Weekly Tech-y News September 3-7th

More App Smash Fun!

I love how the first grade teachers at Beartooth took my earlier PicCollage Kids + Number Pieces idea and made it even better! You can read my original post here. Instead of having their students just build two digit numbers, they added another level of awesomeness by having their students add their two digit numbers together and solve the equation! They used the FREE apps PicCollage Kids, Number Pieces and Seesaw to accomplish this. Great work!

Participate Learning Collection - Apps I like to Smash with Seesaw

I'll be presenting at NCCE 2016 in Seattle about Seesaw.  Here are the apps I'll show how to smash with Seesaw!

App Smashing a Class Dot Book!

In some kindergarten and first grade classes this week, we participated in International Dot Day (a little late, LOL) by creating our own class dot books.  Dot Day is inspired by Peter H. Reynolds' book The Dot, which is a wonderful book for encouraging creativity and confidence in being unique and working hard at something until you can be and do your very best.  The students loved this book and I was so impressed by their thoughtful reflections after reading the story.

Once we read the book, we used the FREE app Doodle Buddy to create our own dots and sign our name (just like Vashti in the book).  In one first grade class, we used the typing feature in the Doodle Buddy app to type in what is the thing they were going to work really hard at doing their very best and their answers were great: reading, writing, art, soccer, etc.

After the students created and saved their creations to the camera roll on each iPad, I used my new magical best friend, AirDrop, to quickly and easily transfer these creations onto one iPad.  You can access AirDrop by swiping up from the bottom of your iPad and opening the Control Center.  Turn AirDrop to "everyone" (otherwise, the "dropper" will need to be in your contacts).

We then "app smashed" these drawings into a class book using one of my all time favorite apps, Book Creator.  You can get a limited free version of Book Creator (that I think allows you to make one book) or you can buy the paid version for $4.99.

This app is really easy to use, and allows you and your students to create amazing books that can be published to iBooks.  After I placed the images into the class dot book, I was able to once again use AirDrop to send the books to each student's iPad - the book is now in their iBooks to be read during center time, reading time, whenever!  So cool!  The book can also be shared with parents who can open the book in their own iBooks.

Click the image below to download a copy of the book created by Mr. Anderson's first graders.  Open the link on any device that has iBooks, and you'll be able to open and read it.  

Of course, this lesson is made even better when you bring the kids boxes of Dots candy to enjoy while they're working.  They will then declare that you are the "best teacher ever!" even though they have only known you for the last 30 minutes.  :)  #candypower