Fotobabble

Another successful app to use with young children.  A great way to record student voice - giving children the opportunity to publish their writing or to express their opinion about something they have learnt. It is easy for them to take a photo and to record, then listen and rerecord if they wish. Then this can be shared - via email to their parents or the link is copied and uploaded to their Padlet page (I am doing this for them at this point in time.)

 
Samantha explaining her garden plan; Scarlett talking about how a food pyramid keeps us healthy; Cooper counting in 5s.
Here are examples of how fotobabble can be used to record student learning - it also gives children the opportunity to talk to or about a topic without having to read a script - which is an important skill in itself!

Blogger - Our Class Blog

So simple! Using the iPad Blogger app has made it easy for the children to write a new post each day on our class blog. I was determined that by the end of Term One they would take responsibility for choosing the learning of the day that they wanted to share and be able to publish the post themselves. 
To achieve this I had to:

• set aside time each day to show 2 children how to take/choose a photo, write a title, write the caption, write their names as the labels
• suggest the photo/learning to share
• suggest an appropriate title, they could usually think of a sentence to write on the topic
• be available to edit their writing before publishing
• make sure that the task was shared around ans that everyone had a turn
• make sure that there were 4 children that were shown 

Padlet - Term 1 2014

This has turned out to be the most successful app for the beginning of the year for my Year 2 class. It is so versatile and has enthused and motivated the children into taking photos, videos and writing and then sharing their learning with their parents.

As an introduction to Padlet we had class pages where we all wrote on the same page.
Now:

everyone in the class has their own Padlet page 

each page is uploaded to the class blog -  http://www.chelseabachelors.blogspot.co.nz/

it is then able to be accessed from home as well - several children have taken off with this and have added photos and captions of themselves at home

writing on their Padlet page has become part of the Daily 5 reading rotation 

writing on their Padlet page has become part of the writing rotation

children choose what they want to write about - choose or take their own photo, write their own title and write their own sentence/caption

Educreations

 Our new FREE web tool – a special iPad app or use a laptop – http://www.educreations.com/

It is an interactive whiteboard that creates video lessons or explanations in a slideshow format. From a teacher’s point of view it has unlimited possibilities for children to become confident talking about their learning and sharing it in an exciting, motivating, e-learning way.

The features of Educreations:

• Write text or draw lines or pictures with a pen using different colours
• Write text with a keyboard
• Take photos or import photos from a folder or your camera roll
• Import pictures from the web
•  Add more pages to your slideshow
•  Add audio or talk along with your slides
• Save and share your slideshow – email, Twitter, embed it into a blog or wiki page
• You will need to sign up with an email account to share it

Ways we could use Educreations 

• share research about a zoo animal
•  explain how to solve a maths problem
• share a book that has been read
• explain how to make something

It's best to plan the slideshow - load up each page with photos, text, practise what to say or write it down, then add voice for each page

The 2 weaknesses I can see are:

 Having to record all slides in one session – you can’t go back and edit once saved

 If you make a mistake with your voice recording you have to start all over again

Only disadvantage is that you can't save the talk for each page - you have to delete the whole voice recording if you make a mistake

Maths -
Talking through / explaining maths learning - eg showing doubles, mult problems, evidence from weighing activities - photos, diagrams, add voice
Literacy Ideas -

Book review - captions, photos, story with pictures/ photos, photos with captions + voice
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/maori-places/9197099/
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/zoo-animal-tagxedos-by-zach-thomas-and-kartik/8950885/
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/ipads-please/9073114/

2014 - Twitter

I will set up a roster so that each day the children will become responsible for remembering to tweet and share our learning. Another easy example of creating a purpose for writing that will be read by an authentic audience and for promoting "student voice" in the classroom. As well as following the Year 1 and 2 classes from Pinehill School we have found 2 other classes of 6-7 year olds in the US who are tweeting their learning on a daily basis who we will follow.

Mrs D's 1st graders      @RamblerStars

Mrs Mastin's 1st graders    @Mastin1stgrade
Pinehill Room 11    @Pinehill11
Pinehill Room 22    @Room22Superstars
Pinehill Room 8      @Pinehill_Room8