I'm proud of my upper elementary students! I kinda just threw the idea of stop animation at them right before Spring Break and gave them a chance to see what they could make. Students were given the option of sending me their video, so what you see here is just a sampling of what they created. Keep in mind that most of these kids are stop motion rookies. Thanks for watching!
Showing posts with label ipads in elementary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ipads in elementary. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Thursday, December 11, 2014
#HourOfCode 2014
Unless you are hiding under a rock and avoiding the edtech world, you probably know that this is Hour of Code week all over the world. I've been looking forward to this week since we completed Coding Week last year. My last few classes this week will be covered by a sub while I'm in Columbus for a conference. I thought now would be a great time to reflect on the week.
This has been a hard post for me to write, because I'm not sure I'll add much to the Hour of Code conversation. My guess is that I'm a part of the vast majority of teachers who directed students to code.org/learn to do the various activities. Just before I decided to scrap the post completely, I decided to just highlight some of the better moments rather than summarize every grade level like I did last year.
I really like LightBot. In this game, you need to send a little robot around a maze of blocks, moving forward, turning left or right, and jumping till he hits a blue square. Then he lights it up. The concept is easy but each level gets a bit harder. One of my 5th grade girls, asked for help on a particular stage. I gave her a hint or two then moved on. A few minutes later I sauntered by. Seeing she was on the same stage, I made a comment. "Oh, it looks like you're figuring it out." Her response? "I already solved it. I'm just trying to do it a different way." #win!
Literally minutes before my kindergarten class came to the room, I had second thoughts about directing them to Daisy the Dinosaur. I knew some of the kids could handle Daisy, but most of them don't have the reading skills yet. I decided to download The Foos to the iPads and see if it would be good. Yes, I realize last second lesson plan switches are not necessarily good ideas. Yes, I realize kindergartners need more individual attention I was able to give them as I frantically downloaded an app to each iPad in the room, but here is the beauty of my story. Just as I directed the kids to The Foos I realized some iPads didn't have the app completely downloaded. As I was working on those, I heard students excitedly interacting with the game. "You figured it out yourself?" "Yes! It's fun!" Needless to say I introduced it to my kindergarten daughter that same night. #thankyoufoos
For better or for worse, I tend to give students few directions when starting a new app. I want them to figure it out themselves and spread the joy to others. That's why I was excited to overhear a second grader exclaim, "I love Scratch Jr! It's a lot like Educreations!" Now, I have to say I'm not exactly sure how the two apps are similar, but that's not the point. I now have a student comparing and contrasting apps, and will no doubt be messing with Scratch Jr in the future. #score!
I'm planning on dipping into coding again next week. With visions of sugar plum fairies dancing in their heads, along with parties, play practice, and the like, I decided Coding Week, Part Two would be a glorious way to finish out December. I'm looking forward to seeing what great stories come from a second week of coding fun.
This has been a hard post for me to write, because I'm not sure I'll add much to the Hour of Code conversation. My guess is that I'm a part of the vast majority of teachers who directed students to code.org/learn to do the various activities. Just before I decided to scrap the post completely, I decided to just highlight some of the better moments rather than summarize every grade level like I did last year.
I really like LightBot. In this game, you need to send a little robot around a maze of blocks, moving forward, turning left or right, and jumping till he hits a blue square. Then he lights it up. The concept is easy but each level gets a bit harder. One of my 5th grade girls, asked for help on a particular stage. I gave her a hint or two then moved on. A few minutes later I sauntered by. Seeing she was on the same stage, I made a comment. "Oh, it looks like you're figuring it out." Her response? "I already solved it. I'm just trying to do it a different way." #win!
Literally minutes before my kindergarten class came to the room, I had second thoughts about directing them to Daisy the Dinosaur. I knew some of the kids could handle Daisy, but most of them don't have the reading skills yet. I decided to download The Foos to the iPads and see if it would be good. Yes, I realize last second lesson plan switches are not necessarily good ideas. Yes, I realize kindergartners need more individual attention I was able to give them as I frantically downloaded an app to each iPad in the room, but here is the beauty of my story. Just as I directed the kids to The Foos I realized some iPads didn't have the app completely downloaded. As I was working on those, I heard students excitedly interacting with the game. "You figured it out yourself?" "Yes! It's fun!" Needless to say I introduced it to my kindergarten daughter that same night. #thankyoufoos
For better or for worse, I tend to give students few directions when starting a new app. I want them to figure it out themselves and spread the joy to others. That's why I was excited to overhear a second grader exclaim, "I love Scratch Jr! It's a lot like Educreations!" Now, I have to say I'm not exactly sure how the two apps are similar, but that's not the point. I now have a student comparing and contrasting apps, and will no doubt be messing with Scratch Jr in the future. #score!
I'm planning on dipping into coding again next week. With visions of sugar plum fairies dancing in their heads, along with parties, play practice, and the like, I decided Coding Week, Part Two would be a glorious way to finish out December. I'm looking forward to seeing what great stories come from a second week of coding fun.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Blocks EX
I love Twitter! While trying to plan out the rest of the school year, I was trying to find a way my first graders could build their own dream house. I was at a loss, and I tweeted out the question. Of course, the first response was MineCraft, which we don't have at school and can't afford. Here's the conversation that ensued next.
Today was my first round of first graders, and as I said above... they loved it! I won't say it wasn't without glitches, but I think most of those could have been cleaned up by using the full version.
I allowed students to just play with it for a while, then I gave them 10 minutes to build their dream house. I didn't see too many of the final products, but they weren't exactly creating architectural masterpieces. What I did love is they were all over the room helping each other. Within moments I was able to refer students to their classmates to answer questions. To be able to tell first graders, "You have more experience on this app than I do. You'll need to help each other," is a daunting idea, but they rocked the house.
Thanks to Leka for your help, and to Twitter for connecting us!
PS I just downloaded Blocks EX for my preschool daughter to enjoy.
PPS She'll graduate from preschool next week. I have to get used to calling her my kindergarten daughter. Ugh!
- @Cncdky let me know how it goes if you try it!!
Craig Dunlap 
Leka DeGroot
@slfirstgrade Great find! They LOVE it! Thanks!
I allowed students to just play with it for a while, then I gave them 10 minutes to build their dream house. I didn't see too many of the final products, but they weren't exactly creating architectural masterpieces. What I did love is they were all over the room helping each other. Within moments I was able to refer students to their classmates to answer questions. To be able to tell first graders, "You have more experience on this app than I do. You'll need to help each other," is a daunting idea, but they rocked the house.
Thanks to Leka for your help, and to Twitter for connecting us!
PS I just downloaded Blocks EX for my preschool daughter to enjoy.
PPS She'll graduate from preschool next week. I have to get used to calling her my kindergarten daughter. Ugh!
Monday, November 25, 2013
Coding Week
This past spring, I watched the video below and was inspired to teach coding to all my computer students.
There is only one little problem. I don't know how to code. So, I used Code Academy to teach myself coding in my free time. That worked for a while, and I tried it out on my middle school class. What we learned using Code Academy is that there are many glitches that caused us more stress than we needed. I'm sure that Code Academy is a great way to learn coding, but I quickly ditched it as a teaching tool in middle school.
What I have found that I like is a host of apps that teach pre-coding skills, especially for elementary and middle school grades. I call these skills pre-coding because we're teaching logic, not language. Students need to plot and plan a course of action BEFORE they actually begin any movement. The levels start easy but get increasingly difficult as the game goes on.
I recently learned of the Hour of Code Week coming up December 9-15 and got really excited. In fact, I got so excited that I started early. I dubbed this week (November 18-22) Coding Week in all my elementary computer classes*.
My kindergartners started out the fun using Kodable, and they loved it! In Kodable, students send a cute little furry creature through a maze, collecting coins as it goes. Students drag directional arrows and color blocks into a specific order before you send the little critter on his merry way.
Honestly, I wondered if I bit off more than I could chew on this. But, I jumped in with both feet and hoped for the best. I showed them an example so they would know the goal before they touched an iPad. It turned out my fears were for naught, because they dove in like the digital natives they are. I loved how they figured it out, asked good questions, and celebrated victories -- collaboratively. I liked Kodable so much, that I'm now using it with my daughter in preschool. (We're taking it slowly, but I think she's getting the hang of the first few levels.)
My first and second graders got their start in Kodable, but they were ready for something else -- something a bit more challenging. So, we brought in Daisy the Dinosaur with them. The coder's job in Daisy is a bit more complicated. One prerequisite is the ability to read. On each level, you have to read the goal, then drag and drop the commands for Daisy into the "Program" square. Daisy can move in two directions, jump, grow, shrink, spin, and do other fun things. After completing the Challenge Mode, students go on to the free play section where they can really have fun with Daisy.
As students play around with Daisy, they learn what makes Daisy do what they want her to do and what makes her do things they never intended. They learn to use the "Repeat 5" and "When" commands which get into more complex programs.
Daisy was a good introduction to drag and drop coding for my third and fourth grade students, but I quickly moved them on to Hopscotch. (Daisy the Dinosaur was created by the Hopscotch people, for the younger set.) In Hopscotch, the coder picks a character (or more -- as my students discovered) and send them about a three-dimensional board. Again, the commands are programmed before you see what the character will do. There are many more commands and they are more complex. I challenged students to make shapes, but after using the app myself a number of times, I got tired of triangles and showed them how to alter the angle just slightly to make super-cool figures (see below).
My fifth and sixth graders started with Hopscotch, but after about 15 minutes, I moved them on to Cargo Bot, a game in which the coder is challenged to program a machine to move boxes into a pre-determined order. This is highly addicting and requires a lot of trial and error. In fact, I could tell that I was bending their minds a bit more than they wanted them bent.
Blockly is one program I wanted to do with the students, but never got around to using. This is not an iPad app, but is a part of the Google family. In this game, you pre-program the guy from Google Maps around mazes and hope he doesn't get lost.
Cargo Bot was my introduction to this genre of iPad app. I found it in the spring and loved it! I spent many an hour playing it -- all in the name of research, of course -- and found it quite challenging. However, the teacher in me must confess that I enjoy Hopscotch better because it gives students the chance to explore, plan, and make new things. That's not to say that Cargo Bot (or any of these apps, for that matter) don't teach higher level thinking skills.
One thing is for sure, I've tapped into a thinking level that these students aren't used to. For the most part, they enjoyed these coding apps, but they also couldn't wait to get on to something else. (For instance, Sumdog's Thanksgiving competition is going on right now, and they couldn't wait to get a turkey costume for their avatars.) However, I'm excited to add these apps to my repertoire of apps students can peruse in their free time.
I apologize for the poor quality of these pics below. They were either taken with my dying iPad camera or my not-so-smart phone. However, I thought it would be fun to include pictures of actual students playing these apps.
There is only one little problem. I don't know how to code. So, I used Code Academy to teach myself coding in my free time. That worked for a while, and I tried it out on my middle school class. What we learned using Code Academy is that there are many glitches that caused us more stress than we needed. I'm sure that Code Academy is a great way to learn coding, but I quickly ditched it as a teaching tool in middle school.
What I have found that I like is a host of apps that teach pre-coding skills, especially for elementary and middle school grades. I call these skills pre-coding because we're teaching logic, not language. Students need to plot and plan a course of action BEFORE they actually begin any movement. The levels start easy but get increasingly difficult as the game goes on.
I recently learned of the Hour of Code Week coming up December 9-15 and got really excited. In fact, I got so excited that I started early. I dubbed this week (November 18-22) Coding Week in all my elementary computer classes*.
My kindergartners started out the fun using Kodable, and they loved it! In Kodable, students send a cute little furry creature through a maze, collecting coins as it goes. Students drag directional arrows and color blocks into a specific order before you send the little critter on his merry way.
Honestly, I wondered if I bit off more than I could chew on this. But, I jumped in with both feet and hoped for the best. I showed them an example so they would know the goal before they touched an iPad. It turned out my fears were for naught, because they dove in like the digital natives they are. I loved how they figured it out, asked good questions, and celebrated victories -- collaboratively. I liked Kodable so much, that I'm now using it with my daughter in preschool. (We're taking it slowly, but I think she's getting the hang of the first few levels.)
My first and second graders got their start in Kodable, but they were ready for something else -- something a bit more challenging. So, we brought in Daisy the Dinosaur with them. The coder's job in Daisy is a bit more complicated. One prerequisite is the ability to read. On each level, you have to read the goal, then drag and drop the commands for Daisy into the "Program" square. Daisy can move in two directions, jump, grow, shrink, spin, and do other fun things. After completing the Challenge Mode, students go on to the free play section where they can really have fun with Daisy.
As students play around with Daisy, they learn what makes Daisy do what they want her to do and what makes her do things they never intended. They learn to use the "Repeat 5" and "When" commands which get into more complex programs.
My fifth and sixth graders started with Hopscotch, but after about 15 minutes, I moved them on to Cargo Bot, a game in which the coder is challenged to program a machine to move boxes into a pre-determined order. This is highly addicting and requires a lot of trial and error. In fact, I could tell that I was bending their minds a bit more than they wanted them bent.
(Note: This solution does not work. I wish it did.)
Blockly is one program I wanted to do with the students, but never got around to using. This is not an iPad app, but is a part of the Google family. In this game, you pre-program the guy from Google Maps around mazes and hope he doesn't get lost.
Cargo Bot was my introduction to this genre of iPad app. I found it in the spring and loved it! I spent many an hour playing it -- all in the name of research, of course -- and found it quite challenging. However, the teacher in me must confess that I enjoy Hopscotch better because it gives students the chance to explore, plan, and make new things. That's not to say that Cargo Bot (or any of these apps, for that matter) don't teach higher level thinking skills.
One thing is for sure, I've tapped into a thinking level that these students aren't used to. For the most part, they enjoyed these coding apps, but they also couldn't wait to get on to something else. (For instance, Sumdog's Thanksgiving competition is going on right now, and they couldn't wait to get a turkey costume for their avatars.) However, I'm excited to add these apps to my repertoire of apps students can peruse in their free time.
I apologize for the poor quality of these pics below. They were either taken with my dying iPad camera or my not-so-smart phone. However, I thought it would be fun to include pictures of actual students playing these apps.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Educreations Week
I love Educreations! When I was a regular classroom teacher I used it in a couple different subjects so students could demonstrate their learning in a few areas. Now that I'm a computer teacher, I wanted to bring the same love to the masses.
I thought Educreations Week would be one week, but it turned into two weeks. I realized anew that students need time to learn new skills and younger ones need lots of time to process step by step instructions. Every elementary student in my school (K-6) experimented with Educreations and many of them built their first presentations.
Each grade level took on different tasks based on what their teachers wanted or what I felt they could handle. Some students knew what to do from exposure last year, and some were clueless. Some needed me to walk through every minute step (multiple times) and some just needed me to say, "Create an Educreations about..."
In general, here are the steps we took.
1. Decide on your topic. (We used plants, animals, Native Americans, and something learned in a different class.)
2. Go to Safari and find pictures to fit your topic.
3. Save your pictures to the Photo Stream. (In my younger grades, this was the entire first class period.)
4. Put your pictures on Educreations.
5. Record your voice and pen markings.
6. Share it with classmates. (This was done different ways. In some classes, we utilized the AppleTV. In some classes, I had them walk to each other's iPads to view. In other classes, we took advantage of the fact that they all used the same Educreations account to view other presentations via the Cloud.)
While the videos with photos were fun, I actually loved the student-created pictures. Kids drew pyramids and they drew Native American homes. It was great to see the things they made! I also had one student talk about hearts. He found a heart picture and kept changing the size of it to make it look like it was thumping.
Overall, it was very instruction-heavy with me creating tons of example presentations, but it was so much fun! Now, my hope is that the students will take this new-found knowledge back to their regular teachers and beg to make Educreations videos to demonstrate learning!
I thought Educreations Week would be one week, but it turned into two weeks. I realized anew that students need time to learn new skills and younger ones need lots of time to process step by step instructions. Every elementary student in my school (K-6) experimented with Educreations and many of them built their first presentations.
Each grade level took on different tasks based on what their teachers wanted or what I felt they could handle. Some students knew what to do from exposure last year, and some were clueless. Some needed me to walk through every minute step (multiple times) and some just needed me to say, "Create an Educreations about..."
In general, here are the steps we took.
1. Decide on your topic. (We used plants, animals, Native Americans, and something learned in a different class.)
2. Go to Safari and find pictures to fit your topic.
3. Save your pictures to the Photo Stream. (In my younger grades, this was the entire first class period.)
4. Put your pictures on Educreations.
5. Record your voice and pen markings.
6. Share it with classmates. (This was done different ways. In some classes, we utilized the AppleTV. In some classes, I had them walk to each other's iPads to view. In other classes, we took advantage of the fact that they all used the same Educreations account to view other presentations via the Cloud.)
While the videos with photos were fun, I actually loved the student-created pictures. Kids drew pyramids and they drew Native American homes. It was great to see the things they made! I also had one student talk about hearts. He found a heart picture and kept changing the size of it to make it look like it was thumping.
Overall, it was very instruction-heavy with me creating tons of example presentations, but it was so much fun! Now, my hope is that the students will take this new-found knowledge back to their regular teachers and beg to make Educreations videos to demonstrate learning!
Thursday, October 3, 2013
What Type of App Are You Looking For?
I'm starting to work with one of our elementary teachers to start using the iPads more. I love this stuff and can't wait to get started. As I ponder how to help her, I decided to put my initial thoughts here, to help me process where to go and to help others who may be in a similar boat.
As I drove to work this morning, I mentally started categorizing "educational" apps to get a sense of what's available to recommend to a teacher. Here is the list I came up with.
- Informational. These apps tend to be very content specific. While they may have excellent information and be done in a very professional manner, they may only be used in one unit a year. (Example: ThinkFast) Before having your IT team install these apps to your iPads, here are some things to think through.
- How many times will you use the app? Is this a one-lesson wonder?
- Do you want to keep it on the iPad year-round and risk a student finding it earlier than you want?
- Can we find this information the old-fashioned way -- Google or a book?
- Is it worth your IT team's time to install and uninstall once a year?
- Drill and Practice. This may take the form of a game or just straight up drill and practice with no mask. The goal here is simple. Students use the app to practice and master a concept or skill like multiplication facts, spelling words, etc. (Example: SpellingCity) It is worth pondering if this needs to be a skill mastered with technology. Can paper and pencil achieve the same goal?
- Presentation. Students take information and put it into a form they can use to show off what they know. This can take the form of a document (Pages), a presentation (Educreations), a cartoon (Toontastic), or a myriad of things. Before you dive into these, make sure you have a firm idea of what you want and you pass that along to your students too.
- Workflow. Teachers share assignments with students. Students send it back to teachers. Teachers communicate grades with students. If you want to be paperless, you'll want to use these tools. I personally use Edmodo a lot and love it, but there are other apps out there.
- Communication. As schools experiment with communication outside the walls of the school, blogs, Twitter, and YouTube become important tools in the toolbox. Of course, at that point you will have a lot of questions about Internet safety to consider before you start launching in that direction.
- Games. Some of them are for drill and practice. Some of them teach logic. Some of them are just games and don't need to be on the school iPad. Choose wisely.
Maybe it's better to back up and think of what you want to do BEFORE you start thinking of the apps to use. Questions.
1. What is your objective? What standard will you hit? What do you want the students to learn?
2. What will the final product look like?
3. What aspects of the assignment can be done with books? What aspects can be done with paper and pencil? (After all, these were all high tech tools at one point in history.)
4. Do I need an app for that, or is there a web site I can use instead?
From there, I would strip down the assignment into manageable chunks and steps that students can follow. Regardless of grade level, most research-based projects will have these steps.
1. Selection of topic and/or project.
2. Research and note-taking.
3. Organization.
4. Creation.
5. Presentation.
6. Celebration. (OK, I added this one out of fun, but why not party it up when you're done?! I'll come enjoy a Diet Coke with you.)
I'm specifically working on a third grade project, so let me sink into that mindset for a moment.
1. Since this is new for the teacher and the students, I would assign specifically what the topic will be (with maybe a few choices) and what the project will look like. I'm thinking of a StoryKit book.
2. I would have a stack of books for them to look through and even give them a day of reading books and jotting notes on paper before unleashing them onto Google for another day of notes. (Two things here. One, I've never taught a third grade project, so I don't know how ambitious this is. Do they know how to take notes? Two, do third graders understand bibliographies?)
3. For elementary grades, I would create the organization for them. For example, let's pretend we're working on the 13 Colonies. I may tell them they need to pick four colonies -- one colony per page -- and they need to give me founder, founding date, founding city, and a fun fact on each page. At that point, they don't need to figure out where to put each piece of information they find. The organization is already modeled for them.
4. I would show them how to create a page, then give them 2-3 days to create the pages. (Since my hypothetical project is using StoryKit, I'm also going to require a picture and their own recorded voice on each page.)
5. In a room with an AppleTV and a projector, you can give each student 3 minutes to show off their hard work to their peers. (HINT: Have your rubric out and grade the masterpiece during the presentation phase. That saves you time so you don't need to watch it again during your free time.)
Wrap It Up:
I think there is a misnomer out there that when using iPads, everything must be done using an app. Remember that many of us learned quite well using only books, newspapers, and film strips. Teaching students to learn in this era means we show them how many different media can help them in the process.
3. For elementary grades, I would create the organization for them. For example, let's pretend we're working on the 13 Colonies. I may tell them they need to pick four colonies -- one colony per page -- and they need to give me founder, founding date, founding city, and a fun fact on each page. At that point, they don't need to figure out where to put each piece of information they find. The organization is already modeled for them.
4. I would show them how to create a page, then give them 2-3 days to create the pages. (Since my hypothetical project is using StoryKit, I'm also going to require a picture and their own recorded voice on each page.)
5. In a room with an AppleTV and a projector, you can give each student 3 minutes to show off their hard work to their peers. (HINT: Have your rubric out and grade the masterpiece during the presentation phase. That saves you time so you don't need to watch it again during your free time.)
Wrap It Up:
I think there is a misnomer out there that when using iPads, everything must be done using an app. Remember that many of us learned quite well using only books, newspapers, and film strips. Teaching students to learn in this era means we show them how many different media can help them in the process.
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