First Grade Workflow Fluency

As first graders are learning about the butterfly life cycle, we wanted to stay away from usual activities such as coloring in a pre-printed coloring page. INSTEAD of such an activity (created by others) and a quiz about recalling the different stages of the life cycle as assessment, we decided to have students built on their knowledge and fluency of creating a collage and CREATING a visual of their learning. The digital visual was to become an artifact for their student portfolio.

Our first graders are working weekly on a Hebrew visual dictionary on the iPad PicCollage app. They are very comfortable with the app itself. We were ready to spill over from Jewish studies into their General Studies class and push them on their workflow (fluency) with the iPad.

1. we reviewed the stages of a butterfly
2. showed students a National Geographic video of the life cycle
3. modeled the creation of a PicCollage Butterfly poster by breaking down each step
4. embedded digital citizenship (images copyright issues)
5. emphasized the workflow of :

• choosing appropriate tools/apps (critical thinking)
• navigating to website ( workflow, information literacy)
• searching for images (information literacy, critical thinking, creativity)
• saving images (workflow)
• switching apps (workflow)
• browsing for images> importing images > editing images > adding text (workflow)
• designing (creativity)
• saving (workflow)
• emailing final product (workflow, communication)

I was impressed by our 6 & 7 years olds to get to work, able to follow along the workflow path, some having a little trouble with spelling some of the words, but ALL comfortable with tapping, swiping, switching between apps, pinching in and out, editing, saving images and simply knowing that these images will be waiting for them in their Photo Album to be used in another app.

This activity was NOT about using the iPad app, it was about creating a visual of their learning. It was about workflow, skills and creativity.

The emailed collages, will be placed on student blogfolis with a written or audio reflection of their creation or learning process.

Interested in other “upgraded” activities for first graders and a butterfly unit? Take a look how last’s year first grade students created an ePub iPad book for the world as the culmination of their unit of study of butterflies.

New Forms of Professional Development

You have all been there… Professional Development days at your school…

Administration usually choose a topic, design the activities and/or bring in a speaker. Most likely,  they will be slides with bullet points…listening…turn to your partners…learning about a new initiative your school will take part in…etc.

As more and more educators are building PLNs (Personal Learning Networks) and taking their Professional Development into their own hands, they realize that their in house, school based PD needs to take on new forms as well.

The EDCAMP style PD is sweeping the USA and the world in order to honor the “experts” among ourselves versus bringing in “outside experts”. Conferences, like educon, edJEWcon or Innovate steer aware from the sage on stage lectures towards conversation style sessions. They aim to move from an exclusive “you physically have to be there” to inclusive virtual connections as an integral part of the learning experience. These conferences seek to blur the notion of a PD event as one moment in time and space to becoming the hub for growing one’s learning network and conversations for “just in time” learning beyond “just in case” tools or skills.

There has also been a wave of new styles of presentations beyond the traditional style lecture typically supported by bullet heavy PowerPoint sides. Take a look at TED style presentations or Pecha Kucha types (see Chris Lehmann‘s example at Ignite Philly above)  to spicen up presentations.

At a recent Professional Development day at our school, a “Hatzatah Presentation”style contest was held, open to our faculty. “Hatzatah”= Ignition in Hebrew,  is our Jewish Day School’s adaptation of  Pecha Kucha and Ignite. Each presenter had 5 minutes to share their idea, broken down into 20 slides which automatically advanced every 15 seconds. The winning prize was an iPad.

We gave them a wide open topic of  “How has/have iPad(s) impacted your teaching practice?” and shared with them a checklist outlining Presentation Logistics, Content, Presentation and Resources.

We asked three judges to take a look at the recorded Hatzatah presentations and choose a winneri. Mike Fisher from Digigogy, Lisa Johnson from TechChef4U and Richard Byrne from FreeTechnology4Teachers & iPad Apps for School, graciously agreed to be our judges.

Each of our “contestants” shared with me, that the process of creating these types of presentations (condensed to five minutes) have been an incredible source of learning for them.

In the spirit of sharing, allowing others to learn form our process, maybe even inspire the possibility of a new form of professional development at your school, here are the filmed Hatzatah presentations. What are some new forms of Professional Development you are  experiencing or experimenting at your school?

Karin Hallett (Liquid Literacy Blog)

Stephanie Teitelbaum (Teach Blog & Tweet )

Shana Gutterman (ShoshyArt Pinterest Board)

Seth Carpenter

Shelly Zavon (Teacher-Twenty-One)

Creating a Classroom eBook with BookCreator

It is no secret that I am a fan of the iPad app BookCreator since its release in 2011. Our students have created several eBooks with the app.

You can read about the creation, its process and even download the final eBooks on the following blog posts:

• Finally! A Book Creator App
• The Making of a Story in Kindergarten and Amplification Thoughts
• Step-by-Step: How to Create a Collaborative Class eBook
• First Graders- First iPad Encounters

One of the most important features of the app is the openness and responsiveness of the developer Dan Amos. He truly is interested and flexible to accommodate educators and their special needs in the classroom.

Our wonderful librarian Karin Hallett, who blogs on Liquid Literacy (a must subscribe blog) published a step by step recount of her process of creating a classroom eBook with current first graders.  (Tip: the student reflection video is especially interesting and the “Book Author Checklist” (see below), Karin created for first graders, is useful:)

Each student worked on their own iPad to create their eBook. We are working on stacking our eBook library with student created books, that will allow students to “leave a legacy” by making their books available for future students of their grade level. The challenge for us teachers was to combine each individual student book into one classbook. Each student book was to be a separate chapter.

Dan Amos had extended the new beta version of the new BookCreator to me and we were in luck that the ability to combine more than one book together was already included in the update.

Each student emailed me their eBook file, which I opened in BookCreator on my iPad. Once I had all eBooks in my BookCreator app, I simply chose to combine the books.

Again, Dan Amos was open to my suggestions to making the app even more intuitive and better for teachers wanting to create classroom eBooks. I had the following suggestions for him:

• copy title page when combining books
• being able select more than one book at the time to combine
• being able to insert pages at specific points in the book, not just the end.
• being able to duplicate pages

The app update is coming out of beta today and ready to be downloaded by everyone. I encourage you to upgrade quickly and start creating your own combined classroom eBooks!