Quick Publishing Idea

I was working with a Year 0/1 teacher who has iPads and uses them in her class for reading and maths but not for writing yet.
I suggested that she download Book Creator and use it as a quick publishing tool.

I asked her to get one child's writing book. I opened up Book Creator, tapped on the + button, selected camera and took a  photo of the child's drawing.

I then tapped on the + and selected text and typed in the student's story. We then called over the student and got her to read her story to us while I recorded it in Book Creator by tapping on + and selecting Add Sound.

This is something that can be done quite quickly when conferencing with the student.
Once you have recorded all the pages you want, this can then be shared and opened with iBooks.

• this can then become an independent reading activity within iBooks
• or a shared book mirrored to a tv, IWB or projector where you can annotate
• full stops 
• capital letters
• features of text
•  presented via projector to syndicate or school assembly
• if students have a book each, it will show the progress of writing and drawings over a year, it can be a great assessment tool and can be shared as an ePub file to parents who can open and view if they have a smart phone/iPad/tablet or software on their computers that open ePub files
• a next step is to video the child reading their story and adding the video to the page as well

Starting younger children reflecting

Kids Journal ($1.29 for iPad)
Diary writing, reflective journal for young students.




This is a great app to start young children reflecting on their day. It can be used for  for individual iPad owners and you can set up class sets of journals on one iPad.

Tap on the empty Journal box to add a new journal.
Add a photo, type in your name and choose a colour for your book.

Choose a Mood Picture
Choose a location picture

Choose a weather picture
Choose the 'Photo of the day'
Type in your reflection/journal/diary entry

These pages can be exported by tapping on the Paper Dart icon. They can be exported to iBooks, Kindle, Notability, Evernote and several more.








So it takes 5 steps to make a Journal entry

1. Choose a mood
2. Chose a location
3. Choose the weather
4. Choose a photo
5. Type in your entry

The next step could be Kidblog which is an Internet based student blogging platform and which is now available as an app
Kidblog (Free for iPhone/iPod Touch; Free for iPad)

And then there is Blogger, if your students have a Google account through Google Apps for Education then they have a 'Blogger' account. It is a great way for students to blog as there are no distractions on the app, all they can do is type a title, type a post, insert a photo and post!

5 year old Chloe, doing her favourite thing...blogging on Blogger

Photo and Text apps #1

There are many different types of photo apps available.
This is a first of a series of posts I will make on photo apps.
In this post I will be looking at apps that allow students to quickly present their photos with writing.

Halftone: (iPad and iPod Touch)
Add Effects: Yes
Text:  Speech bubbles, narrative boxes
Share: as a photo to library, send in an email

1. Take a photo or use a photo from the Library
2. Choose a paper style and layout
3. Add balloons and stamps
4. Select a font

 How could you use this in the classroom?

• Great for students who only write a few sentences

 Comic Life (iPad only)
Add Effects: No but great variety of templates to choose from
Text: Speech bubbles, narrative boxes
Share: Dropbox, WebDAV, email, Photo Library

1. Create drawings in apps such as...
2. Choose a template in Comic Life
3. Insert graphics or photos
4. Add text to speech bubbles and text boxes
5. Add more pages, add templates that are different in the number of slides that they display

How could you use this in the classroom?

• break up narratives and tell the story in different shapes and parts of the page
• use a mixture of photos and drawings
• choose templates that complement the telling of the story
• use one photo templates for students who cannot write a great amount
• create timelines
• character or plot analysis
• Procedural writing
• posters
• digital story writing

 Comic Touch: Free version has a watermark, has all other features of the Full version (iPhone version, no full iPad version)
Add Effects: Limited effects of Smudge, Bulge, Dent,  Stretch or light
Text: Speech, Thought, Whisper, Exclaim and Caption bubbles

Share: Photo Library, email

1. Choose a photo from the photo library or take a photo with the camera
2. Add Speech, Thought, Whisper, Exclaim and Caption bubbles
3. Tap on the Share button and save to Photo Library or email

How could you use this in the classroom?

• Use the photos as motivation for the writing, what are the students saying to each other
• record what people could be thinking
• great publishing tool for limited writing

Notes

The Notes app comes pre-installed on your iPad or iPod Touch.
The first line of your note becomes the title.

It has very basic capabilities but still very useful.

So how can it be used in an educational context?

If you don't have a Word Processor on your iPad or iPod Touch then you can use 'Notes' for drafting a story. I have had students use the iPod touch very successfully for drafting their writing.
It can then be sent as an email for printing out to be edited or opened in the Word Processing programme on your computer. (Tip: before printing out, set the Line Spacing to at least 2.0 in your WordProcessor so there is space for editing.)
It can also be used as a basic publishing tool. If students have drafted, edited and conferenced their writing in their book, then they can type it up onto the Notes app and then email it for printing out. It can then be decorated or illustrated by hand.

This app is great on field trips as well. Use it for writing notes.

I have had students practise their spelling words on it, much more fun then writing them out in their spelling books.

The notes app has a great search function on it. Type in a word and it will show all notes with that word in it. Great for finding notes on a common theme.

 No Distractions
What is great about using Notes in these different ways is that students can't get distracted with other tools like changing fonts and styles and adding graphics and backgrounds.

All they can do is 'write'!