Technology Tuesday: 30 Hands

Have you heard of the 30 Hands App?

 I hadn't until last Monday at our Elementary Library meeting and boy have I been missing out.  It is an app similar to Educreations or ShowMe in the fact that you can upload pictures and then record. You can also write or add shapes to the pictures (haven't played with that very much).  But what I love about it is that each slide is its own recoding.  If you mess up, you don't have to start back at the beginning like some of the others.  That feature alone makes it a great tool for the younger kids but even better than that it is really easy to use.

Today, I used it with 1st graders for seqencing the story Bark George by Jules Feiffer

If you haven't read this book, you must!  It is a great story for sequencing, but is so silly. Kids of all ages love it (I sometimes even catch the teachers giggling).  Anyway, normally I have them sequence the story on paper, but after hearing about this app I knew I must try it.

I started off ahead of time by taking some pictures from the book with my iPad and then had to figure out how to get the pictures to all my student ipads.  I was going back and forth between Chirp and Dropbox and since I hadn't used Chirp before decided to go with Dropbox (probably a little more time consuming, but at least I knew what I was doing).  So I uploaded the pictures into Dropbox and then had to download them into the camera roll of the 11 ipads I was going to use.  (I decided to have the students work with partners)  I am sure there is an easier way to do this and would love to hear any suggestions in the comments below.  

Then when the class came in, I read them the story and we talked about the meaning of sequencing. They got their iPads and I walked them through getting the pictures into 30 Hands.  I made sure that the pictures were not in order on the camera roll so they were also out of order when dropped into 30 Hands.  

I showed them how to rearrange the pictures and record and then off they went...  They had to talk to their partner about the order of the pictures, move them and then record their retelling of the story.  

Here are 2 examples from our class today.  I love how one is short and to the point and the other is a little more wordy.  We have not spent much time recording in first grade, so there are some pauses, hesitations and talking between the partners, but over all I was pleased with all of the kids' work.  

Have you used 30 Hands before?  What apps do you like for retelling?