Pic Collage

This year I am working in Pre Primary and as of term 2 have been lucky enough to have 5 ipads permanently in my classroom.

I wanted to share an app that I think is fantastic to use with the younger years.  It is called Pic Collage and after completing a few activities with it my kids are becoming whizzes at it.  Here are a couple of examples of what they have created with it.

We went for a walk through the school in two groups and took photos of living and non living things.  The children then used those photos to create either a living or non living collage.  This was our first official lesson with pic collage.

We made a pretend trip to the moon. The following day they used the pictures we took of them in their astronauts costume to make a picture of them on the moon.

We used the option to import pictures from the web to create a collage of our solar system.  The search option for web photos is very simple to use.

Ok, so this one is obviously mine but it is another use for the app.  I created my alien using the collage materials we have collected in our classroom. I am encouraging the children to create things with them but then take a photo and pull it apart so we can reuse the materials.

In Maths we were learning about wide and thin.  The children had to create a collage of things that were wider than them.

 

I highly recommend this app.  It is simple to use and produces a great product that the children love.  It could be a great story starter as children put themselves into unusual places and then write a story about it.  When playing with my 6 year old niece I put her in the fridge, what a great visual prompt for a story!

Two

One

QR codes

I am trying to work out a place to store information I can link qr codes to. I created a wiki but the settings are private and if I am not signed in then it won't work you have to pay to make your wiki public....bummer!

So I though I would try a blog post. Please excuse the random posts.

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.

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!!