Scribblepress

Today I tried using the app Scribblepress during literacy.  Scribblepress is an app kids can use to create their own books.

I have started with my top group.  The idea was to have the title on one page, then the orientation then the problem and then the solution.  I am trying to teach them the structure of a narrative at the moment.

It was very slow going as they hadn't used the app before.  If they were handwriting it they would probably have written nearly a page in the same time.  They only got a sentence or two done on the app.  Having said that, the app is not hard to use and if they had time to play with it and use it regularly I think it would be a very effective tool.  I am really hoping we can get the 5 ipads into each class next year because I think I could have the kids doing some amazing things before the end of the year.  The problem with only having two weeks is not having the time to let kids experiment and play with the apps.

Now I am experimenting with ways to share the books.  They can get shared with ibooks but Iwould like to be able to share each book across all the ipads.  I assume that syncing would do that if we get a mac but until then I need to find other ways.  I am pretty sure I can email myself the link and then download it to each, but once again, fiddly!!

Educreations

Today the children had to retell a story using educreations.  They drew a picture of the story and then had to take a photo of the picture.  They then put that into educreations and told me about the story.  It was slow going but they were all so eager to have a go and do something on the iPad!

Some of the pictures were....interesting, to say the least.  Lots of pics of feet and hands but they got there.  Most of them used the app really well but it helped that we had used this once before (last term). 

If I wanted to make the activity purely ICT I could have had them do the picture on the ipad but having them draw the picture first staggered the use of the ipads so they weren't all trying to do it at once.

The issue now is in getting that work off to share with others.  I know I can put a link to the lesson but it would be great to be able to have it come up as a video.  I am going to try to embed the link in here, but I have yet to be able to do it.  If not, then simply follow the link.

Nope, can't work it out. I am following the instructions but there is no embed button appearing. The other option I may have to investigate is capturing their video using a screen capture tool.
Memory by Kate

Memory By Ashton

I was a bit worried about how much background noise you would hear if you were recording in the classroom but the voice you can hear the most is mine!  I had told the kids that there was no talking and they were pretty good.  Recording in a normal classroom would be difficult though.

Memory by Elisajane

Fiddly!

Kylie and I have been trying to set the iPads up with more of a system. We have done up a page for different learning  areas, creating, literacy, maths and other (we are just starting!).  I can definetly see the benefits of a syncing device as we stood there for ages this morning moving apps to the correct page and trying to make sure each device had them in the same spot so it would be easy to direct kids to the right app.  Fiddly!  Hopefully once they are set up and we are just adding the odd app it wont be too bad.

We also noticed that it was very slow to download when we were trying to do 2 or 3 apps on each device.

On a positive note, the kids absolutely love them.  They are now familiar with the volume, earphone port and can close all their apps completely when finished.  So far they have been really good at looking after them.  Although, I can see that those covers are going to be very dirty, very quickly.  Perhaps we should look at getting black covers if we end up getting more.

I am hoping to teach them how to use the camera tomorrow and then how to put their picture into educreations and tell me about it. I think this will be particularly useful skill in the early years as verbal explanations are done regularly.  It would be great if I could just have them take a photo of their work and then narrate it. Educreations is a great app because you can access their work via teh internet and it doesn't matter which iPad they used, as long as they are logged in on my name. http://www.educreations.com/

I am hoping to set up folders for the kids to put photos in but I think it may be a bit soon to do that.  Maybe next week.

New iPads

YAY!  Year 1 has iPads!  Our school has been lucky enough to get funding from the P&F to purchase 10 iPads.  We have decided to trial them in the year 1 and the year 5/6 class.  The idea of this is to work out all the kinks of how we are going to manage the iPads and children's work when they are being shared.  Having them in two different year levels will give us a better idea of what the children need and can use appropraitly at different ages.

We got them yesterday afternoon so I let the kids just play with them as they finished their activities.  I think it will be important to give them time to just play before we try and learn with them.  There is only a few apps on there at the moment (stupid wifi was down today so I couldn't put more on!) but the popular choice was sparkle paint.  They seem to love colouring and drawing.

I have told the kids that we have to find ways to use them to help us learn and not just play so it will be interesting if they actually come up with any ideas as we start using them.  I don't think 2 weeks will be nearly long enough!