Tech Tool of the Week: StoryKit

Those of you who noticed what your 1st-5th graders were doing in computer class last week will be familiar with this week's highlighted technology tool, StoryKit.  StoryKit is a digital storytelling app for iPad.  It allows students to create their own electronic storybooks by writing and illustrating a story, then recording their own voices as they narrate the story.  In computer class during the two weeks after spring break, all students in grades 1-5 created a storybook about what they did during their spring break.  Once they were finished, students uploaded their storybooks to the web and received a private link to their story.  They could then share their storybooks by emailing the link to parents, friends, etc.  Students can also read and listen to their completed storybooks on the iPads.


Please take a look at these examples of stories created by our students to get a sense of what StoryKit storybooks look like!


Colby C., 2nd grade
Hannah F., 4th grade


If you're interested in learning more about StoryKit, here is a short video tutorial that will teach you how to use the app.

Tech Tool of the Week: Quizlet

This week's Tech Tool of the Week is Quizlet, a fantastic online learning tool for playing educational games, memorizing vocabulary, and studying online.  Quizlet has over 10 million free sets of flashcards covering a wide variety of different subject areas (including Chinese!)  Users can access these free sets, or create new flashcard sets with their own terms and definitions.  


Students can view flashcards in several different modes.  In Flashcard Mode, students simply familiarize themselves with the material.  In Speller Mode, students can listen to a word and then type it.  In Learn Mode, Quizlet keeps track of a student's scores and retests incorrect answers.  In Test Mode, Quizlet generates customizable tests including true/false, multiple choice, matching, or short answer questions.


One cool feature of Quizlet is that students can create a group to share or discuss flashcards with their friends or classmates.  Teachers, you can host a group where your students can create and discuss study materials for your class.  In addition, students can play fun, competitive study games on Quizlet to make studying more fun!  


Students can access Quizlet both on the web and through their mobile device (iPhone, iPad or Android).  There are several flashcard apps (like Flashcards+) for mobile devices that integrate with Quizlet.  


Here is a short demo video that highlights some of the features of Quizlet:

Tech Training: Digital Storytelling with iPads

For those who are interested, below is the presentation I made at yesterday's Faculty for Faculty Meeting.  If you were not able to attend the workshop but would like to learn about using iPads for digital storytelling, please let me know -- I am happy to schedule a time to meet with you individually!

Coming soon: a detailed, step-by-step written guide on how to use each of the digital storytelling apps on our iPads.

Tech Tool of the Week: Pic Collage

This week's highlighted Tech Tool is an iPad app called Pic Collage.  Pic Collage is a fun, easy-to-use app that allows you to quickly and easily create beautiful photo collages.  Import photos from the iPad's Photo Library or Facebook, or download images from the web.  Using simple touch gestures, you can add photos, then resize, rotate, and move them around.  You can even crop photos or change their borders.  There are lots of fun backgrounds and stickers for you to use, too!  When you're done, share your collages on Facebook, Twitter, or email.  In addition, you can order a postcard of your collage online and have it shipped anywhere in the world! 


Pic Collage would be a fun and easy tool to use with students.  Think about ways this could be used in the context of a project you already do in your classroom.  What topics do students study in your class?  Students could find images on the Internet about a topic using a kid-friendly search engine, then make a collage of the pictures they find.  They could create a collage of pictures of their family, their friends, their interests, etc.  There are so many possibilities!


To give you a sense of what the collages might look like, here are a few examples of collages created using Pic Collage from the Pic Collage website.

   

  

Tech Tool of the Week: Evernote

This week's highlighted Tech Tool is Evernote, a wonderful, FREE tool that can help you organize and remember information.  You can use Evernote to record your thoughts, capture interesting things you see, create notes, clip interesting web pages, store PDFs, and even snap photos.  You can download Evernote to all of your devices including your computer, iPad or Android tablet, and smartphone.  Then you can access your notes on any of your devices or even anyplace you have access to the web.  So no matter where you go, Evernote is always with you!  


To keep things organized,  you can place all of your notes, articles, and photos in Evernote into "notebooks".  

Do you ever come across articles online that you would like to read, but just don't have time at the moment?  Evernote makes it easy to "clip" articles and save them for later.  This is my personal favorite feature of Evernote!  Brad uses Evernote to take notes at conferences.  He also finds Evernote useful for organizing photos that he takes on his smartphone.  


If you would like to get Evernote on your school laptop, just stop by the IT office so we can install it for you.  Also check out Evernote's website for schools, which has tips for teachers on using Evernote.  

Read about how to get started with Evernote or watch this video for an introduction!

