Yesterday I came across the 123D Monsters app from Autodesk Inc. Of course it ticks many of my boxes as it a creative app and with monsters at its heart it means it has an almost Doctor Who theme. But putting that aside another reason to love and download this app is because though it is creative it is actually quite challenging. It would almost be what John Davitt calls “struggle ware”, i.e. it takes some perseverance to get your head around the tools and workings of the app and produce a scary looking creature.
Many apps give you almost instant results; take a snapshot, whack it through a filter and job done. This app however, requires you to spend time pinching, dragging and repositioning the virtual clay until you are ready to “bake” your beast. Don’t expect to dive right in and get instant results, it will take you some time to gain familiarity with how it all works, but it is worth it when you see the finished creatures. Once your monster has been “baked” you can then add paint or texture such as skin or feathers. Your finished monster could be printed via 3D printer or exported as a 2D image with custom effects and backgrounds.
I’d like to give this to my Year 6 pupils and ask them to create a Martian species as part of our Mars topic. It could also lead to some very descriptive and rather scary creative writing
By the way this is only my first monster, below, so I have yet to come up with a name for him. If you have a suitable name for the creature, then please let me know in the comments box.
Just the other day, myself and my brilliant colleague in Year 2 came up with a fantastic project idea. We knew we wanted to do some animation to link with their Switched on ICT unit: Animating History and we knew we wanted to stretch both the children and ourselves.
Jo’s idea was to create an animation around the people leaving the scene of the fire by boat. This can be seen in paintings such as the one below:
We recreated that scene using some foil for the Thames, fairy lights for fire and various bits of Lego to signify the escaping hoards, their boats and floating debris in the river. The children made boats and little cardboard sets and backdrops, though some boats needed scaling down a bit they were very impressive! When everything was built the class had a short intro to the app and animation processes and off they went. The app we used was iStopMotion, which due to its onion skinning tool and simplicity of operation worked fantastically. The only thing that I would change next time, would be to look at some cheap mounting for the iPads or iPod touches in order to achieve a more fluid series of shots.
Here is my “one I prepared earlier” example that I used to give the children some idea of where we were heading.
For busy teachers who need quality resources, there are probably two sites we turn to. One is Teaching Ideas and the other is Teachers Pet. Though, if I am honest I have them both on separate Chrome tabs when I am on the hunt for something for my classroom. In the past, I was probably quite snooty about sites that offered labels, word banks, posters and the like to teachers. I though teachers should make their own. But, that view was held when I was working as a consultant and I actually didn’t have my own class.
And now I am a teacher again, marking and planning take up most of my time, as indeed they should. I don’t have the time to make my own posters about parts of speech,magnets, materials, space travel or story writing. Though I may create a very interactive whiteboard file or Powerpoint on the topic, it can often be a very ephemeral resource. I often find I want to return to a topic or a teaching point a few days after I first flashed it up on-screen. Having effective and well placed visual descriptions in the room can offer a longer term reminder of key facts for my class and an aide memoir for me. They help and prompt me and my pupils during lessons on a mostly daily basis.
The resources I use from Teachers Pet are bright, colourful and very clear. I use them around my classroom and point them out during teaching, particularly at the moment when we are focussing on strengthening our understanding of parts of speech.
So, now it is even easier to browse for these resources. Now we have an app, or at least a soon to be released app from the TPet Team. I was asked to test a version of the app last week and I have since spent some time playing with it. As I was testing I was looking for bugs and glitches , but there weren’t any that I could see. Pages turned smoothly, buttons behaved, screens rendered very quickly and search boxes delivered as they should. Perhaps I had missed something.
This app is effectively a regularly updated index of thousands of useful and essential classroom resources.But then so is their website. However, I am struck by how much more natural it feels to flick and browse through these on a tablet. For regular iPad and IOS users like myself it feels so much less like work to pick up the iPad on the sofa and skim through for a space poster or writing targets , rather than powering up the ageing laptop or PC. Yes there is so much here, but the app still feels clean and tidy with lots of white space and not a hint of advertising or distraction. I think I’d like to see a similar app offering from the TES Resource bank and the collected works of Pie Corbett and then I may not have to power up my computer very often at all.
2DIY is essentially a creative tool-set that allows learners to create their own two dimensional games. In today’s changing ICT curriculum, where it is more about making and creating, 2DIY has never been more important. In the past I have been involved with working alongside Tim Rylands to showcase the power of this software both in schools and at Learning without Frontiers. 2DIY always had (and still has) that wow factor. I have had children cheer when I have announced that today’s lesson would be on 2DIY.
So, I was thrilled this week to be given a beta version of the new iPad version . I am not sure whether it will be with us tomorrow at Bett, but I will be on the 2Simple Stand on Saturday and you are welcome to nag me and have a play with my iPad.
So what is it like?
All the games making templates from the PC version are here and the graphics have been given a facelift. You can use this app to create quizzes, labelling activities and playable games. These can be saved to the app or linked into a pupil’s Purple Mash account. The app works well and there are now sticky issues, which is really good for a Beta. One difference between this and the CD version is the inclusion of a joy stick rather than the arrow keys, a clever solution and one that works well.
It is worth pointing out that there are probably only two other primary focussed game making apps in the App store. And only one of these is any good! Now that 2DIY is going to be added to our school suite of apps, we are getting closer to a complete package of the apps we need. The creators not consumers message which 2Simple evangelised us with during the original release of the software is even more true of iPads than computers. We need apps like this which allow children to build something for themselves. Rather than the glut of drill and skill and photo altering apps.
