Photofunia

I thought I would take the opportunity to share a fun, web-based tool. With Photofunia, you can create really cool images with your photos by adding one of hundreds of effects. It is extremely easy to use and works just as well on iPads. You can put your photo on a magazine cover, a billboard, as a portrait on the wall of an art gallery and so, so, so many other options.

It's ease of use makes Photofunia the perfect tool for all ages of students and makes a perfect addition to documents and presentations. I also think it could serve as a fantastic writing prompt. When you check it out and see the fun settings you can put photos into.

And best of all - it provides the students (and teachers) with so much fun and motivation!

Check it out.

iTunesU

Even though it's just for iPads I have fallen back in love with iTunesU ever since you were able to create courses on an iPad. I think it might be that whole anywhere/anytime thing. iTunesU has always  been a great way to share resources. For things like iBooks and Beat the Teachers I think schools are crazy if they don't start collaborating on courses in year groups. I recently created Beat the Teachers of the first 200 of our school sight words and shared with the whole school. Wouldn't it be fantastic if someone else created mental maths Beat the Teachers and someone else created Beat the Teachers with phonic words or picture ones for phonemic awareness.

You could even each make books in Book Creator ( the easiest book creating app in history) and share them with your other like years, and you have guided readers. They would have exactly the content and vocabulary you want. To share a Book Creator to an iTunesU course, I found the easiest way was to email to myself as an ePub and add it to the course from a computer. I have been having a play with making games in book creator using pictures or words as links to other pages. They are visually appealing and easy for younger students. When you add them to a course as an ePub other teachers can download to iBooks and use.

Of course, you can still create fully interactive iBook Author books and add them to the course also. I added some simple comprehension passages and quizzes that I made in iBook Author. I also made Stick Around games and shared to the course via google drive. Now I am just waiting to see what fantastic things other teachers at the school create and share.

Blended Learning

There are so many great tools for blended learning and so many that can be used across different devices. With blended learning you are looking at students doing part of the lesson at home or at their own pace in class. I do love creating and presenting lessons using these tools but, at this time of the year, they are perfect for assessment.  My favourites for this purpose are Nearpod, Kahoot (you need to create lessons on getkahoot.com and students access lesson on kahootit.com), Socrative and Padlet just to name a few.

The Shift

It's very easy, when iPads first come into a school to get caught up in the device. It is, after all, a very cool device. As much as you talk about it just being a 'tool', it takes a real shift in thinking to realise what that means. When we first got iPads and I started reading about how other schools use them I read of some schools who did not download any 'content' or ' consumption ' apps. I really wanted to follow that idea but I was not that brave. It is really cool though that those teachers in our school who have achieved that shift in thinking are definitely the ones who use their iPads the most and are also the ones who have deleted all of their consumption apps. Many of the apps we use most frequently at KPS are the ones we have used from the start and there are some very cool newer ones. On my previous blog www.ipadsatkps.blogspot.com. I listed apps quite often - many of those apps are still favourites. We still make QR Codes, create ePubs and workflows but the use of technology is just so much more embedded into many classrooms. One of the coolest things is that teacher and student made games are replacing pre made apps. I have been trying to get people to do this for a long time but, finally, people are discovering the value of it.

Now that iTunesU courses can be made on iPads, I think that opens up a whole heap of opportunities. I am hoping teachers will create and share courses or even collaborate on courses for their students. I recently created a course with phonological awareness, phonics and sight word activities for students from Kindy to year three and shared it across the school. I am hoping teachers will take this idea and tweak it to create what they want.

iMovie is still the main movie making app we use and now that I have actually bothered to learn how to detach the voice, our movies we create to show parents look far more professional - starting with an interview and then continuing the interview with different images.

Keynote is still my favourite slideshow app for presentations, choose your own adventure stories and games.

Book Creator is still my favourite app for making books, portfolios, ePubs and choose your own adventure stories  as it is just so easy to use.

Other apps that I still love are PuppetPals, SonicPics, Strip Designer, PicCollage, Tellagami, Explain Everything, Educreations, Haiku Deck, BaiBoard, TinyTap, Socrative, Nearpod. Some of the newer apps and tools, some of which I did blog about, include:

Thinglink - interactive posters and just so easy to use
Adobe Voice - slide show presentations with voice and cool formatting
BaiBoard and Padlet - sharing ideas on a wall
Stick Around - making games that are fully editable
Hopscotch - drag and drop coding to make games
Stop Motion - stop motion animations and claymation
Aurasma - my personal favourite right now because it creates magic
Glogster - multi- modal lessons and activities
GreenScreen by DoInk - speaks for itself

I am certain I am forgetting some apps but I will be back.