Tech Tool of the Week: Pages

Would you like to have your students type up a story, a report, or an essay?  Think you need to reserve the computer lab or borrow some laptops from IT?  Think again!  There's another option: you can have your students use the iPads!  Our iPads have an app called Pages, which is a word processing program.  Pages is simply Apple's version of Microsoft Word.  Students can do everything in Pages that they can do in Microsoft Word.   They can even type in Chinese!


Here is a short introductory video on how to use Pages to get you started:

Tech Tool of the Week: Edmodo

This week's highlighted technology tool is an exciting new website called Edmodo. Edmodo is a free service that allows teachers to create and maintain their own safe and secure, collaborative classroom communities.

When you take a look at Edmodo, it looks a lot like a Facebook for the classroom. Edmodo allows you to create a social learning network specifically for your class. Unlike Facebook, however, Edmodo is completely private and secure.  And it allows you as teachers to manage class content, collaborate, and more.

Teachers can share educational content, manage projects and assignments, handle notifications, conduct quizzes and events, and facilitate other engaging learning experiences with students. Schools and districts can claim unique Edmodo web addresses for added communication and customization. And teachers can build profile pages on Edmodo, which they can use to meet and stay in contact with other educators, plus share best practices and top resources.

On the student side, members of an Edmodo classroom can interact with the site, take quizzes, participate in games, and ask the teacher questions. But students may not direct message each other within the site. Edmodo is not meant to be a social platform for student to student interactions that don’t relate to what’s going on in the classroom.

Finally, one other cool feature of Edmodo is that it works on a variety of different platforms, including the iPhone, Android, iPad, and laptop or desktop computers.  Check out some interesting ways that you could use Edmodo for mobile learning!


For ideas on how to get started and to access teacher resources, take a look at Edmodo's blog. In addition, here is a short demo video to give you a taste of what you can do with Edmodo:

Tech Tool of the Week: Puppet Pals

Welcome back and Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a restful break.

This week's highlighted technology tool is an iPad app called Puppet Pals. Puppet Pals is an easy-to-use app in which students can create simple animated movies. The first step is to choose characters for the story from a wide variety of cartoon characters. Next, choose one or more backdrops.  Then it is time to record! Students can move the characters on the screen as they tell their story. Movements and audio are recorded in real time. The final product is an animated movie that you can post on your class website, email to parents, share with the rest of your class, and more! Students can even use their own photos to create characters or backdrops.


The beauty of this app is that it can be used across grade levels and subject areas. For younger students, Puppet Pals could be used to teach storytelling skills. Older students could use Puppet Pals to explain and illustrate a vocabulary word, science concept, or math problem.  For Chinese classes, students could write and record a story using vocabulary they are learning in class. The possibilities are endless! 


Please let me know if you would like me to show you how to use Puppet Pals. It's easy to learn and fun to use! I can also help you brainstorm ideas for how you could use Puppet Pals in your class. If you are interested in watching a tutorial video, here is a link to one created by the designers of the app.


To get a taste of what Puppet Pals looks like, check out how one teacher used Puppet Pals with his 3rd graders:

Tech Tool of the Week: Sonic Pics

The first official Technology Tool of the Week is Sonic Pics, a terrific iPad app used for digital storytelling. Sonic Pics allows students to turn images into a custom slideshow movie. To make a movie, students add one or more images and record their voice as they narrate. Examples of types of images students could use include digital photos, drawings made on the iPad, and screenshots from Safari.

Here are some ideas for ways you could use Sonic Pics in your class:

1. Create multimedia books. Students create illustrations in a drawing app like Drawing Pad, save the illustrations to Photos, and then pull them up in SonicPics to record the words.

2. Document a classroom experience. Load photos of a field trip, science experiment, special visitor, etc. onto the iPad and have students narrate the photos.

3. Assess a learning experience. Load photos of an individual or group working in the classroom, and then have students narrate those photos to explain their process and reflect on their learning.

4. Retell a story. Have students draw pictures to represent the beginning, middle, and end of a story, and then record themselves retelling the story.

5. Generate questions to support inquiry. Load content-related photos on the iPad. Have students select 3-5 images and record their questions. This could also be used to assess the level of thinking and questioning students are engaged in.

6. Create a podcast. Use photos or student-created illustrations or diagrams as your images. Students could create a podcast about something they are learning in class, news about school, book reviews, etc.
7. Create a weather report. Take photos out the window and narrate them with data from any weather app or website. Share it on your class Veracross website.

Currently we are working with the 1st Grade Red and Gold classes on a Sonic Pics project. Students first drew a self-portrait on the iPad (using an art application called Drawing Pad) and wrote their name in Pinyin on the picture. Next, students used Sonic Pics to record their voices as they talked about themselves in Chinese. Students stated their name, age, birthday, and personal characteristics. Below is a sample of a video made by one of our 1st graders. Special thanks to Teresa Shyu for coming up with the great idea for this project!