So far the response from my Year 6 Class has been along the lines of “sick” and even “cool”. One of my girls spent most of wet lunchtime building maze games. To the point where I had to wrestle the device from here as it was time for the next lesson. I am looking forward to using this app with more classes and building it into a programme of Games Based Learning and Games Design. It is the missing link between Scratch and Kodu!
A few years ago I discovered Clicker 4 for PC. After using it just once with individuals who struggled with or were otherwise disengaged by reading, I soon realised that this was a very powerful tool. Clicker is essentially a word-processing program with a customisable grid of words which act like a mix of a word bank and a giant concept keyboard. The beauty of these grids is that you can personalise them and customise them to the child you are working alongside. What’s more the software can read the text back to you and you can even add your own voice.
Since my initial first experiments with the software, the product has moved and we are now up to Clicker 6 and some apps too.
Dylan’s target was to vocalise “I see sentences”. Clicker made this possible in a meaningful fashion.
I have trained a number of Teachers and Teaching assistants in both mainstream and special school on Clicker 5 and I both myself and my wife have made wide use of it with our autistic children. I still maintain it is one of the best pieces of assistive technology ever produced.
Here is a video of one of my other sons, Leo, he has autism and learning difficulties and struggles with pencil control and concentration. Here he is a few years ago on our SMART BOARD using some colourful semantics Clicker grids to write one of his own sentences. I have to say it is only in the last few months that he has managed to replicate something like this with a pencil.
So, with all this in mind I was thrilled to be asked to try out the new Clicker apps on our iPads. I am going to mention just one of these here, which is Clicker Sentences. An app which feels closest to the spirit of the original Clicker 4,5 and 6.
Once again you are able to customise the grids with words of your own or make use of some of the pre made learning grids. I used this last week with Leo as a supported Word Processor we wrote a fairy tale from the template and then I created some history focussed grids for him to help complete his History assignment.
I was really impressed with the preloaded Fairy Tale writing template which we used. Using a series of word bank/ grids
Leo was able to quickly compile his story and listen both to every word and every complete sentence. Not only did this sustain his attention it also helped greatly with his reading. Really this app should be an essential installation for all schools that are putting iPads into their Key Stage 1 and SEN settings. If you want to talk about progression then this would be the idea precursor to Pages with all its intricacies of formatting and features.
Aside from the pre-made templates the app also allows you to create your own templates. I have to say this was far easier than in the original PC application, though the features of the app are less than on the PC. Nevertheless in just a few seconds I had created at least three model sentences with a picture prompt for Leo to follow. Following each sentence he simply swiped onto the next.
On this occasion I let Leo construct the sentences himself from the words randomly arranged in the grid set. However the app does allow you to present the word bank in either alphabetical or sentence order, you can even have it guide you through the grammar by having it highlight one word at a time.
A screenshot from a Victorians Clicker Sentence grid we created “in a matter of seconds”
To augment your own grid creations and the pre-installed templates, there is also a growing number of resources and ready to run grids over on Learning Grids.com too. This feature of having a large searchable gallery of pre made templates was another very useful feature of the PC based programme. Busy teachers do not always have the time to create themed resources and so an on-line repository of these is really useful, if only to provide inspiration for your own grid making.
I would recommend you add this app to your list of literacy apps straight away. Then look at whether it is appropriate for some of your less able pupils too.
There are so many apps being released each week and though some of these fail to excite or are nothing but tired remixes of other apps, once in a while an app stops you in your tracks and you just say wow! Or at least you may think I wonder what that would look like in a classroom with decent wifi and possibly a printer!
I have to say this does make me think of 2Design and Make from 2Simple, but this app does more and it is on an iPad!. You can create figures, vehicles and boxes and add some stunning intricate detail. I really can’t wait to create a wall display of Foldify Cars or Superhero figures.
As you are painting and designing all of these on a net and then assembling the model this app serves as a good mash-up of ICT, Maths and Design and Technology.
From the people that brought us Songify and the Ocarina app comes their newest offering. Their aim is to help us all create our own music videos by adding a filter to any 15 seconds of speech. The results look good in their promo videos; so I am keen to put this in the creative hands and minds of a Year 5 or 6 class. It could be an interesting way to present a poem or a hard to grasp science concept or how about as a way of memorizing the names of King Henry’s wives.
Like Foldify this app is all about crafty things and actually getting you away from the device and creating something in the old school way. The app encourages you to create your own cardboard rocket, both with its visuals, the instructions for building and the launchpad. Here you can place your homemade rocket onto the iPad screen and launch it into space together with smoke and a countdown.
If you are running low on toilet rolls and paper cups you can send the in-app rocket and pilot into space. He will visit planets with unusual names and you can also customise his / her rockets before setting off.
I love quirky apps like this and Urbn Pockets have delivered again with an app that shows they understand children and teachers. I would definitely be using this app within the theme of space with Year 2 or 3 and i think it would inspire a lot of writing and junk modelling.
Yesterday I came across the 123D Monsters app from Autodesk Inc. Of course it ticks many of my boxes as it a creative app and with monsters at its heart it means it has an almost Doctor Who theme. But putting that aside another reason to love and download this app is because though it is creative it is actually quite challenging. It would almost be what John Davitt calls “struggle ware”, i.e. it takes some perseverance to get your head around the tools and workings of the app and produce a scary looking creature.
