Ode to SonicPics

Oh, SonicPics, our new favorite app. I have to give credit to my colleague Mike Amante in New Hartford, New York, who casually mentioned this app during a recent recording of Michelle Bourgeois and Katie Morrow's excellent podcast, Always On. We are always on the lookout for new apps to support student media creation, and SonicPics has yet to disappoint.

SonicPics is an app that allows students to select photos from the iPad Photo Library and then record narration to create a simple video. Kids simply swipe from one photo to the next as they talk and record their thinking. The final product can be e-mailed to the teacher as an m4v video file; if the file is too large, the teacher can transmit the video directly to the classroom computer over the network using an IP address provided by SonicPics.

SonicPics allows teachers to capture students' thinking visually and verbally, which is so powerful for young learners who may not yet be fluent readers and writers. The final products can be synced back to the iPad or shared with students via your iDisk or Dropbox. This gives students an audience and allows them to share ideas with their peers. Audio recordings also give students opportunities to self-reflec

t and self- assess, because they can listen to their recordings and re-record if they want to make improvements.

We have countless ideas for how to use this app and plan to try them all! Here are a few:

1. Create multimedia books. Students create illustrations in a drawing app like Whiteboard Lite or Drawing Pad, save the illustrations to Photos, and then pull them up in SonicPics to record the words.
2. Document a classroom experience. Load photos of a field trip, science experiment, special visitor, etc. onto the iPad and have students narrate the photos.
3. Assess a learning experience. Load photos of an individual or group working in the classroom, and then have students narrate those photos to explain their process and reflect on their learning.
4. Retell a story. Have students draw pictures to represent the beginning, middle, and end of a story, and then record their retelling.
5. Generate questions to support inquiry. Load content-related photos on the iPad. Have students select 3-5 images and record their questions. This can also be an assessment piece to collect data about the level of thinking and questioning students are engaged in.
6. Create a podcast. Use photos or student-created illustrations or diagrams as your images. Consider content-oriented podcasts, news about school, book reviews, issue-oriented podcasts -- the sky is the limit.
7. Create a weather report. Take photos out the window and narrate them with data from any weather app or website. Share it on your class home page.

If there are any SonicPics users out there, we would love to hear how you are using this app to support student learning.

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Accessing Web Content with Read It Later

I've been experimenting with Read It Later, a free app and website that allows you to save web pages for access on your iPad or other device. My colleague Begoña Cowan discovered this tool during a frenzy of app-hunting over the holiday break, and I think it has a lot of promise for organizing and sharing online resources for student access. Here's how it works.

The teacher logs in to a single shared account at readitlaterlist.com. There are a variety of third-party plug-ins and applications for managing Read It Later content, but so far I am content with the Read It Later bookmarklet. By dragging the bookmarklet to your Safari bookmarks bar, you enable your browser to save and tag web pages for future access.

When you click the Read It Later bookmarklet, a box pops up

telling you the page has been saved. You can then tag or rename that page if you wish. I am tagging links with the room number of the students who will need the link, as well as the general topic. First graders are studying Native Americans right now, so I have tagged this page as 106 tlingit. Students in 106 who are studying the Tlingit tribe will be able to find this resource easily on the iPad.

When viewing pages on the iPad in the Read It Later app, students can choose either the article view (text only) or the full web page view. The pages are downloaded to the iPad when the app is opened, so you can access the article later without an Internet connection.

Students can also add and tag sites as their research skills become more sophisticated, making Read It Later a handy shared repository of sites to support learning and research.

There are other apps, such as Instapaper and Evernote, that have similar functionality. I like the simplicity of Read It Later for our young students, but you may want to investigate other apps as well.

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Collaborating with Simplenote

The upper grade students at Burley have a number of opportunities to communicate and collaborate electronically -- student blogs and wikis, education-focused social networking, iChat, and so on -- and we often remark on how engaged and focused students are with this type of communication. Students have told us that they like the opportunity to participate at their own pace and to read the ideas of others before chiming in. They say they participate more because they can share their ideas when they have them, rather than waiting to be called on or for someone else to finish.

Simplenote is a free app that allows students to collaborate in real time using the iPad. Each iPad is set up to access a single Simplenote account. As students create their own notes, a left-hand note navigation list displays all the notes in real time. Students can pull up one another's notes to get ideas and then return to their own note to do their own writing. The teacher can access all the notes (in real time, or after the lesson) by logging in to simplenoteapp.com.

To make this work with the students, we developed a lesson to model effective collaboration using Simplenote. We begin by talking to students about how they usually share ideas with one another. Students say that they turn and talk, or talk in their learning groups, or listen to other people when the teacher calls on them. Then we explain that the iPad can give them a new way to share their ideas with one another. Using a document camera and projector, we demonstrate how to create a note in Simplenote. Then, we have a student use another iPad to create a note. Students notice instantly that the student note appears on the teacher's screen. The teacher then goes in to the student's note, reads it, reflects on a new idea, and then incorporates that new idea into his or her own note. We explain that the purpose is for everyone to generate ideas about a particular topic, but at the end of class, we want students to be able to share one idea they got from another student's note. We also make it clear that they can only write in their own note and talk about how it would negatively affect our ability to work together if people don't follow that rule.

As the students work, we circulate and prompt students to check one another's notes for new ideas. We ask them what ideas they have gotten from their classmates. At the end of class, we gather on the rug and view the list of notes in the web browser at simplenoteapp.com. Student volunteers share the ideas they got from one another as we display the notes on the screen. In this way, students can concretely see the flow of ideas from one note to another and think about how this tool can help them work together.

