Mrs. Anton's Class!

March 14, 2012 · 9:11 pm

Little Teachers!

Today I went to a sharing event for the iPad project at the DRC in the morning. It was awesome to see all the projects that the teams have been working on over the past five weeks! When I got back to school the children wanted to know where I had been so I commented that I had been sharing their awesome projects with other teachers in the district. They wanted to know all about it of course and then their comment was “that I should have brought them (the class) with me because they know lots about iPads!” They were right of course! They would have been great “little teachers”!

One of the teachers actually did bring a few of her students with her to share their projects and it was awesome to see how skilled and comfortable they were with the technology!

Because I had my computer with me today we watched our Photostory about our project again as some of the children were away on our sharing day and it was their first chance to see it! Then we had to dance to the music! Lots of fun!

Some of the students got a chance to play with DoodleCast today and it is a hit! What amazes me is how quickly the children catch on to the apps! One demo and they are off! They seemed to really enjoy talking about their drawing while they were drawing and then enjoyed watching the instant replay. Unfortunately I forgot to show them how to save their work! Three little boys totally engrossed in their drawing and storytelling! Too cool!

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Tagged as DoodleCast, ipads

March 13, 2012 · 8:02 pm

The Mitten for a Snowy Day

Today we read the story The Mitten by Jan Brett. We have been very successful making it snow this year by reading snow stories and doing snow art. Every time it has started snowing we have been helping it along with great results! When it started snowing this morning we couldn’t resist working our magic once again! We made a story map to go along with our story! Each mitten contained a part of the story. The children read the parts and put them in the correct sequence. We then put a mitten in the middle of our “snow” that the animals could snuggle into by hiding an envelope behind a wallpaper mitten that was camouflaged in the snow. We also read The Hat by the same author at storytime today. Jan Brett has a great website. It has some fun things for children to do.

I found two more apps that I like for primary students. The first one is DoodleCast. It is a cute little app that lets children draw a picture while narrating what they are doing in their picture. You can then play it back and watch the drawing unfold before your eyes and listen to the story behind the picture at the same time!

The other app is great for encouraging the correct formation of letters in printing. It only pays attention when you start the letter at the correct spot. As you print the letters you also spell simple words and see children’s illustrations depicting the words. It is called I Write Words.

Two fun little apps!

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Filed under DoodleCast, I Write Words, The Mitten, Winter

Tagged as Doodle Cast, I write words, printing practise, the mitten

March 12, 2012 · 9:38 pm

I Wish I Had 100?

Today we talked about 100. If we could wish for 100 of something what would we wish for…. If we could eat 100 things what would it be? What kinds of things would we prefer not to eat 100 of…. What could we make 100 of? We got some really neat answers. The children brainstormed items for each category. Then they chose the ones that matched their personal preferences to complete the story frame. The final item was to indicate what they liked best about our 100 day celebration. They liked the 100 day cake, the 100 fruit loop necklace, the 100 trail mix snack, reading 105 stories together, and making 100 stamps on the iPads the best. To culminate the activity we mounted their story frames and then they had to surround their story frame with 100 stickers! 10 sets of 10 equals 100!

I promised to post more of the snowmen pictures made by the parents at our iPad open house!

Have to admit that I really miss the iPads! Wish I had 100 of them!

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Tagged as 100 Day, doodle buddy, ipads

March 10, 2012 · 8:07 pm

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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Tagged as Doodle Buddy projects, ipads, Pictello, Snowmen, Snowmen Project

March 1, 2012 · 10:11 pm

Finishing Up

Today we worked on finishing up our books. We had some pages that needed to be tweaked! I have uploaded all the books to the Pictello server and made PDF copies of all the books that were created. After our Show and Tell Day I will email these to each family that would like a permanent record of their child’s work.

Our books have four pages in them. Each page represents a project. Each project explored different concepts and provided a variety of learning opportunities. The books themselves take only a minute or two to view but they represent hours of learning. I think that the children really liked creating their projects on the iPads and are eager to share their efforts. I am very, very, very proud of the work they did!! And the best part is that they had a really good time doing it! I bet they didn’t even realize that they were learning!

We are also sadly finishing up the time we have with this project. We have had the iPads for five weeks. I wish we could have them forever….. They are moving on to the next lucky group of students and teachers next week. We will have our final day with them next Friday. They have been an absolutely fabulous addition to our classroom and our learning. Boy, will we miss them!

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Filed under Doodle Buddy, iPads, Pictello, Snowman Project, Story Buddy, Winter

Tagged as ipads, Pictello, Snowmen Project

February 29, 2012 · 8:27 pm

100 Day Activities!

Today was our 100th Day of School! It was a very busy day! Each child got a necklace that said “I Survived 100 Days of School” to wear today! We did a lot of things centered around 100. As a group we read over 100 stories. The children partnered up and read stories to each other. After reading the story they copied the title of the story on a post-it, signed both their names, and then added the post-it to a big chart. It didn’t take long to get over 100 post-its on the chart! That’s a lot of reading. As they were working on the reading, small groups practiced counting to 100 by counting out 100 fruit loops to make a fruit loop necklace.

As today was anti-bullying day, everyone got a pink T-shirt to wear and we went to an awesome anti-bullying assembly! Very impressive! We saw some amazing skits, singing, dancing, and presentations. Lots to think about…

When we got back from the assembly the children took their 100 collections that they had brought from home and put them on a 100 grid. We took pictures of all the collections. Because the desks were full of our collections we had our lunches as a picnic on the carpet! Then we continued to work on 100 by counting to 100 and doing a 100 dot to dot.

We used the iPads today to show 100. We used the Doodle Buddy app. The children used the stamp tool to make 10 sets of 10 stamps. We got some really cool collections of stamps!

We also made a 100 “trail mix”. The children counted out 10 of 10 different food items for 100 things to eat. We put them on the grid to make sure we had 100 and then we got to eat 100 things!

And then we sang Happy 100 Day to Us and had some cake! Yum, yum!

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Tagged as 100 Day, Doodle Buddy projects

February 28, 2012 · 9:14 pm

Book Time!

Today we continued to put our books together! Luckily we had a lot of help! My daughter came in again to help with the recording. We also had a lovely surprise visit from Mrs. Beleznay who coordinates the iPad Project Success project! She offered to help too! So for about an hour, the three of us took each child one at a time to help them record their stories on the ipad in the Pictello app. We managed to get almost all of the projects completed! I am very grateful for all the help! The next big job will be uploading the books to the Pictello server so that we can save them and email them out to parents who wish to have a copy of this book in either Pictello book format or as a PDF file. We are hoping to share our books with parents on Friday, March 9th. They are not very long but they represent a wealth of learning. Learning how to create digital books, using different tools in a paint program, learning how to add text and text boxes are just a few of the strategies we have worked with over the last few weeks to make the pages for our books!

I have included some more of the samples of snowmen that families created as well as the snowmen labelling pictures the children did. I have to admit that I loved that project!

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February 27, 2012 · 8:42 pm

Putting together our Books!

Today we started putting together our Pictello books. I gave the children a quick demonstration on how to use the app to make a book. Then we worked through the outline I gave them. This is a big project for little people. Luckily we had a bit of help! Mrs. Turner, our class volunteer was here today and my daughter came in to help too! The children got started and with a few bumps and hiccups we got some of the books started. The children had to open the book file and on each page import a picture and then add some text in the appropriate boxes to go with each picture. They had to import the picture from the camera roll on the iPad which meant finding it on the camera roll and then selecting it to add to that page. Adding text is not easy either! Trying to figure out how to get those capitals and periods is a bit trying. The children continued on in the afternoon with help from each other. As you can see from the pictures they are very focussed on their jobs and helping each other. I had to do some editing, but by and large I am happy with the result. We will continue to work on the remaining books tomorrow and on Wednesday.

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February 26, 2012 · 9:01 pm

Travelling iPads! Fun!

On Friday morning, the iPads went travelling. The iPads travelled to several primary classes and were a big hit with everyone! We introduced a variety of apps to each class and let them explore. Needless to say, the students appeared to really enjoy them and were fearless! Each class worked with Doodle Buddy and tried out the vareity of drawing tools. We also worked a bit with Story Buddy. We also introduced a new app called Chickionary. This app is a word building app. You are given a variety of letters and given a limited amount of time to create as many words as you can with using the letters. I was really impressed at how focussed the students were trying to find as many words as possible before their time was up. Several classes used this app. We also introduced our favourites, Word Bingo, Math Bingo, and Montesorri Words. The beauty of these apps is that they can be adapted to the skill level of the student.

Over the next few days the iPads will be travelling around the school. They have a very full schedule!

In the afternoon, we worked with our buddy class using the camera and the puzzlemaker app. Mrs. Baird told me about this app. She had her students take their picture, import this picture into the puzzlemaker app and then do a puzzle of their picture. I thought it was a great idea and we did the same thing with our buddies. The buddies took a picture together and then had fun playing with a puzzle of themselves!

This coming week we are blitzing our books! We have to put them together and narrate them! Lots of work!

The iPads are leaving up on March 9th. We are going to miss them! They are a great student friendly and teacher friendly teaching tool!!

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February 23, 2012 · 9:43 pm

Reading and Making Books

Today we started putting together all the pieces of our snowman book in Pictello. We have created four pages for our books so far. It takes a bit of time but I really feel that the product will be worth it. The children who started their books today certainly seemed willing to put in the effort. They worked steadily and were really attentive. The rest of the class worked quietly on their assignments while a few students put together their books. They were especially quiet whenever the writers were recording their stories. Very professional, don’t you think?

Pictello allows you to send a copy of the books created to their server. If you have an iPad with the Pictello app loaded on it you can download the story and keep it forever. It also allows the book to be sent as a PDF file. This version is simply the pictures without the accompanying text or recordings. Either way, we can arrange to keep some sort of copy of their efforts before the iPads leave if all goes well. I have been able to send a copy of one book to myself as well as the PDF files so I hope that I can do it with all the student books.

Today at storytime, we enjoyed The Monster at the End of this Book. It is a book app that I downloaded on my personal iPad and shared with the class today using our computer on wheels projector and the iPad combination. It is a really cool app that tells this funny story in a fun way!