Flipping for Nonfiction

Flipboard has revolutionized the way my students look at, share, and respond to nonfiction.  Flipboard is an app that takes multiple informational sites and creates a digital magazine to flip through. It is simple and easily accessible for adults and students alike.  This doesn't sound like such a big deal – kids can pick up a magazine and read articles any time they want to. Why do it digitally? 

Timely material 

Flipboard uses the RSS feed of any website.  If a site has an RSS feed, you can add it to the shared student Flipboard account, and every student iPad will receive updated content as it becomes available.  This means that my students' digital Flipboard magazines are updated daily and include current events, science concepts, and any other type of current content you can find online.  Since the "magazine" is ever-changing, 5th graders can't wait to see what they will find next. 

This is what they saw on Monday...

...but on Tuesday they saw this!

Real world reading 

The third time we used Flipboard, one of my students said, "It's like you are teaching us to read like adults do everyday!" The reading that we do in school should inspire students to create habits that can last a life time.  When these young people grow into adults, they will have an academic way to look at digital reading. 

Accessible for all

I have loaded over 20 sites for students to follow on their iPads, which gives them a vast amount of choices.  Students make their own decisions about what they read on a regular basis.  Some sites are more challenging than others, but they all contain a variety of pictures, tweets, and comments that make the articles accessible, even if the student can't read the full article. Obviously, my instructional choices and conferring ensure that the students choose articles that are appropriate for them. 

How we got started with Flipboard

As with everything that I do on the iPad, I started with just having the students access Flipboard. I had a  few questions prior to starting.  Will the students be able to navigate Flipboard? Would flipping the pages and the amount of content overwhelm them? How could we use the app for more than reading independently? What technical skills would students need to use this tool and share their reading? To answer these questions, I had to actually use it with the students and see what happened.

Start reading

This is an easy place to start! I wanted to see if there was enough material to keep their interest.  I knew that, without student buy-in, nothing else I did with Flipboard would get off the ground.  After two days of investigating the articles in Flipboard, I saw students whispering and sharing their screens with each other.  They were energized and wanted to share what they were learning, so I knew I had to give them a platform to do so. 

Promote sharing

Edmodo was the obvious choice for sharing.  Students already had accounts, they knew how to use it, and I could easily set up one large group or smaller groups based on student interests.  Students shared links to articles they read so their classmates could read them. 

  

Apply non-fiction reading strategies
We shared links to articles for a few weeks, but students quickly grew out of it, in true 10 year old fashion.  As students shared, they wanted to have conversations about the articles that they read, and they began talking about these articles during reading instruction.  I asked my students to take the reading strategies that I was teaching and apply them to their Flipboard reading.  They did this by completing graphic organizers in Pages, taking a screen shot of that Pages document, posting it as an image in Edmodo, and including the link from their article in their post. This gave their peers access to the article, as well as to the student's notes and thinking -- and it gave me a way to assess the depth of their Flipboard reading and their use of comprehension strategies. You can see below how these posts inspired other students to reply and engage in an online discussion about the articles.

Flipboard continues to grow like wildfire in my classroom.  Students are engaging in conversations about reading strategies in authentic ways via the digital world.  They see themselves as powerful consumers of nonfiction and don't shy away from choosing to read in that area.  I love it when an app I "play around with" becomes a powerful educational tool in the classroom. 

Making Book Trailers

Image created on the iPad using Snapseed,
PS Express, and Keynote.

Last year I tried my hand at having my class make book trailers.  They did a decent job given that I wasn't quite sure how to jump into this new medium.  Well, this year we've learned from the past and I'm proud to say that the fifth graders are creating book trailers that are better than ever! 

One of the issues that we had last year is that we didn't have any student created examples to look at.  While the professional ones are nice to get a feel for the genre it helps to have examples that are within the students' reach.  This also gave us the opportunity to examine them and notice which elements we thought worked well and which elements needed improvement.  Once we spent some time immersing ourselves in the genre we began planning.  I ask students to consider what things they would explicitly and implicitly share with their audience, how they would build the mood and tone of the trailers, and what types of images they would use to accomplish this.

We also addressed copyright issues.  As fifth graders, they are ready to think about intellectual property and what that means.  Students were asked to create all of their own images or they could use stock images that I found through Photopin and give credit to the artist.  (I pulled appropriate images to share with them through Dropbox and organized them by the search term I used so that I could locate the links to give credit later.)

Before students started I did a quick tour of some of the apps they might use to create or edit images.  These included Drawing Pad, Snapseed, PS Express, Scribblify, Magnetic Letters, and Keynote.  We spent several days just creating images for the trailers before students even began with iMovie.  Once students had several images I did a quick tour of iMovie, showing them some basics on how to get started.  Over the next few days I or a student periodically introduced small things like how to lengthen or change transitions and how to add sound effects.  This workshop model enabled students to experiment as they worked and internalize how to use iMovie to achieve the desired effect.  I also gave students a checklist to use as they worked to help them reflect on the images, music, and overall feel of their book trailer.  To see our final products please visit our 302 Book Trailers Vimeo Channel!