It's pretty exciting for the students to be able to brainstorm with continuous and ongoing collaboration with the entire class. Students who have a hard time getting started can start by reading ideas of others. Students who are eager to jump in and can't wait can begin immediately and then expand on their initial ideas after reading classmates' notes. An additional benefit is that students are building early digital citizenship skills and, of course, applying their developing writing skills in a meaningful way. We're looking forward to applying this tool in student inquiry as students generate questions and brainstorm project ideas.

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Next steps: getting ready for inquiry

Although we are still adjusting to the routines in our literacy centers, we are ready to begin using the iPads in our content area instruction and inquiry. A little background: our faculty has both studied and been featured in a book/DVD series by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey "Smokey" Daniels entitled Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action. Inquiry-based learning has led to increased student choice and engagement, deep and meaningful questioning, and real-world advocacy and action. Our iPad grant proposal centered around incorporating the iPad into all the stages of student inquiry for our first and second graders, in addition to supporting their literacy development. Now that we have a good foundation for using the iPads in literacy centers, we are ready to integrate them into into content area instruction.

Our first step will be to use multimedia to inspire student questioning and build background knowledge. Teachers are preparing slide shows and selecting web sites about their upcoming content area units, and these will be used alongside print resources in the classroom to help guide students as they wonder about the content and plan their learning. First and second graders are visual learners, and the iPads bring them the ability to access, manipulate, and think about images at their own pace. Images inspire wondering and questioning. Questions build student interest and frame future research. Questioning is a key component in the inquiry process, and I think the iPads will make it a richer, more engaging experience for the students.

Students will be using the app Simplenote to list the questions they have as they view the images and slide shows. I have become a little obsessed with Simplenote today -- as the name implies, it's incredibly simple. Students can create their own notes on individual iPads, and the teacher can view them all in real time in a single browser window. I'll post again once I see how it works in practice, but my test runs have been left me very optimistic. And best of all, it's free!

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First day with student literacy centers!

Today our second graders started using the iPads in their literacy centers. We set up the iPads so there are three screens of apps -- one for literacy practice, one for art and publication, and a third for teacher apps. As each group of 5 students came to the center, I showed them how to navigate through the screens and, specifically, how to navigate a video. There was a little confusion between the video progress bar (at the top) and the volume slider (near the playback controls), so that was something we talked about.

For today's content, we used a sight word video that prompted students to read the word silently, pause the movie, write the word, and then listen to the word and a sentence including the word. Sight word recognition will help second graders build reading fluency and comprehension, and practicing sight words is always an important activity in the early months of the school year. Without exception, the activity went smoothly and students were engaged throughout. I am thinking of making a companion video to this one that will present the words in more rapid succession to help with memorization. The current video is more of a guess-and-check model, where students can check their reading by hearing the word after they've had some time to read it to themselves.

Tomorrow we will use the Spell Blocks with Sight Words application as a second literacy center activity, and then begin the fluency recordings. I will also teach the student tech teams how to set up the literacy center themselves. We are so excited to be underway!

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First Impressions

As Carolyn and Tina mentioned before, the iPad training last week was incredibly useful and exciting. There were frequent eruptions of “Ooh!” – “Wow!” – “Cool!” from the squad of iPad grant recipients as we navigated our way through a host of new software and tools. I can’t wait to see the reaction from our first and second grade students when they get their hands on one!

I’ve already come across an abundance of programs for the iPad that should be useful in the classroom, and everything that I mention in this post is completely free!

First off, I had never used iTunesU prior to the training, and I am still in awe of the amount of professional quality material available. There appears to be an excellent mix of resources for students from early elementary all the way to post-graduate adult learners. There are audio recordings of children’s fairy tales, there are videos of high school students working on service learning projects, and there are video recordings of entire college courses given by professors from universities such as MIT, Duke or Yale. Of course, it’s all free. Just download the latest version of iTunes, open it up, go into the iTunes Store, and there will be a tab at the top labeled “iTunesU”. This is something that you can do on any working computer - - Mac, PC, or as we were shown, iPad.

On to programs specific to the iPad, downloadable through the AppStore on the iPad:

Toy Story Digital Book
This is a great piece of introductory software for younger children available on the iPad. It is an interactive book of the first Toy Story movie. The book can simply be read to you, each word being highlighted as it is spoken, or you can record yourself reading the text on each page and play it back for later listening.

BrainPop Movie of the Day
This app features a different BrainPop movie each day for free, no account required.

iWriteWords Lite
The free version of a letter-writing game on the iPad. It gives stroke by stroke instruction for each letter, reads the word you’ve just written, and gives you a “Good job!” when you’ve finished.

Puppet Pals
The free version of this program gives you access to eight old western characters or “puppets” to create a story with. You select the actors, the backdrop, animate the puppets across the backdrop, then play it back and watch your story unfold.

A Story Before Bed
This app comes with one free book, “The Frog Princess” by Adrian Klein, with the ability to buy more books through their store for use in the app. The functionality of it is a bit limited with only an iPad, as you need a desktop/laptop to create your own recordings. But the presentation of the included story is top-notch and if you have the resources this could be a very useful program.

History Maps
Being a map-lover myself, I’ve used this multiple times already just out of personal curiosity. It features a host of maps from throughout history of various geographical locations. The maps look great and are incredibly easy to navigate on the iPad. You can browse through a long list of available maps sorted by a variety of possible areas. Sort by geographical location, time in history, or topic.

World Book: This Day in History
Another program I’ve been clicking on every day I’ve sat down with the iPad. Each day you can view a variety of historical events, births, and deaths. You can click on any piece of information to read more about it.

VideoScience
This application should be incredibly useful for any teacher of science or student with an interest in hands-on experimentation. Science teacher Dan Menelly provides text and video of him performing a multitude of experiments appropriate for the classroom.


I feel like that should be enough for a first impression, but my list is long and I’ll continue to post with references to anything I find that could be useful in the classroom.

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