any activity) on a Touch to show what students are learning.

1. The BrainPOP quiz score can be screenshotted and emailed to the teacher. By pressing and releasing the power and home buttons simultaneously on the device, a student can take a picture of his/her quiz score. Then by going into Photos on the device, the student can choose to send the quiz picture in an email to the teacher (as previously described). The student could include a sentence or two as reflection in the body of the email as well.
2. Perhaps the assignment is to report important an vocabulary word in the movie. A student could watch the movie once, and then on the second screening, the student could screenshot a vocabulary word as it is displayed or explained in the BrainPOP movie. The screenshot could be emailed out of Photos to the teacher with a short explanation of why the word is important to the topic.
3. Another assignment after watching a BrainPOP movie could be to submit a “flash card” to the teacher. The student would email to the teacher a screenshot of the movie and explain what is going on in the scene. The teacher then could make all of the screenshots  into a slideshow that could be shown to the class as a part of a review of the topic before a formal assessment.
4. Along the same lines, the student could be given parameters such as taking 5-7 important screenshots on a topic in a single movie or over several movies. (For example, there are six movies on the topic of simple machines at BrainPOP.) These screenshots would go into Photos and made into an album right on the device. This album then would be played as a slideshow and used a review of the topic. Furthermore, this review could be watched and the Notes app could be used to jot down notes. Yet another extension would be to use another app (Animoto, iMovie, etc.) on the Touch to make a slideshow that could be shared with classmates outside of the device. And that will be saved for another workshop…

All of these examples illustrate a student not only watching a BrainPOP movie and taking an interactive quiz on a mobile device, but then reflecting and demonstrating the meaning of its contents in a very streamlined and individual manner that can be efficiently received and reviewed due to the built-in capabilities of the device. Certainly something to consider the next time you want students to watch BrainPOP.

(It must be noted: In no way is the screenshotting of copyrighted material being endorsed for any means of profit, distribution or duplication to forgo a subscription. Screenshots should be discarded immediately after use.)

If you and your students like BrainPOP quizzes, then you just might love this very useful tool for making your own: BrainPOP Mixer.

Watch this video to see how easy it is to make your own BrainPOP style quiz:

What I really like is that you don’t even have to make up the questions. (This is one feature that Google Forms doesn’t have.) With thousands of questions being shared, there is no re-inventing the wheel. Plus, you can use convenient tools for grading the quizzes. More time saved! In the end, your created quiz can be accessed from your own blog or a common web page through this portal. Students just need to use an access code that you can tailor make.

So what are you waiting for? Get your own free Educator account, and link it to your school subscription to start making interactive quizzes today!

(If you couldn’t tell, I’m very excited for us to start using this tool. Let me know how I can help.)

Last year, I wrote two posts about stop-action movies (something new MAY be in order: Stop-Action Movies & Stop-Action Movies Follow-Up).

The latter post concluded with our hopes to integrate this technology into fifth grade. What follows is a summary of our results.

During the 2011-12 school year, all fifth graders at Abbot School participated in the Westford Education Foundation funded project In Motion on the Ocean: European Explorer Stop-Action Movies. Under the direction of four social studies teachers, Stacey Mulholland, Aimee Murphy, Karla Pentedemos and Kate O’Brien, and in conjunction with the Instructional Technology Specialist (me), 40 movies were created and uploaded to the blog portion of a Wiki. Although the project is over for the year, all of the movies still may be played right on the site or downloaded by clicking on the Subscribe in iTunes button. Commenting also continues to be open for constructive feedback. (Many comments have resulted from participation in #comments4kids on Twitter.)

The overall goal of this project was for students to demonstrate their knowledge of early European explorers (Massachusetts History and Social Studies Standards 5.1, 5.3) using an extremely hands-on and constructivist medium that would appeal to all students. During the learning process, students were observed informally as well as surveyed formally. Here are some quotes from both students and staff that demonstrate the project’s success:

‘This is the best project I’ve ever done!’ – overheard by Mrs. Murphy as students were working in their groups.

‘I know we are doing a new unit, but can we do that again with Colonial America?’ – said to Mrs. Murphy at the end of the project.

‘I thought it was a great way to express your creativity and have fun with your friends.’ – from a 5th grader’s reflection sheet- Question answered: Is there anything else about the project you want to tell?

‘I wish we had more assignments like this.’ – from a 5th grader’s reflection sheet- Question answered: Is there anything else about the project you want to tell?

‘Advice I give future SAM directors is listen to everyone, they might have great ideas.’ -from a 5th grader’s reflection sheet- Question answered: Advice I give future SAM directors is….

‘Advice I give future SAM directors is to meet a few days before you film and find out what everyone is bringing.’ -from a 5th grader’s reflection sheet- Question answered: Advice I give future SAM directors is….

Also, students were asked: Doing this project, I feel that a) I know more about the explorer than I did before or b) my knowledge of the explorer hasn’t changed. Almost 100% chose “a”. This confidence was reflected in benchmark as well with one teacher reporting that these were the best scores yet.

‘I loved watching the kids develop group decision making skills.  Throughout the process, I noticed kids that aren’t normally leaders speak up and get their voices heard.  Group members gave each other positive feedback on how to meet their goals.  Half way through the project in a self-evaluation, students were asked to reflect on the process.  I was encouraged by how many students commented that they knew more about their explorer than before.  I also was impressed at how many students now look at the movie making process differently and respect the process that it takes to accomplish it.’ – Stacey Mulholland

At Abbot School, we integrate technology into our core curriculum. Students use technology to master content and deepen understandings. The European Explorer Stop-Action Movies Project has been one of those great projects where the students are so invested in their learning that it doesn’t feel like work. The students are so engaged that they are having rich content conversations in their groups. The hands-on nature has appealed to many different types of learning styles, too. Everyone is on task and making a contribution. The technology tool, SAM Animation, truly is a facilitator allowing for real world skills to be developed and core curriculum to be front and center.

The challenge with any new project is the time devoted to reach its full fruition in its inaugural year. Our hopes is to streamline the process a little next year. However, this project definitely is a keeper!