When you begin hearing choruses of "this is fun" during a lesson, you know you are doing something right! My school received a classroom set of iPads at the beginning of the school year, and my goal was to find ways to incorporate the iPads that would be fun and beneficial to our students' learning process. We decided to start out with free apps, since there are so many free ones, and we have found many that are wonderful. One of those apps is called Sock Puppet, and students are able to create a puppet show by selecting their own puppets and backgrounds. Then, they record their voices, and the app turns it into a cartoonish voice. The students absolutely love it, and surprisingly, they are very serious about getting their shows just right.
I had a class of 7th grade Social Studies students come into the library to create their puppet shows. The teacher was using this as an end of unit review, and the students had to write interviews based on several different conflicts they were studying. It was simple, fun and educational! What could be better?
The videos can be uploaded to YouTube or Facebook, neither of which I could do at school. So I resorted to taking a video of the iPad with my phone. Sorry for the poor quality, but you will get the idea!
I have shared your excitement when providing an assignment around iPads and having students become not only engrossed but immensely concerned about getting it right to the point that they will willingly ignore the recess bell. At the end of last year, I designed a lesson around a book similar to what you did with your students where we read “Days of Terror” a historical fiction by Barbara Smucker, more commonly known perhaps for “Underground to Canada”. Now, this is probably a topic that wouldn’t be necessarily high on the interest level of most Grade 5’s. Yet, they were so busy working on a movie trailer demonstrating an event that took place a hundred years ago, comparing their drawings, writing and research to the rubric I had provided, that they had all but pushed me out of the process. Success! What I found and continue to find most inspiring is how learning like this invites collaboration - students holding up their iPads to share how they had incorporated text into a photograph they had just downloaded or discussing ways to make a montage of photos that they could put into their presentation. Every day I am pleasantly surprised by the ‘voice’ my 9-year old students have once their attention is captured. I do appreciate how your goal is so much more than just ‘fun’, but is rather making the use of technology ‘beneficial’ to student learning. Just handing out computers isn’t going to have much effect – likely none. But integrating technology in a way that transforms classrooms into places where students can ask their own questions and find their own answers will continue to transform the way we think about school.
I have shared your excitement when providing an assignment around iPads and having students become not only engrossed but immensely concerned about getting it right to the point that they will willingly ignore the recess bell. At the end of last year, I designed a lesson around a book similar to what you did with your students where we read “Days of Terror” a historical fiction by Barbara Smucker, more commonly known perhaps for “Underground to Canada”. Now, this is probably a topic that wouldn’t be necessarily high on the interest level of most Grade 5’s. Yet, they were so busy working on a movie trailer demonstrating an event that took place a hundred years ago, comparing their drawings, writing and research to the rubric I had provided, that they had all but pushed me out of the process. Success! What I found and continue to find most inspiring is how learning like this invites collaboration - students holding up their iPads to share how they had incorporated text into a photograph they had just downloaded or discussing ways to make a montage of photos that they could put into their presentation. Every day I am pleasantly surprised by the ‘voice’ my 9-year old students have once their attention is captured. I do appreciate how your goal is so much more than just ‘fun’, but is rather making the use of technology ‘beneficial’ to student learning. Just handing out computers isn’t going to have much effect – likely none. But integrating technology in a way that transforms classrooms into places where students can ask their own questions and find their own answers will continue to transform the way we think about school.
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