 

https://vimeo.com/channels/302booktrailers

Interactive Anchor Charts

A while back I wrote a post about two great resources for math instructional videos.  I enjoy exposing kids to these instructional videos because it gives them the opportunity to hear other teachers and students explain things.  After much hemming and hawing I’ve found a way to easily and quickly make and integrate my own videos into my classroom.  Although I’ve recently been using Explain Everything as my go to app for making teaching videos I’ve found that the Show Me app actually works better for my math videos.  Essentially it’s the simplest solution with the least amount of time investment on my part.

After a lesson I will do a quick 2-3 minute review video on Show Me.  I then upload this video my Show Me account.  It’s a very simple interface, extremely easy to use, and all you have to do is make a free account.  Using a QR code generator I make a QR code that links directly to the video and then tape it to the anchor chart.  Bam!  Automatic interactive anchor charts.  If a student is working in class and needs a quick reminder on a strategy or concept all they have to do it refer to the chart and they get a written tutorial from the lesson as well as a video tutorial from me.  Here's an example of one of the videos I made.



Because I have limited space, as I take anchor charts down I take the QR code and put it with a title on a board of topics and QR codes.  Even though the chart may be down or buried under other charts students can still access the review learning by just scanning the code with their iPad.  The other benefit is that they can access my Show Me videos from home so if they forget how to do something as they work on homework they can hear me explain it again.

I haven’t tried this with longer lessons but I think for a simple, fast, and effective way to capture snapshots of our teaching to share with students Show Me is a great solution.  You can keep videos private (only those with the link can access) or publish your work to share with other teachers and students around the globe.  There is no need to save or sync to the ipads.  Plus it’s free!

First Impressions

As Carolyn and Tina mentioned before, the iPad training last week was incredibly useful and exciting. There were frequent eruptions of “Ooh!” – “Wow!” – “Cool!” from the squad of iPad grant recipients as we navigated our way through a host of new software and tools. I can’t wait to see the reaction from our first and second grade students when they get their hands on one!

I’ve already come across an abundance of programs for the iPad that should be useful in the classroom, and everything that I mention in this post is completely free!

First off, I had never used iTunesU prior to the training, and I am still in awe of the amount of professional quality material available. There appears to be an excellent mix of resources for students from early elementary all the way to post-graduate adult learners. There are audio recordings of children’s fairy tales, there are videos of high school students working on service learning projects, and there are video recordings of entire college courses given by professors from universities such as MIT, Duke or Yale. Of course, it’s all free. Just download the latest version of iTunes, open it up, go into the iTunes Store, and there will be a tab at the top labeled “iTunesU”. This is something that you can do on any working computer - - Mac, PC, or as we were shown, iPad.

On to programs specific to the iPad, downloadable through the AppStore on the iPad:

Toy Story Digital Book
This is a great piece of introductory software for younger children available on the iPad. It is an interactive book of the first Toy Story movie. The book can simply be read to you, each word being highlighted as it is spoken, or you can record yourself reading the text on each page and play it back for later listening.

BrainPop Movie of the Day
This app features a different BrainPop movie each day for free, no account required.

iWriteWords Lite
The free version of a letter-writing game on the iPad. It gives stroke by stroke instruction for each letter, reads the word you’ve just written, and gives you a “Good job!” when you’ve finished.

Puppet Pals
The free version of this program gives you access to eight old western characters or “puppets” to create a story with. You select the actors, the backdrop, animate the puppets across the backdrop, then play it back and watch your story unfold.

A Story Before Bed
This app comes with one free book, “The Frog Princess” by Adrian Klein, with the ability to buy more books through their store for use in the app. The functionality of it is a bit limited with only an iPad, as you need a desktop/laptop to create your own recordings. But the presentation of the included story is top-notch and if you have the resources this could be a very useful program.

History Maps
Being a map-lover myself, I’ve used this multiple times already just out of personal curiosity. It features a host of maps from throughout history of various geographical locations. The maps look great and are incredibly easy to navigate on the iPad. You can browse through a long list of available maps sorted by a variety of possible areas. Sort by geographical location, time in history, or topic.

World Book: This Day in History
Another program I’ve been clicking on every day I’ve sat down with the iPad. Each day you can view a variety of historical events, births, and deaths. You can click on any piece of information to read more about it.

VideoScience
This application should be incredibly useful for any teacher of science or student with an interest in hands-on experimentation. Science teacher Dan Menelly provides text and video of him performing a multitude of experiments appropriate for the classroom.


I feel like that should be enough for a first impression, but my list is long and I’ll continue to post with references to anything I find that could be useful in the classroom.