Category Archives: Photostory

Making Books! iPad Style!

our_math_book

One of the final projects we worked on with the iPads was a math book.  The children used a combination of apps to create their math books.  They really loved this project and worked on it for a long time very happily!  I found the beginning of the idea on a neat website called Journey with an iPad by Kate Lechleiter.  She had a post about using Doodle Buddy and ten frames to represent numbers.  She took a picture of the ten frame and used it as a background on Doodle Buddy.  Then the children used the stamps to represent numbers.

lars nick math

I thought that I would like to see the children take this idea and create addition stories with it.  I took a picture of a ten frame on each iPad so that it was in the camera roll.  The children then used that picture as their background and used the stamp feature in Doodle Buddy to create their own addition stories.  Then they recorded the addition stories underneath them.

Then we took our stories and imported them into Strip Designer to create our math books.  They turned out great!  The children had such a good time creating them that they wanted to make even bigger stories.  So I took pictures of two ten frames together so that the students who wanted a bigger challenge could create even bigger stories.  

The children made up to four or five pages of addition stories in Strip Designer.  I discovered that I could save the work as a PDF file and save it in iBooks.  Then I was able to email it to myself and then forward on a copy of the book to their homes!  I also printed off a hard copy of the book.  It is in black and white.  I like the digital version better!

c alphabet

The last day with the iPads we decided to create an alphabet book with the iPads.  We used a combination of photographs of things in the classroom. pictures of the children, and drawings done in Doodle Buddy.  We took these images from the camera roll and imported them into Strip Designer to create our pages.

w alphabet

We have the whole alphabet done!  They turned out great!  I am hoping to collate them into a Photostory which I will upload to a cloud so everyone can download a copy!

Yesterday, the iPads were picked up.  We decided to use them until they came to pick them up! I let the children choose to work with any app that they wanted to for the last time.   We had some student teachers visiting and it was fun to see the children sharing their favourite apps with these teachers.  I know the teachers were impressed with how comfortable they were navigating around the various apps creating their last projects.

beth fish comic

payton last

We really loved our iPad project!

mr mugs ipad 2

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Filed under Doodle Buddy, iPads, Math, Photostory

Too Much Fun with the iPads!

IMG_1601We celebrated our iPad project on Friday.  This is our celebration cake!  The children seemed to really like it!

We had a great time sharing our projects during our Open House.  I know the children were really proud of their projects and loved sharing them with their parents!  I will begin to email some of the projects to you soon!  Watch for them this week!

I will also post the Photostory about our project and send out the link so you can watch it at home.

snowman 2

toboas dad

Here are some of the snowmen the parents made!  The children did a great job showing their parents how to use Doodle Buddy to draw a snowman and label it.  The parents and the children did a great job, don’t  you think?

cool snowman

In the afternoon, we found a really neat new app that we have not tried before called Sparkle Music!  The children really enjoyed working with it.

spakle

We will miss the iPads!  We were lucky to have them!  They are too much fun!

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Filed under iPads, Photostory

Sharing Time!

Yesterday was the last day of Project iPad!  To celebrate our journey we hosted an open house for our parents.  We had a stellar turnout!  Lots of parents and even grandparents came to see our project and we had a great time sharing our learning with them!

The children have worked hard on a Pictello book about the snowman they created with their families.  The books are very cool but what really makes them special is that each child narrated their own stories.  Listening to them read their stories themselves always brings a smile…  I have managed to load all the stories onto the Pictello server.  I will be emailing the corresponding codes as soon as possible.  If you have an iPad and the Pictello app loaded on your ipad you will be able to download your child’s story and keep it!  I have also downloaded a PDF file for each book that will be going out via email as soon as possible.  Unfortunately the audio component is not part of this file.  But you will still have all the pages for the book!  It takes a little time to copy in all those email addresses so please be patient!

To begin our celebration we viewed a little movie that I was able to create on a neat product called PhotoStory3.  This program lets you take the photographs that you have taken and put them all together into a slide show.  You can add comments and put it all to music for a really cool finished product.  I had used it before for our school mural project so this time I found it a little easier to put together.  Not such a steep learning curve this time!  The children loved seeing all their projects and it was fun listening to their reactions as they took a trip down memory lane!  Apparently it is possible to email the photostory.  I will have to try that!

Then the children shared their stories with their parents.  I hope they enjoyed them as much as I did!  Then the children taught their parents how to use the iPads.  We gave the parents the snowman labelling project to attempt.  They were great students!! Here are some of their attempts!  I had so many neat snowmen that I will have to save some for future posts!

The children also got to share their favourite apps with their parents.  It is difficult to decide which one would be their favourite.  They certainly seemed to enjoy them all!

We also repeated our buddy picture project with the parents.  The parents and students took a picture of themselves using the camera.  Then they imported the picture into the Puzzlemaker app, created a puzzle using that image, and then proceeded to complete the puzzle.

The forty five minute long Open House time just flew by!  I would like to thank the parents and extended families for coming!  There were lots of adults so every child got to share their story with someone and no one felt left out!  I know it is very difficult to come in the middle of the day to an event.  Please know that it was greatly appreciated by both the students and myself!

After school I had to drop the iPads off so that they could move on to the next lucky school…  What a great experience we had with them!  I know that we will really miss them.

I am hoping to continue to explore the use of the iPad in the classroom albeit on a significantly smaller scale!   We will continue to try to find ways to use it in the classroom and hopefully continue to share these efforts on our blog….  So please stay tuned!

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Filed under Photostory, Pictello, Snowman Project