The students in Ms. Rollin's 4th grade are studying the novel, Frindle. In this book, a boy name Nick challenges his no-nonsense, dictionary-loving teacher to an all out war on words.
After reading the book, they used the Socrative student app to take an online assessment that was created by their teacher. This program works on an iPad or on a computer. The program also grades the assessment automatically for the teacher, cool! As they read the book, they used Popplet Lite, a free graphic organizer program similar to Inspiration, to record the main idea and supporting details of each chapter. To complete the book study, pairs of students will take one chapter each and use the Comic Life app to create a graphic novel of Frindle. Students will use their hand drawn pictures as well of "App" drawn pictures for their graphic novel.
A few interesting things happened in this class while I "helped" them learn about their apps. One, I noticed a few kids ON THEIR OWN use the invert colors feature to add contrast to their screens because it helps them read better. How'd they do that? Go to: Settings-General-Accessibility-Triple-click Home and choose INVERT COLORS. Two, a student drew a picture of Nick using Draw Free, and I asked him if he needed help getting the picture to the camera roll and I reminded him of the SEND button. He said he remembered that but what he liked to do was just make a screenshot. I bantered with, but then you will have the toolbar showing on the left. Oh, no problem, says he, all you have to do is crop it and he proceeded to show me how to use the Photos app to crop it in 2 seconds or less, wow! I'd never even thought of that! He was so proud to teach me and I was so proud to learn from him! Thirdly, the other interesting event was that while I was showing them the ins and outs of Comic Life, they seemed to already know how to use it. So I stopped TEACHING it and just let them start using it. I's amazing, it seems like this device encourages the whole idea of the "Entrepreneurial Learner", it's a device that is like a human extension of the arm and brain, it just makes sense and we can just use it. Hmmmm....
After reading the book, they used the Socrative student app to take an online assessment that was created by their teacher. This program works on an iPad or on a computer. The program also grades the assessment automatically for the teacher, cool! As they read the book, they used Popplet Lite, a free graphic organizer program similar to Inspiration, to record the main idea and supporting details of each chapter. To complete the book study, pairs of students will take one chapter each and use the Comic Life app to create a graphic novel of Frindle. Students will use their hand drawn pictures as well of "App" drawn pictures for their graphic novel.
A few interesting things happened in this class while I "helped" them learn about their apps. One, I noticed a few kids ON THEIR OWN use the invert colors feature to add contrast to their screens because it helps them read better. How'd they do that? Go to: Settings-General-Accessibility-Triple-click Home and choose INVERT COLORS. Two, a student drew a picture of Nick using Draw Free, and I asked him if he needed help getting the picture to the camera roll and I reminded him of the SEND button. He said he remembered that but what he liked to do was just make a screenshot. I bantered with, but then you will have the toolbar showing on the left. Oh, no problem, says he, all you have to do is crop it and he proceeded to show me how to use the Photos app to crop it in 2 seconds or less, wow! I'd never even thought of that! He was so proud to teach me and I was so proud to learn from him! Thirdly, the other interesting event was that while I was showing them the ins and outs of Comic Life, they seemed to already know how to use it. So I stopped TEACHING it and just let them start using it. I's amazing, it seems like this device encourages the whole idea of the "Entrepreneurial Learner", it's a device that is like a human extension of the arm and brain, it just makes sense and we can just use it. Hmmmm....
