O'Neill Elementary's 3rd Grade Reading class, under the direction of Mrs. Julie Pistulka along with help from Katie Morrow, ESU 8, recently published their latest version of an annual community history research project. This year, the creative student authors compiled and shared their information in the form of an alphabet book.
Using a Pages template, each "letter" consists of 3 pages:
1) a stanza of poetry and photo gallery on the topic
2) written report from student research
3) student-created artwork
Students added audio narration for all the text with the newest feature of Pages books - Audio Recordings.
Last week, I was delighted to find this book delivered in my mailbox from Amazon.
"If I Were A Wizard" (hardback) by Paul Hamilton
At first glance, it looks like another delightful children's book, doesn't it? In actuality, "If I Were a Wizard" by Paul Hamilton teaches readers young and old all about computational thinking and coding concepts. And it does this without intimidating terminology (and yet provides connections at the end).
When I talked with Paul this July at the 2018 Apple Distinguished Educator Institute, I was amazed by his humility. It struck a chord with me when he mentioned that humans are drawn to story, but true connections are made via characters. Thus he created Hazel. And Hazel is more than a beautiful mouse on the pages of the book or the digital swipes in iBooks. Hazel is a relatable comrade for all those who get to know her. Students can "meet" Hazel and experience her world through Augmented Reality with the free app Wizard AR. While exploring this magical world, teachers like Katie Gardner can capitalize on creative writing opportunities. Or simply enjoy an original title track performed by a beautiful young vocal wizard. Teachers can build closer relationships with Hazel by visiting the wizardcodingbook.com website and downloading the numerous free educational resources-- writing, math, art, and even more beyond just coding. It is clear to see that Paul has created more than just a coding book!
It is hard to debate the value in teaching coding concepts in today's primary classrooms. With "If I Were a Wizard" young children of all ages and backgrounds will be inspired to consider today's reality-- that they, too, can code. And I will continue to be inspired by the author's dedication to education that matters.
Building Word Wizards with Creation Apps (NETA 2018)
Use the power of iPad to transform students into vocabulary wizards in the K-12 classroom. Learn about 10 creation apps that will move your students from consumers to creators and empower them to expand their word wizard skills. Walk away with ideas and apps to use immediately in your classroom. Bring your iPad and create some ‘magic’ along with us.
Don't abandon printed projects... just enhance them with technology integration!
This was a driving force in a recent project I had the honor of working on with the West Holt 4th grade classes. Mrs. Shirley Rossman wanted to create a class book to demonstrate their collective knowledge of Nebraska history. And the 150th anniversary of Nebraska's statehood was the perfect backdrop.
Excitingly, she reached out to me looking for ways to infuse digital media into the printed, bound book that she envisioned as a class product. We collaborated to design an augmented reality experience for the reader, where each student's two-page spread could be brought to life with AR.
This was our process:
1. Text development
Students selected their Nebraska topics, researched them, and wrote their text narrative for their page. The pages of the book were mapped out on large classroom posters. To preserve the authentic student-authored look and feel, Mrs. Rossman had each student hand write their text onto one of the page templates to go to the Schoolmate Publishing Company that she had selected to produce the class book.
2. Create trigger images
Students created original artwork to accompany each page of text, again drawing by hand on the book template pages. I used the iPad to take a quick photo of each student's page of artwork so that I could designate each one as a trigger image for the augmented reality we planned to build in.
*Side Note: I applaud the originality and creativity of the students' hand-drawn images. While it would have been easy to find images online or even create them digitally, the authenticity of these students' illustrations makes the book extra special.
3. Create media assets
Each student had the opportunity to create at least one media asset to accentuate their topic. We talked about bringing their research "to life" and trying to enhance the content in a creative, not simply redundant way. This was truly where student choice and voice could shine. App which I demonstrated as suggestions to choose from included:
Chatterpix
Tellagami
Toontastic/Toontastic 3D
Puppet Pals 1&2
WordFoto
iMovie
DoInk Greenscreen
Nearly every app was new to the students but the definitely jumped in and learned quickly! Some student seven created multiple assets that could be selected when readers scanned their image. Mrs. Rossman did a wonderful job of coordinating additional parent volunteers, para professionals' help, and simply workspace on the days we reserved for media production.
We did post all the video assets on a YouTube playlist, just as a secondary way to showcase the students' work and creativity.
4. Blipp-building with Blippar
While Mrs. Rossman sent away the physical pages of the book to be printed and bound, I began working to develop the augmented reality interface.
I selected Blippar as our AR platform because of its reputation with education, in addition to its free price. Teachers can sign up for the Blipp-builder dashboard and create unlimited "blimps" for their classroom, completely for free. Blippar, the app which readers will use to 'scan' the pages, is free as well, and available from both the iTunes and Google Play Store.
While the blimps created with an educational account aren't "public" they can easily be viewed with a simply "campaign code." This is a 5 digit number that users enters into the settings of the app prior to scanning. We put these directions as the pregame page in our book:
The Blippar dashboard asks you to first name your campaign: West Holt 4th Grade NE History Book and then create a blipp for each student by uploading their trigger image.
To add to the interaction, you have several options. The student's media asset can be displayed on initial startup. Or you can add a "button" for the user to tap to initiate the media asset. Sometimes I used generic buttons from the Blippar library, but often I used a custom logo that I created for the project and uploaded to the Blippar library.
Various actions can be accommodated on each tap. Ones we primarily used included:
play video (either uploaded directly to Blippar or linked online)
view image gallery
go to URL
open PDF
Each blipp needs to be saved and published individually, but all can be accessed with the one campaign code in the app.
It seems there is a world of untapped potential to blips-building and I have a feeling that we only scratched the surface with this project!
For as long as I can remember, the O'Neill Elementary 4th Grade Nebraska Fair is an exciting opportunity for young learners to begin to develop critical research skills and is a must-see for all parents, grandparents, and community members. My youngest son, Drew, is a 4th grader this year and we eagerly anticipated this memorable project in his academic career.
2016 O'Neill Elementary Nebraska Fair
In the fall I heard about a Roger Wagner product called the Hyperduino from Kelly Croy's Wired Educator podcast. The concept is a combination of a Hyperstudio's multimedia creation software and an Arduino board. With a "Makerspace" feel, this kit allows students to explore principles of STEM with still incorporating physical creation, construction, and design. I immediately knew that Drew would love to incorporate circuits, LEDs, and sensors into whatever physical representation of his Nebraska history project he decided to build. We ordered a kit and eagerly waited for the time of the year that the 4th grade classes began their research.
Drew decided that his topic would be the thing about Nebraska that he loves the most--- Nebraska football-- and quickly got his topic approved by his teachers. The students completed their research questions, fact-finding, and report writing all at school, but parents were encouraged to help students with some sort of display to accompany their project for the Nebraska Fair. This is where the Hyperduino came into play.
The physical model could literally be anything-- the kit actually comes with a small cardboard volcano model and another example video features a solar system model board. (For more ideas, visit the HyperStudio and HyperDuino Central Facebook group.) We decided that a replica of Tom Osborne Field at Memorial Stadium would give us opportunity to connect LEDs and sensors to trigger different multimedia videos that Drew would create to enhance his project. We used a bulletin board, but any kind of cardboard, foam, or display board would work just as well. We knew that we would need to plan and decide:
- number of videos that would be activated by his project
- what the triggers would be for each
- how the LED lights would interact with the videos (when in the videos and where on the board)
- how far apart the Hyperduino connections would stretch to allow us to connect everything to the Hyperduino
Drew and I worked through the example volcano project with little difficulty. We quickly discovered that we didn't even need to learn Hyperstudio to link the media-- that it all could now be done with a free Chrome web app in the Chrome browser. He decided to create 5 videos of his own and use one on the history of Husker football that he found on YouTube. The media that you connect to the Hyperduino can be any YouTube video or website URL which really opens your options for media creation. Drew made three videos with the Explain Everything app and filmed his live tour of Memorial Stadium with the built-in camera and edited in the iMovie app. All videos were uploaded to my YouTube channel and I added them to a playlist, simply for ease of finding later on.
Next we built the physical model of the football field. At the predetermined places Drew and his dad poked holes for the Hyperduino cables and attached LED lights and sensors to them. The Hyperduino is fairly small and can be awkward to access once everything is hooked up, so I used Post-it notes to label each connection with the corresponding number code from the Hyperduino. This made the programming for the Chrome app much more efficient.
We also read about a motor that comes with the kit that you can program to turn. Drew's dad helped him rig up a small hackysack-type football that would spin once we programmed a sensor to do so.
