RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘Puppet Pals’

Gratitude & App-reciation

20 Feb

During our TCEA 2012 workshops and seminars, Yolanda Barker and I handed out cards with promo codes on them for the following apps. I would first like to say that we do not endorse apps or products that we do not APP-SOLUTELY LOVE and USE. We would feature and mention the apps regardless of their appy donation(s). That being said, I would like to take a moment and thank the app developers for their gracious donations to our TCEA 2012 participants. I know everyone APP-RECIATED the schwag.

App-reciation Collage created with Turbo Collage app

 

  1. Puppet Pals Director’s Pass: This app is a main staple in the techchef4u kitchen and can be utilized to create animated videos to support any content area at any grade level. (See Samples).
  2. To me By me: This “surprisingly educational” app allows users to write a letter to their future self to be delivered on a specific date. The app is perfect to practice letter-writing and goal-setting.
  3. Tacky Wales Create: This app is fantastic to teach parts of speech and creative writing. (See Samples).
  4. iCardSort: This app is a MUST for any classroom. It can be used in multiple settings (e.g. individual, cooperative pairs, small groups, stations, whole group) and has so much functionality (users can customize the background and decks in a variety of ways as well as wirelessly beam/blast decks to other users) and versatility (can be used in multiple content areas and grade levels). (See Samples).
  5. Explain Everything: This is by far the best paid app for screen-casting! You can import documents and presentations from Dropbox and Evernote and then annotate and narrate over them. Explain Everything also offers multiple export options that do not require logins! (See Sample).
  6. La Di Da: Created by the makers of Songify, this app allows users to speak a selection and transform it into a song. Clearly “surprisingly educational“, users can practice foreign language, speeches and soliloquies, and create innovative media to support any content area’s project. (See Samples).
  7. Root-1: Root-1 donated the cool “Begin Your Quest” eco-friendly shopping bags and have created the “surprisingly educational” app, StoryLines for Schools. The app is a modern day telephone game. Users choose a vocabulary word or quote or generate their own, pass the device to another student who must draw a representation of the word/quote, and pass it to yet another student who must decipher what the drawing is. The app can be used to support vocabulary, themes, events, and concepts in multiple content areas. Root-1 also makes a few other wonderfully free and educational apps: Word Joust K-5, Word Joust 6-8, xWords, and Word Kung Fu in beta (coming soon).
  8. Inspiration Diagrams: Inspiration Diagrams donated an iPad cover for each of our 3 workshops. I had the pleasure of being a beta tester for Inspiration Diagrams. The Lite version will be released in March and the full in April. The possibilities for support and integration of the writing process are endless. The current version of the app has 11 templates ranging from Cause and Effect and Book Report to Fiction Reading Notes and Chronology. The app still mimics Inspiration software in the outline and diagram views but boasts new features such as Send to Dropbox and iTunes. I am very eager to see what the final product will look like.
  9. Matt Barker: This is Yolanda Barker’s husband. He graciously donated his CD to our participants. While his music is copyright free and he welcomes those who seek to modify and integrate it into their own projects, I am sure he would love to hear how it is being used in the classroom or other settings (share your thoughts with him). Matt is also the artist behind “appy hours 4 u” intro, outro, and voice over and plays live at a few local hangouts in San Antonio.
  10. Coach’s Eye: This was a late edition to our schwag. Coach’s Eye is from the makers of ScreenChomp and Camtastia and offers countless classroom integration possibilities. The name is a bit misleading as it was originally created for coach’s to instantly review and analyze their player’s videos. The app allows users to record or import video, slow it down, narrate and annotate over it, and even export it! Imagine recording and reviewing a science lab, public speaking event or debate, or even  weather patterns on a field trip.

 

Please give these people and app developers a nice round of APP-LAUSE! Thanks Again!

 

 
3 Comments

Posted in iPad

 

Tis the Season for iLearning

18 Feb

I have had the pleasure of sharing many of Ms. Carnazzo’s creations in the techchef4u kitchen and thought it was about time I took a trip to her classroom. Yolanda and I had the opportunity to observe Carnazzo in action and assist a group in completing their Seasons project. The weather that day was quite fitting as neither one of us were dressed nor prepared for the torrential downpour.

The first thing I noticed was her classroom management. All students were on task, at a level 0, and were working on the assignment that they were expected to complete. Before the activity, Ms. Carnazzo (2nd grade teacher) reviewed the task and the CHAMP’s Expectations for student behavior. Then students were then split up into 4 groups. One group worked with Ms. Carnazzo on the carpet finalizing their script and storyboard while the others worked quietly at their desks doing independent work. Each group was responsible for a different season.

Carnazzo's iClassroom

 

Science 2.8B: Identify the importance of weather and seasonal information to make choices in clothing, activities and transportation.

Beforehand: Before we arrived, small groups had researched info on their season using BrinpopJr videos and the Science text to describe their seasons citing the following elements:

  1. Typical weather/temperature
  2. Types of clothing to wear
  3. Activities appropriate for that weather
  4. Kinds of transportation they might use (e.g. to get to school)

 
Groups had also discussed and written ideas for their Puppet Pals video using the provided Storyboard template. Ms. Carnazzo had pre-selected a seasonal image background from both Puppet Pals Director’s Pass app and Doodle Buddy’s background gallery.

During Class: Small groups worked with the teacher (and Yolanda and myself) to:

  1. Finalize their Puppet Pals ideas
  2. Practice their presentations without actually recording (took several run-throughs)
  3. Record their video (as time permits)

    4.  

Logistics: Groups not working with a teacher had another weather activity to work on quietly at their desk. In working with a group first-hand I discovered a few things:

  1. You can only practice the script a couple of times before the students start losing interest. I found the best course of action was to practice once or twice with the script, record a rough draft, listen to it, and record one more, and then choose the best of the two.
  2. Passing around the script and the iPad causes a bit of background noise. I found if I held the iPad and handed it to each child when it was their time to speak, some of the noise of moving the iPad was reduced.
  3. The Puppet Pals video file is too large to email. Since the students recorded their show on my device and not Ms. Carnazzo’s, I had one of two options: upload to YouTube as a private file and then download from there, or pull it off when I synced my device at home.

 

Carnazzo's Season's Student Projects


 
If you are interested in how to manage an iClassroom or how to purposefully integrate 1 iPad in to a classroom, tune in Thursday March 1st at 3:30pm as the famous Lisa Carnazzo will be our guest “The 1 iPad Classroom“. If you missed the live show, check it out in iTunes the next day.

 
2 Comments

Posted in iPad, Science

 

Glogster Learning Stations & iHybrids

04 Jan

Asked to develop a technology-integrated lesson for 5th Math, I naturally leaned to using the iPad. However, the lesson is being developed as a district resource and not every campus has iPads or iPods. Thus, I created a hybrid lesson. Since the elementary math specialists already had a bank of word problems that they had used in a “Words to Symbols” matching activity, we only had to spruce up some of the text and make it applicable or relevant to the apps we planned on using.

Glogster Learning Station: 5th Math - Patterns, Relationships, & Algebraic Thinking

 

The resources:

  1. Word Problem Videos: Each word problem was created with apps (e.g. Talking Pierre, Talking WeeMee, Talking Ben, and Puppet Pals). These videos were then emailed from my iPad and uploaded to Glogster EDU.
  2. Recording Sheet: The recording sheet was created in Word and dropped into my public Dropbox folder which generates a unique URL which will allow anyone to access the document (as there is no feature to upload documents in the free version of Glogster EDU).
  3. Glogster Learning Station: The Glogster Learning Station is great and visually appealing way to house all of your resources for students to access during the learning activity. Within the learning station, I included teacher’s notes, student directions, the word problem videos (and text translation), and a screenshot of the recording sheet that hyperlinks to the actual sheet (available to download), and an extra activity (that could serve as an additional assessment).

 

While this is a teacher-created station, the idea is so simple that students could create their own learning centers or create resources for a classroom learning station (as featured by Ms. Carnazzo’s class). Her class worked in small groups to create content to teach facts about government.

Class Glogster Learning Station: 2nd Grade Government Facts

 

The beauty utilizing Glogster EDU as a learning station (see more Glogster Learning Station resources) is that it frees up the teacher from disseminating directions and materials and it frees up devices in the classroom. Many classrooms only have one iPad (or a handful) and a few computer stations accessible to their students. By using the hybrid model, students can visit the Glogster station and then use other tools to complete an extension or remediation (e.g. two or three groups of students are working at Glogster learning stations, one group may be creating their word problem video or Khan-esque explanation using an iDevice and/or Document camera, and another group could be using the SMART board notebook lesson (or laminated cards) to match word problems with equations). This is also a great idea for differentiated instruction.

How times have changed…I created the following learning station glog (“Don’t Underestimate Yourself”) for middle school mathematics less than two years ago and the video resources took me nearly all day to edit and prepare… on a PC. With the flux of mobile devices and the ease of media production on these devices, I was able to knock out the video resources for the equations glog in less than an hour (and that was only due to the fact that I am a bit of a perfectionist).

Glogster Learning Station: Secondary Geometry & Spatial Reasoning

 

 
2 Comments

Posted in iPad, Math, Web 2.0

 
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
 
All original content on these pages is fingerprinted and certified by Digiprove