Yolanda Barker's Blog

Take a school-issued iPad on a field trip??? YES! I say yes. This is just what some of the students at ISA did on their field trip to the San Antonio Museum of Art. Take a look at some of the artifacts they created with the photos they took while they were there.

Some of the students sent post cards to their teachers using Bill Atkinson’s PhotoCard with information on a piece of art and a connection they found to their teacher.

Later they took the photos they had taken and created a scrapbook page using Albums FX Lite to make further connections to their curriculum.

Read, Write, Think has long been a favorite Website of mine. I love their interactives and all the great ideas they have. And now they have lodged an even more special place in my heart with their new mobile apps. The first one they came out with was Trading Cards.

This app is really well done with space to put in a photo, add information, send out in an email and even to print out.

To make the app a little fun you can use Old Booth to take your own pictures and put yourself in the era of the person you are writing about.

You really just need to download it and check it out. The ideas are endless for what you can do with it.

I love Videolicious. This app is just great: simple, clean; professional. The upgrade makes it even easier to make the videos look more the way you want. And it’s free. Can’t beat that.

Check out this summary of the French Revolution:

Studying social norms is a norm of Sociology. Cassie Allen had her students create How To guides using Snapguide to demonstrate their study and observation of social norms. In her classes there are 4 foreign exchange students. I thought this was interesting because most of the groups decided to focus on American social norms. This means that our foreign exchange students were writing about norms in a different culture (be it with an American partner). One student decided to do norms for her home country: Japan.

Check out some of the examples (click on the image to go to the guide):

Our wonderful librarian, Sharon Swarner and one of our fabulous ELA teachers, Carin Schramm teamed up to create a wonderful iPad lesson using ScribblePress. They have graciously allowed me to post their ideas for you to use and adapt. Thanks, Sharon and Carin!

The students were to be responsible for 7 of the “Canterbury Tales”. In past years, the teachers have found that the students really struggle with the language and become disengaged quickly. Carin has in the past asked students to be responsible for one of the seven tales and share with the class. In this way the students still learn and hear about all 7 of the tales but only have to struggle with the text of one of them, allowing them time to really understand the tale. They then share out to their classmates. In the past she has had them modernize the tale to make it more relevant and understandable to their peers when presenting on their tale. They have created posters and hand-drawn their illustrations. This has worked well in the past in terms of the students understanding, but she hears complaints from those students who feel they are not “artistic”. The time spent on the hand-drawn illustrations takes away from her goal of having them read, understand, and modernize the tale; which is really her ultimate goal for this particular assignment.

This year she enlisted her librarian and the iPads for help. The two of them together came up with a wonderful plan for the students. Working in 7 groups, the students were lead to “read and understand; modernize and write; and to create” a tale based on one of the seven required tales. Using the worksheet provided, students were guided to think about the characters, theme, tone, and setting to create their modernized version.

Additionally, groups were required to create some kind of written assessment for their peers to complete based on their tale. After they completed their modernized version, all groups presented to the class. Then groups swapped assessments and completed one of the 7 assessments.

Carin said she was surprised at how much they had learned from one another. She said they knew much more than in past years. The students found doing the assignment and  watching the presentations interesting. Something she had not heard in past years. Carin was happy to tell me that she found that students had put  forth more effort than in years past. She also mentioned that she felt like students who have complained about the artistic barrier with this assignment were able to better focus on the main objective of understanding the tales. She will definitely do this again.

Take a look at the sample from her students.

This is a screenshot of one page of one of the group’s work:

If you are interested in the handouts please take a look:

Canterbury Tale Project

Chaucer worksheet

Once again, Melanie Anderson at ISA has come up with a wonderful lesson using the iPads for her students. She asked the students to use any app of their choosing to illustrate their understanding of Camus’ philosophical essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus”, while connecting it to his novel, The Stranger.

Below you will see 4 examples of how students demonstrated that the existential philosophy addressed in the essay, through an allusion to Sisyphus, is illustrated in the text of the novel.