The final, and most important step, was to create the "Playlist" in the HyperDuino for Chrome app that would run the project when launched. While we still are not experts in this, this is how we did it:
1) Loaded the desired video in YouTube.
2) Clicked the + to add new media that is currently open in your browser.
3) Chose the timecode of the video that we wanted to play.
4) Clicked the blue drop-down arrow to set inputs and actions.
This is an example of the sensor connected to the A0 port that is set to Analog mode and will respond from 0 to 255, which means that if the sensor's light is blocked, that it will trigger the playing of the video.
In this second "line of code" the same video is used, but port 9 is set to Output -- High when arriving at timecode 00:13 (light turns ON) and Output -- Low when leaving timecode 00:35 (light turns off).
You can view our final Hyperduino for Chrome Playlist here.
Through trial and error we continued to program the Hyperduino app to interact with our media. The spirit of experimentation is so crucial here. We definitely had more failures along the way than successes, but now feel equipped to build a Hyperduino experience next time that is much improved from our first project. We did figure out how to start a video with a sensor and then make an LED light up at key moments in a video. We got the football to spin (although it did begin to be less dependable after hours of demonstrating to audiences) and added some final labels to the physical project board, just to make the demonstration more self-explanatory. You can view Drew's final project with Hyperduino interactions here:
The Nebraska Fair at O'Neill Elementary was a resounding success and Drew's project was well received by all who visited it. For me personally, it was a great time to experience something as a learner myself, and I cannot wait to pass along the knowledge I gained to the next person who would like to try a similar project. And even more importantly, it was great to learn something new with my 4th grade son.
The following are some simple ideas for teaching poetry writing lessons with iPad apps. All apps are free, unless otherwise noted.
Rhyming Poetry
Try the Rhymer's Block app to create a new piece of rhyming poetry. Use the Prime Rhyme app or the RhymeZone website as a reference to find rhyming possibilities.
Another great introduction to poetic forms is creating a name poem. Here is one online generator to quickly prompt this kind of poetry. Also consider trying this Name Poem app.
Found Poems
"Found Poems" are formed by finding words within prose and reassembling them in order to form a new poem. Students can use an app such as FridgePoems to practice reassembling random or suggested words. Then take a piece of prose (a famous speech or passage from an essay, for example) and create a found poem with the Word Mover app.
Point-of-View, Personification, or Persona Poems
Chatterpix app- Students write a poem in first-person point of view. They then take a photo of the “narrator” (it could be an inanimate object or a historical person or a photo of anything they find online). In the Chatterpix app they draw on where the “mouth” is and then record themselves reading their poem, making the photo come to life and look like it is speaking. Alternatively, they could use an app such as PhotoSpeak if their poem lasts longer than 30 seconds.
Oral Fluency Poetry Reading
GarageBand app- Students record an oral version of any poem they author, reading with expression of course! Export the audio recordings with Share > Export Song to Disk and then collect all students’ poems in a playlist, Google Drive folder, or put on a website for others to listen to.
Illustrating Poetry
Use a drawing app like Doodlebuddy or Paper by 53 and have students create a Sketchnote of their poem. Alternately, even simply illustrating an image to go along with their poem would have value.
Syllable Structure Poems
Use this teacher-created guide for iBooks to expose students to some poetry formats with set syllable structures (including haiku, senryu, tanka, and cinquain) and then use an app like Haiku Poem to create their own.
Concrete Poetry
Students create a concrete poem built out of the shape of their words. A favorite app for this type of poetry creation is TypeDrawing, however it is a paid app. Another option (also not free) is the app Path On.
Diamante Poems
Use the Diamante Poem app from ReadWriteThink to create this diamond-shaped, set structure poem.
Poetic Symbols
Use the Adobe Voice app and bring poetry to life with the images in the app's symbol library. Add your poem with a voice over and you easily have a finished multimedia project. Note: the student example below is not necessarily a poem, but gives you an idea of how simple to use the app is.
Poetry Video Remix
Create an iMovie from a published poetic work. The following example created by students is a interpretive remix of the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay."
Figurative Language
Find examples of figurative language in modern day song (like the example below, created by students with the Keynote app), in books, or other existing works. Students can create a compilation of figurative language examples or simply author their own.
Additional iPad apps for exploring poetry with students:
