First Grade Stories & Recordings

We have been talking about authentic ways to record student voices and learning on the first grade classroom blogs using the iPad. We were a bit sidetracked this month as Posterous blogs are closing down and it has been the only blog that is setup for us to email media directly to the class blog or individual student blogs. It is possible to request a backup of a Posterous blog and then move it to WordPress without cost. Unfortunately we cannot upload a video directly to a WordPress blog; you can embed a video from a YouTube channel as you would in a Blogger post.


Last week I started setting up classes in Kidblog to be added to classroom blogs as links on the side. In one class we are adding an “Addition Strategy” post in which each child draws a number sentence using Explain Everything on the iPad and then adds her/his voice describing the strategy used for a solution. The process for using Explain Everything was to have the children record and name each one as a project. When the students were done I selected each project to compile and send it via. email to a teacger. Once the projects are in email they are attachments which can be downloaded to a folder on a desktop. In Kidblog it is very easy to login as each student as the names are in a dropdown list and we used the same password for each student. The last step is to create a post and insert the video format of the Explain Everything project.

 Our goal is to put the creation of the product into student hands as much as possible. Pursuing the use of Storykit and Explain Everything as apps that students can use on their own seems like the way to go at this point.

Exploring the StoryKit app with First Graders

I worked with some students last Tuesday and recorded their descriptions of photos showing them balancing crayfish. They certainly knew how to use the word “counterweights”! I have written out the directions so that a parent who helps out during writing will be able to do the process with students. The parent who watched me this week liked the activity and wants to do it on her own.
 
(cross posted in a somewhat different form on the private "iPads in Grade One" blog.)

After exploring a number of story writing apps, we determined that our initial goal was to select an app that allowed students to be the ones creating on the iPad. Our favorite app for that at this point is Storykit. It is a free app that is actually an iPhone app that can be enlarged to work on an iPad.

I worked with students to test out this app and we were able to have two groups of 4 students take each other’s pictures, draw a background and record the “About the Author” pieces that they had asked to write to accompany their “How To” books in about an hour. We hadn’t carefully edited their writing so they will need to redo ones that included last names or addresses. We are planning to take pictures of their self-portraits to use as “avatars” instead of photos as needed. Having students assigned to an iPad can help with this as then the images are on the right iPad.

I visited all six classrooms on Friday and all 20 iPads have Storykit and are set up to send email. If you want to email directly to a student blog then you can use the email generated by Posterous when you set up the student spaces. If anyone else is interested in setting up individual spaces for kids I’d be glad to help you. If you give me your passwords I can do some of the setup for you.

Writing and Blogging in Grade 3

For the past two years Richard Sellinger has incorporated working in a blog with his classroom writing program. This year his "Lobster Blogsters" have started off the year collaborating with classes in other parts of the country on an Observation Window project that ties in with themes that he and Nancy March have been doing to incorporate scientific observation into student writing. Their first observations are recorded in the Voicethread embedded below:


The third grade classes all hope to connect with students in other countries as part of their unit on countries of the world this year. To begin to practice that communication Richard's students are creating their first articles and Kim Spencer's students learned how to comment on them this week. There has been great enthusiasm by students in Richard's class to having comments from other students to their articles. We all look forward to building this communication tool with more blogs and more access.

Life Cycles

Students in 2nd grade have been learning about life cycles: insects, apples, sunflowers, humans, and others. After reading and learning about various life cycles in the classroom they used the Clicker CD titled "Life Cycles" and then Clicker Paint to create a life cycle drawing. Their drawing skills were impressive and their work was outstanding.