These first two examples are pages from two different examples using the app ScribblePress. Students created eBooks to illustrate their understanding.

This student used the app Puppet Pals to illustrate understanding.

This last example is created with Visual Poet.

I love the way Melanie allows the students to choose their own app to demonstrate their learning. Let’s all take a page from her book and allow students to choose their own way to demonstrate their learning.

At our high school we have a few classes of students who still need to pass the TAKS Test. This may be for a variety of reasons, but in many instances, they are second language speakers. I worked with a class of just such students. They recently finished reading Beowulf and the teacher thought it would be engaging for the kids to retell the story in the style of a comic book. There are loads of different comic book apps out there, they used ComicBook!. Take a peek at a a page from two different students’ comics.

Comic book apps are excellent for ELA. As the sample shows, you can use them for retelling stories and novels read in class such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Joyce, Camus, Rowling, etc. They are also great for retelling a historical event, science lab, or math problem. You can use them in the ELL class or a foreign language class. My healthy lifestyles teacher is going to use one for having students demonstrate the journey of the sperm to the egg (I’ll post those in a blog post of their own when they do that assignment next term). Cinema and film classes can use them for storyboarding.

Comic book apps can be used higher on the Bloom’s Taxonomy for things like personalizing, reflecting, creating a role play or creating a cover for a book or event. Students can demonstrate teh consequence of something, be it science or social. Comic books can be used to write a biography. The ideas are endless. It is a great way to create a visual representation of whatever students learn in a way that some kids really relate to.

I say check out comic book apps as a way for student to create great academic works. As I write this, I am not sure ComicBook! is my favorite comic book maker on the iPad. It is a fine app, but I may be more enamored with  Strip Designer, or Comic Life. Comic Life is pretty pricy, but for a dollar more than ComicBook!, I think Strip Designer is my fav.

Take a look at the archived video of the live stream of Lisa, Jon and me doing our panel discussion.

Lisa Johnson, Jon Samuleson and I will present  ”App-tivities in the Classroom” at Tech Forum on November 8, 2012.

Each one of us will present on the level we currently teach with. Jon will talk about apptivities in the Elmentary level, Lisa in Middle School and me in High School.

I will focus on some of these apps you see below. We each have a limited time to speak so I may not get to talk about all of them. These happen to be some of my current favorites. Some are paid and some are free, check ‘em out.

The American Library Association has “Banned Books Week”. Mr. Dehart created a great day of stations and discussion for his class surrounding this topic.

The class had finished reading Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” about censorship. Then the class divided into 5 groups. Each class had a representative from the campus club “Artists Rights Movement” (ARM). 4 of the stations had iPads while the 5th station had the ARM member.

Stations each had a task:

Station 1: The focus of  this station was definitions. The definitions station had students reviewing the concept of challenged and banned books, also highlighting what type of organizations have asked for a ban. Students wrote down definitions they found important, such as “challenged means….”students reviewed those concepts via the American Library Associaton’s website.

Station 2: Students looked at the list of banned books and chose a book they had read. In their group they discussed the book and what impact that book had on them.

Station 3: Students watched a video essay about banned books on the iPad from the chairperson of the library’s Banned Books Week. Students documented “take aways” or things they think the creator wanted the watchers to take away with them after watching the video.

Station 4: In preparation for their own interviews, students watched a video of Setphen Chbosky being interviewed and reading from his book Perks of Being a Wallflower on the iPad. Again, students were asked to do a “take away” this time focusing on what they might use in their own interviews.

Station 5: A member of ARM presented on information about a book from the banned books list that had impacted them. Similar to station 2, but this one was a pre-prepared presentation from an ARM member.

After the day of stations in class. Students in their groups were offered a choice to create bumper stickers that would give a statement of their ideology which would distill what they discussed and spoke about at the stations. Each group member would be responsible for their own sticker. A choice of writing a poem in Visual Poet is offered.

Bumper stickers made in Popplet Lite as a group: