Friday, October 19, 2012

Our 1st iPad Project: Create a Short Story

As most of you know, we were able to buy 2 iPads with our Fall Festival money. We already had 4, but I wanted to have 6 so that we could use them with the Storia app in guided reading. I also want to explore how iPads can be used as a creation tool and not just for apps. For this project, we used:

Pages
Doodle Buddy
Dropbox

We've been working on writing and grammar skills since the beginning of the year. We've also worked through the writing process quite a bit. The students have writer's notebooks where they keep their stories that are in the editing/revising process and they've published on different sheets of paper. This time, I wanted to try a different type of publishing.

To prepare for this, I spent one day of guided reading allowing the students to get familiar with Doodle Buddy. I knew this is where we would create our illustrations. I also wanted them to get the "play" out of their systems so we could get down to business. We also spent one rotation of centers last week writing our short stories (and I did stress short for this project) in our writer's notebook and editing/revising them. This week was a 2 day week because of fall break. No centers or guided reading=perfect time to publish. :-)

Students all had assignments to do while the six iPads rotated through the students and they typed their short stories into Pages. I also have two computers in the room that had Pages and they were able to type there too.

**Warning: You must have iWork '09 to move the document from the computer to the iPad.**

Next, the students used Doodle Buddy to do ONE illustration each for their story. They saved their drawing to the camera roll. They could then go into their document in Pages and add their illustration to their story.

**Time Saving Tip: Configure Dropbox to automatically upload your photos and store them. That way the students don't have to use the same iPad they typed on to create their illustrations, they'll automatically go to dropbox from the camera roll and you can pull them in that way. This was a two day process, so we typed one day and illustrated the next.

After the students got their stories typed and illustrated, my job began so we could showcase them to parents and you all! From their document, I used--Open in another app--export as a PDF--and saved in Dropbox. From Dropbox, I uploaded to my Google Drive account so that I could share the link. All this was done in a two day period, so it is possible! Later, the kid's projects will go up on a classroom wiki. I just couldn't wait to get these out there!

Whew! And here they are....in all their fifth grade glory! Great job, kiddos!! :)

Mrs. Lanning's Homeroom:
Brad
Campbell
Hailey B.
Justin
Kerigan
Matt B.
Preston
Skylar
Nathaniel
Teagan
Colby
Triston
Aaron
Christian
Matthew
Rachel
Hailey L.
Jake
Riley
Savannah
 
Mrs. McClary's Homeroom:
Alex
Damien
Danyela
Kennedy
Garren
Jordan
Katherine
Leland
Levin
Shylei
Taylor
Zac
Layla
Hailee
Meghan
Summer






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