iPad Scout- Week 3

When I asked my students on Friday what they thought about the iPad scout this week, most agreed that it felt "easier" than the past two weeks. I completely agree. I think it has been a combination of getting used to using the iPads (the students and me) and getting a few bugs worked out, but this week, things seemed to flow much more easily than the past two weeks. Here are a few of the highlights of our week:

What we did this week:
- Popplet app: We have been writing poetry, and we learned about similes and I was about to print a graphic organizer for the students to use to organized their ideas for their simile poem. Then I remembered an app I had seen called Popplet. It is a kid-friendly graphic organizing app in which students can touch the screen to create a new Popplet (or bubble). They can organize the Popplets and connect them to make a web, which we use often. I love this for several reasons- #1, we saved paper. I know that this is just a substitution for something we could have easily done on paper, but we are all about being green in the Bartin Bunch. #2- The engagement was high. Students loved using this app, and it was very easy to use. The web I was going to print for them had 5 bubbles to write in, but they loved it so much, most kids filled more than 5 Popplets with their ideas.

Eddie's Popplet about his dog.

Sydney's Popplet- She really fills my bucket!

- We did our first word processing on the iPads this week. Students had written autobiography poems, so we decided to publish them. I went back and forth on which app to use, but finally decided on Notability. Students have gotten comfortable with this app, plus it is easy to insert pictures and save to Dropbox directly from the app. This went very well. The only complaint was that Notability does not have options like centering text (which many students wanted to do). Students took a picture of themselves which they inserted onto the page with their poem,  and saved them to their Dropbox folder. I could then open the files and print them from my computer, and parents can view them from Dropbox.

- In reading, we have been practicing reading poetry with expression. I wanted students to record themselves reading a favorite poem aloud. I had a difficult time finding the right app to do this. At first we tried Notability, since you can record voice, but the students could not open the file in Dropbox and listen to it on their iPads. I then wanted to use AudioBoo, which I have heard good things about, but it is rated as ages 12 and up, so the students couldn't access it. Finally, I found Voice Record Pro. It is a free app that will save voice recordings directly to Dropbox. It is easy to record, but then it takes about 6 steps to rename the file and save it to Dropbox. It did the trick though, and now students will be able to listen to their own and each other's recordings this week as we critique our reading fluency.

- Educreations- I talked about this app last week. It is great for math, as students can work out math problems and mirror them to the projector or record their word. This week, I used it as an incentive. I was looking for students who showed great math thinking and could explain their work aloud, and I chose some to make videos about addition strategies. I will be posting these to our class website, to help students and parents who want to know more about how we solve problems. I love it!

Here is Pete, explaining how to use splitting to solve 3-digit addition problems:



- We have been using Safari more often. We learned how to make bookmarks to our favorite sites, which is very handy and saves time later on.

- We took the Edison test on the iPads. This did not go as well as I had hoped. None of the images would display on the iPad, which was especially difficult on the math assessment. Next month, we will take the Edison on the laptops, which my students refer to as "the old-fashioned way."

One thing that I have noticed is my students' use of the word scout. It has become part of our vocabulary. I have heard comments such as "I am going to scout this out", or "well, things don't always go perfectly when you are scouting." They even use this term when we are not using iPads at all.