Tag Archives: ipads

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.

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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?

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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.

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

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Filed under iPads, Photostory

Fearless Techies! Too Much Fun!

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The one thing I have noticed is that children are fearless when it come to technology!  They jump right in and try anything!

Today we made movie trailers!  We teamed up with our big buddies and worked on movie trailers using the IMovie app.  This app is awesome!   It has a variety of templates that the students can use  to create a wide variety of quick movie trailers.

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Our buddy class have been making them in their class and when Mrs. Marshall showed them to me I was hooked!

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We got together in small groups  today and the students made movie trailers about friendship!

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Then Mrs. Marshall and I made movie trailers about our students making movie trailers!  It was TOO MUCH FUN!   Now I have to figure out a way to share them with you!

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These images are only screen shots from the trailer!  They really don’t show you how cool they are!  They have great music too!

The trailer templates let them put in photos and videos!  The finished product really does look like a real movie trailer! We will try to share some of the trailers at our open house we are having next week to showcase all our projects!  I will definitely have to find a way to share them with you!

The app is just under five dollars.  I have downloaded it to my iPad already!  I think it would be awesome to use this app at home and use it to keep track of special family times!  I wish we had found out about it sooner! They are definitely something we want to do again!

We only have two weeks left with the iPads!  Boy, I wish we could keep them!

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Filed under Buddies, iMovies, iPads

Busy, Busy Christmas Time!

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The weeks have been flying by!  Why does December go so fast when you are an adult and so slow when you are a kid?

The elf and Gus have been surprising us each day in a different spot!  Here are just a few of their antics!  They have been leaving us books to read and puzzles to do!

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We have been working on the iPads and we have used them quite a bit for silent reading time.  By adding the headphones to the iPads the children can listen to the stories without distraction.    I bought a neat accessory that lets me have several children at a time listen to one iPad using their headphones!

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We have been doing lots of things with the iPads and with Christmas.   We have been drawing gingerbread men and making patterns.  We hope to incorporate these into a little book!

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We made Christmas poems using Doodle Buddy.  The children had to create text boxes and add them to the screen and then add the pictures.  Doesn’t sound like much but when you are six it is a big deal!

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They also had to change colors and use different sizes of stamps.  Lots of fun!

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Really looking forward to all the neat things we can try!

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Filed under Christmas, Doodle Buddy, Elf on the Shelf, Halloween

Sinterclaas and the Elf!

IMG_1094Today Sinterclaas left a treat for our class.  I am a first generation Canadian as my parents emigrated to Canada in 1952.  We brought some   customs that we still celebrate today!   One of my favourites is Dutch Christmas.  So, today I brought my wooden shoes to school.  The children learned to count to 10 in Dutch and say Merry Christmas. Sinterclaas must have noticed because when we put my wooden shoes outside our classroom door, Sinterclaas came!  He brought little treats for the children along with special gingerbread cookies called speculaas, some gumdrops, and chocolate letters.  Lots of fun.

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The Elf  and Gus built a castle out of the blocks last night and played with some of our dinosaurs!  Take a look!  The children brainstormed some names for the elf and the elf is going to let us know what her name will be in the morning!

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We decided to take our silent reading up a notch and used the iPads and our headphones and listened to the stories on the I Like Books app again today.  It is hard to tell which story is their favourite!  I like this program because as it reads the story the words are also highlighted.

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They look focussed, don’t they!

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Filed under Christmas, Elf on the Shelf, iPads

The iPads are Coming Back!

Last year this blog started because of a project we called the iPad project.  We put in a proposal and we were one of the lucky schools that were able to have 15 iPads for about six weeks.  To chronicle our progress this blog was created.  You can take a look at our journey if you look at the older posts.  We had an amazing time and learned a lot.  We created books with the children, and used the iPads in a variety of ways.  I hated to see them go….

So, I applied to have them back!  Mrs. Marshall and I wrote a new proposal and we found out this week that it was accepted and we are getting the iPads back!  I don’t think that either Mrs. Marshall or myself have touched the ground since we found out on Thursday!

One of ways we will to use the iPads is writing our student blogs.  We plan to write and write and write!  Hopefully you have had a chance to view your child’s blog.  The student blogs are only accessible with a password and are closely monitored by Mrs. Marshall and myself.   If your child has forgotten the password just let me know and I will send it to you!

I forgot to mention that we get to have the iPads for an extended period of time.  Three months!!

So, this blog will continue to report on our journey with the iPads, Version 2!

Did I mention that they are coming in December!

Talk about a great Christmas present!

 

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Filed under iPads, Student Blogs

Another Monster?

We have continued to have fun with the Peter Rabbit apps.  It is hard to figure out which app is the most popular.  They all seem to be getting a lot of use!  I love the coloring one in the official Peter Rabbit website app.  The magic paintbrush colors the pictures in the same lovely colours that can be found in the books.

We did a story map based on the story Home for a Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown.  You can’t go wrong with a Margaret Wise Brown story!  The children sequenced the story and then we made some boo-boo bunnies for them to use as a story prop to retell the stories!  We didn’t manage to get them all finished on the day we did the story maps so we didn’t send them home until the next day when everyone could take their bunnies home!  They were pretty popular bunnies and they had a lovely time “resting” in their Easter bunny baskets.

I love the app The Monster at the End of this Book so I couldn’t resist getting the next story called Another Monster at the End of this Book.  Really cute story!  I used the projector to show the story using my special adaptor cord so we could all see the story on the big screen.  One of the students took charge of turning the pages.  Another hit!

Poor Grover!  He sure doesn’t like monsters!

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Filed under iPads, Peter Rabbit, Story Books

Peter Rabbit has an App!

Today we continued our bunny projects with the beloved Beatrix Potter story Peter Rabbit! I am a bit of an Beatrix Potter nut.  I have all the books and we have been reading some of them.  I also have a really good version on video.  So, of course, I went looking for Peter Rabbit apps!  I found three in the short time that I went looking and we tried them all today!  All were big hits!  Not everyone got a chance to work with them yet but we had several children demo them on the big screen using the projector.  I have a special cable that lets me show whatever is on my iPad using the projector.  That makes it really easy to share with the students and I always have lots of volunteers who want to be the “demo guy”!

We watched the video first today.  I had already read the story previously.  Then we did an sequencing activity.  I chose 12 pictures from the book, and the corresponding text.  The children had to sequence the pictures, find the corresponding text, and then collate it altogether into a personal little Peter Rabbit book.  We also made a paper bag puppet to go with the book.

Later we worked with the story again using the three iPad apps I found.  One app allows you to either read the story yourself or have it read to you.  It has neat little pop-ups on each page that the children enjoyed.  It is called PopOutPeter!

There is also another Peter Rabbit app created by iActivecom that also reads the story.  It has a neat addition in that each page can be made into a jigsaw puzzle.  That was fun! 

The last Peter Rabbit app is the one from the Official Peter Rabbit Site.  It also tells the story.  It has some neat features as well.  There are some fun games and pictures to colour.  I liked the coloring one where you could use the magic pencil that colored the picture the same as the book.  The games are cute too.  I suspect that all three apps will be popular picks. 

I would find it really hard to choose between them.  I like them all too!

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Filed under iPads, Peter Rabbit, Story Books

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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Filed under DoodleCast, iPads

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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Filed under 100 Day, Doodle Buddy, iPads

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