Technology Tuesday: Graphic Novels (Finally!)

My third graders do a big research unit on forces of nature right when we come back from winter break. In the past, each class has researched a different force of nature ie hurricane, tsunami, tornado, etc and then each group within the class writes an article for the class newspaper devoted to that force of nature. Well, this year, since I now have iPads in the library, I was talking with a colleague on day and we came up with he idea of having the kids do a whole lot of app smashing and make a graphic novel! It was a really cool idea and we played and played with it, wrote out directions, and tested the directions and tested it some more and played some until we were sure it was fool proof. Ha - that is until one of the apps apparently updated and part of the directions didn't work and then scribble press wouldn't upload the finished books and we had a fire drill and 2 unplanned assemblies and I had to make a plan B and a plan C.  Lucky for me I have awesome 3rd grade teachers who just go with it!

So this is what we did.  The kids researched their force of nature and their specific question in order to make their page of the class graphic novel.  Then they used a story board to plan out the pages/s to give information about their group's specific question.  They then took one or two pictures of each person in the their group and found some backgrounds of their topic in SIRS Discoverer. Then in Puppet Pals they made characters out of themselves and put themselves in a scene using the various backgrounds they chose and took screen shots. Then here's where it gets interesting... In all of our testing the screen shots from puppet pals we put into the StoryMe app and they speech bubbles we added.  In real life, with 21 kids, the StoryMe app would not find the pictures of the kids on top of the background in the camera roll. It would see the individual pics of the kids and the pics of the background but not he screen shot of the kids ON the back ground.  Insert Plan B... 

The kids make the frame of their pages in Strip Design and save those to the camera roll and then insert that page into Story Me to add the speech bubbles. Story Me is a really cool app that cartoonizes pictures. Then they email it to me and I put the whole book together using the PAID app Scribble Press and then we share 7books on the iPads in the 7 classrooms so the kids can read the other classes books and answer questions during their station work. Insert Plan C...

The PAID Scribble Press app would not upload the book all the way for some reason. So after several failed attempts I tried using the FREe app Book Press and voila it worked beautifully.

Here are a few pages from our tornado book

I might be a little biased, but I think they turned out great and will definitely be doing it again.  What kind of products do your students create for research?

3 for Thursday

I bought 3 new apps this week for the iPads in my library.  I am lucky enough to have 20 iPads housed in the library that the teachers can check out, but I get to use them when they don't.  Our PTA gave us some money to use for apps, so of course I started spending right away.

Strip Designer

Strip Designer was the first one I bought.  I have seen so many greatl ideas for this app on Pinterest, I just had to have it.  I can't wait to get classes in for inferencing, categorizing, labeling...There are so many cool things.  I think the kids will love the speech bubbles and cool text effects of this app (they might even forget they are learning).

                                Puppet Pals HD      Puppet Pals 2
I couldn't decide between the two, so I got both Puppet Pals.  I love the sets of Puppet Pals HD, but in Puppet Pals 2, the characters mouths move and you can move the arms and legs.  The sets are more like real scenes instead of play stages and the characters can move through the scene as it is moving. You've already seen how we used Puppet Pals 2 for Digital Citizenship.

Scribble Press

This one I am least familiar with but I wanted a book maker and I was debating between two.  This one looked like it has some great features and they are working on a web version that will work with the app version.  

How have you used these apps?

    

Technology Tuesday: Puppet Pals Videos

Digital Citizenship is a huge push in our district these days.  So much so that the technology department created 4 modules for elementary teachers to go over with their classes during the 1st nine weeks.  The 4th lesson is about copyright and plagiarism.  Last year, the teachers were responsible for teaching all 4 parts and when it came time for researching in the library, it seemed the students did not make the connection about citing sources that they learned in the Digital Citizenship lesson at the beginning of the year and research information.  So this year, the librarians presented that module to the classes. (Yes, ALL of them). In the 4th grade module, there are a couple of scenarios that they kids are supposed to discuss as a table and then share out if what the person did was OK or not.  Rather than discuss and share, we did Puppet Pal 2 skits to share.  This was my first time to use the paid Puppet Pals 2 and I must say, it was really cool and the kids LOVED it.  Below is an example of a kid created skit.  The scenario was that Samantha found a report on the Internet and she was going to use that but change the first sentence. Was that OK or No Way?

For the first time being exposed to the app, I thought they did pretty good.  They loved that they could move the characters arms and legs.  Have you used Puppet Pals or Puppet Pals 2 for some cool videos?