Start Simple!

Learning to use the camera app is a great place to start when learning about the power an iPad can play in learning process.

This past month I have begun working with three classrooms who have never really used an iPad before. In my new school we have only had 5 iPads and have not used them a great deal to create knowledge. Last month we borrowed 10 iPads from our Outreach program provided by the CBE ILC (Innovative Learning Commons). 

I thought, what better way to begin using these devices than to use the camera app to take some photos around the school. Here's a snippet of what the three different classrooms did.

Graphemes Around the School

This grade 1 class used the iPad to take photos of letters (graphemes) that they could find around our building. Of course this was an easy task but a great one for students to get excited about finding the different letters they were learning about. 

We created our own success criteria from holding the device to taking the photo, and also to deleting images that weren't worthy of being downloaded.

After we gathered all the photos (which I downloaded from each iPad and then shared to our community folder) we talked about which images were good photos and which weren't so good and why that was.


 

Once all images were accessible from our server, the students then wrote their names (in Comic Life) using the different letters everyone in the class had found. 

Numbers Around Us

This grade one class put a spin on what they would take photos of. They went out around the school building to find different numbers they recognized. This proved more challenging as they found many numbers they could not recognize.

I downloaded the photos, as I did for the letters group. Once we had sorted them them somewhat, students were to choose numbers that were meaningful to them and then create an info graphic based on there chosen numbers. 

  

Colour, Colour Everywhere!

The kindergarten students took photos of different colours around our school. 

Once all photos are gathered in the same manner as above (we have not finished this project yet), we will use comic life again to share our work. We plan on adding photos and the names of each colour to a document then comparing to each other and building on to it further from there.

More to come on this project!

Student Success - Making Learning Accessible

Student Goal:

Record ideas about a model that he/she has designed and built.

iPad App:

Comic Life

Learning Task:

One day while subbing in one of our classes. I noticed one of our complex learners was not focused on what we were doing as a while group. She was building a castle out of geometrical shapes. She was totally focused and and engaged in her little mini project.When a school assistant came in to help we gave the student an iPad and invited her to make a comic page about her creation. In about 25-30 minutes she was able to produce an amazing piece of work without too much hassle at all.This usually doesn’t particular student doesn’t enjoy writing but in this case was certainly enthusiastic about making this Comic Life poster. With a little help with the spelling, she was successful in some written reflection. 

AWESOME!

Gr4 Social - The Story of Artifacts

iPad Apps:

Comic Life for iPad

StopMotion Studio for iPad

Student Learning Goal: 

Social Studies - To tell stories about Alberta's rich history using artifacts from the past.

Learning Task:

The students in our 4 grade four classes have just completed a huge social studies inquiry project. Their mission was to learn about how artifacts from the past were important to the different people of Alberta.
Students were able to choose an artifact from a wide variety of authentic and real artifacts. They then had to learn about how that artifact was used and who it was important to.
All groups had to use books and internet to research their artifact to learn more about it. In some cases, experts were invited in to the classroom to share their knowledge about particular artifacts.
Students were given a choice of different ways to present their stories:

• Green Screen  & iMovie
• iWeb
• Voki (animated avatar)
• Stop Motion animation
• Comic Life for iPad

Some examples of the videos and webpages can be found to the right.

We called it Fort Discovery...