Scrap It

Last Friday we went on excursion to Perth Hills Centre at Mundaring.  I thought I would try and integrate a bit of technology into the recount rather than the doing the same old recount every time you do an excursion.

We used an app called Scrap It.  It is a scrapbooking app so it was a bit 'pretty' for this activity but worked well otherwise.

The children had to choose 3 events from the excursion and import them into the app.  They then had to type up a sentence or two to go with each picture and a title.

I then saved them to the camera roll so they could be used.

So, how did it go?

The kids loved it.  They were so engaged in it.  We had a photographer come in to take photos and they barely looked up from the ipads, unlike normal occasions where any interruption is an excuse to stop working.

It took them awhile to make the page but if they used it more frequently they could be quite quick.  The app itself was pretty easy to use and once they worked it out they were off.

We will need to do a lot more typing lessons if we get them next year as some of the spelling is atrocious and I know they would have done it much better if they were writing it.  I think it was hard to sound out words while using new technology at the same time.

Getting the photos onto the 5 ipads was a little tricky to start with.  I tried emailing them but could only send 2 or 3 photos per email- way too hard when there is over 100 photos!

I ended up setting up a dropbox account for each of the ipads.  I then set up a year 1 folder and shared it with all 5 ipads.  This meant that everything I uploaded into that file would appear on each ipad.  Genius!

However, it appears that things stored in dropbox still need to be downloaded onto the ipad if you want to use them so I then had to go through each ipad and import the photos onto the camera roll. Fiddly!  This syncing business just keeps looking better and better.

Reflection

Yay!  No more worrying about cords and Apple TV.  We have downloaded an app called Reflection onto our pc's and can now connect any ipad in the classroom to the smartboard wirelessly.

Today I used it with a number line.  The kids passed the ipad around and had to find me the number on the number line.  The rest of the class was able to see what they were doing on the smartboard. Love it!

There was a bit of a delay today however, but only a few seconds.  The computers seem to be running really slowly today.  Maybe it is the weather.  The other day when we were testing it was running beautifully with no delay.

I can see this would be useful as a way for kids to show their learning.  When they have done something good they can just project it up and I can direct the rest of the class to look and listen.  Not to mention being able to play games on the ipad that everyone can watch.