Continuing to Learn with the iPad- Storytelling

In an attempt to document the trials and errors of using a classroom set of 20 iPads in our K-8 school, I am adding a new post to the collection of iPads in the Classroom:

• Transliteracy- QR Codes and Art
• Working on iPad Fluency with Lower Elementary Students
• Step-by-Step: How to Create a Collaborative Class eBook
• Students Create ePub iPad Book for the World
• Finally! A Book Creator App
• Plan, Do and Review iPad Exploration (by Andrea Hernandez)
• ShowMe App for the iPad- Good Tutorial Designer App?

5th Grade- Storykit- Creating a story in Hebrew

One of the Hebrew teachers approached me with an interest in having her students create a story book in the target language on the iPads.

We chose to test the free app Storykit with this project.

Students read a poem by Leah Goldberg called: (That’s Not Me). Based on the poem, students wrote their own story and created a storyboard how they could illustrate their story.

We had the Hebrew letters added to the iPad keyboard by going into: Settings> General>  Keyboard> International Keyboards>Add New Keyboard> Choose Hebrew

Once the International keyboard is added, a globe appears on your keyboard. Tap the button to cycle through all the different keyboards you have installed.

Once the storyboards were finished, students were ready to work with the iPads. The app allowed users to create their own illustrations, import images from elsewhere or take photos with the built in iPad2 camera and insert them into their story. Students could also add audio recordings to their story.

I showed students how to go to Microsoft Office ClipArt, search for images and download or take a screenshot and edit the image.

Students also used each other to stage scenes from their story to take a photo.

Problems we found along the way:

• students could not re-order the pages of their story in order to imitate leafing/swiping through a book from “right to left” (opposite from the way we turn pages in books in English).
• students were not able to place punctuation at the end of a sentence, since the Hebrew keyboard in Storykit (maybe because it is an iPhone, not an iPad app) does not include a period.

Once the stories were completed, students

• shared (tap share button) their story
• emailed themselves the story link
• went to their emails to click on the generated URL
• took a screenshot of their story pages
• wrote a blog post about their experience
• inserted the story pages into their blog post

I will probably not use the Storykit again, since I want to be able to easily embed the stories on the student blogfolios, as well as export them into our school iBook library.

Take a look at some student samples.

Sarah’s Story

A blog post from Sarah, one of the 5th grade students:

Today in Hebrew class we made a story on an app called StoryKit. We made this on the IPads. My story is called , or in English the name is: It’s Not Me. Our Fifth Grade Hebrew teacher, Morah Liat read us a story about a boy who is acting bad, but is usually a good child. Everyone had to make a story based on that one. Typing in Hebrew on the IPads is very tricky. In English the words go left to right, but in Hebrew the words go right to left. That makes deleting letters difficult. I  spent a lot of time on this Story.

Sydney’s Story

Rachel’s Story

Doodling…An Essential Skill to Develop & Support in our Students?

There is something about doodling…illustrating… as you are listening to, absorbing and reflecting about content or an experience. I have questions…?

• Does doodling calm a mind, that is constantly bouncing of its walls?
• Does doodling help one focus on auditory material?
• Can doodling help clarify content?
• Does doodling only work for the artistically inclined? (What if I can’t draw?)
• Is doodling only beneficial for the visual learner?

I have been wanting to find out about these questions for a while now. During an experiment with a fifth grade class last school year, I showed them parts of Ken Robinson’s TED talk “Changing Education Paradigm” that had been animated by RSA Animate. You might think that this age group would not have been interested in that topic, but surprisingly they were fascinated and begged me to watch more of the video clip. I wrote about the different jobs students took, including the one of a Doodler/Illustrationist, as they watched another movie about the American Revolution. Take a look at the post The Official Scribe: It’s All About Learning Styles & Collaboration.

My little informal experiment showed that students, who doodled their notes, retained more details of the content they heard and were able to narrate and explain content, connections and sequence better than their counterparts who took text with bullet type notes.

In another post, titled Third Graders- Called Upon As Experts, I mentioned the “Doodler” using an iPad to illustrate during a Skype video conference.

A few days ago, I clicked on a link from Twitter, which took me to the following TED Talk: Doodlers Unite! by Sunni Brown

In this short five minute video Sunni answers many of my initial questions I posed above.

She makes a point of the importance of doodling as a means to use visual language and talks about the perceived notion that doodling is too often NOT considered serious learning. She advocates that doodling has a

profound impact how we can process information and solve problems.

How can we, as educators, ignore this statement above? Processing information and solving problems are critical 21st century skills!!!

How can we not take advantage of Sunni’s definition of Doodling below?

Sunni defines Doodling as:

to make spontaneous marks to help yourself think

Take the five minutes to listen to Sunni and maybe you will doodle on a piece of paper or on your iPad about what YOU think? How can you connect what you are hearing to YOUR classroom and YOUR students and all of OUR learning. How can me make doodling acceptable in schools and even take a step further by strategically teaching and supporting it?

Why and How to Participate in Teddy Bears Around The World Project?

I posted a few weeks ago about the ongoing Teddy Bears Around the World (now in its fourth year) project.

The project blog and hub can be be found at http://www.langwitches.org/blog/travel/teddybearsaroundtheworld/

I have created a How-to-Guide in order to articulate how and why to join such a project, to make participation easier and to facilitate the process of passing on the information.

Feel free to forward via email or print out the flyer and hand them to a teacher who might be interested in participating.

Global Project: Teddy Bears Around the World