Great Fire of London animated on the iPad

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.

Teachers Pet App – Like the Argos Catalogue for Teachers

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.

Download the app from here

2DIY on an Ipad – first look

I have been busy playing with one of my favourite pieces of software, except with a difference. 2DIY, but not on my PC.

Before joining 2Simple Software I was a bit of a fan boy of their stuff and was proud to be the first Teacher/advisor to blog about 2DIY.

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!

 

 

Future Apps – 3 to try in 2013

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!

Here are my big 3 for 2013!

Foldify

Currently (£1.49)

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.

You can download the app by clicking here and read a behind the scenes look at the design over on Wired.Com here.

Strum

(Free)

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.

My Little Rocket

(69p)

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.

Download it from here 

More in 2013 please Urbn Pockets.

Related articles

• iPad art gets real with Foldify app [GigaOM] (gigaom.com)
• Coolest App of The Week – Foldify (mamalovestech.wordpress.com)
• Foldify Makes Coloring Paper on the iPad a Lot of Fun (beautifulpixels.com)
• App of the Day: Pocket Card Lab – Make Cards on your iPad for Free (antsict.wordpress.com)

iPad Events – Part 1 – Ipads in the Primary School

Tonight, I am in recovery after two amazing events at the close of the week, these CPD sessions were made possible by the contributions of some real ICT legends. On Thursday we hosted Teachmeet iPad, more on that in an up and coming post. And then, yesterday we hosted, “iPads in the Primary School” at our school.

This was aimed at schools who were considering procuring devices or those that were early on in their iPad journey. Huge thanks to everyone involved in this event, including Laura and Neree from Elm Park Primary School, the team from Joskos for giving us lots of wifi and to Toucan Computing for being the Apple experts in the house.. This event was jointly organised by myself and the team of Dave, Penny and Amanda at Havering School Improvement Service.

Our message to schools  could be summed up as follows:

• The iPad is an amazing portable and easy to use device. It is portable and allows for learning and creative expression beyond the confines of a set ICT room.
• This device can really help to reinvigorate the teaching and learning of children with special needs
• Teachers in the Foundation Stage are seeing a considerable reduction in workload and more focussed observations by using apps like 2Build a Profile. or Look at Me from Toucan Computing
• Though use of your ICT room may decrease due to an iPad implementation, remember that iPads can not currently fulfil the programming aspect of your ICT curriculum. There is no Scratch, 2DIY or Python app, though apps like Creatorverse and even the Beebot app do have elements of what John Davitt calls Struggleware, or to put it another way the child has to think, instruct, test and refine their set of commands.
• Digital Leaders / Groups of ICT enthused children are really helping to  fashion vision and strategy. In Elm Park, Digital Leaders are busy testing apps, helping in lessons and are more than just monitors.
• To really embed iPads in schools the message is clear : Training Training Training – even though the devices are easy to operate teachers need to get their head around core and secondary apps and what they do. They also need time to reflect on  be clear about their curriculum relevance and value.
• The nature and price of Apps means schools can innovate and try out applications quickly rather than investing in an expensive site license for something they may use only two to three times a year.
• For any school embarking on a large-scale purchase of iPads, it is important to really think through why and how theyare going to use them. There are many schools that have bought sets and yet they are still sitting in cupboards or used infrequently as tools for reward or merely internet research devices.
• Start small – perhaps a class, a group or even one device and get a feel of what it can do, before purchasing.
• In these changing times, where CPD is sparse, we need more than ever to share what is working well in our schools – hence yesterday’s event

Related articles

• iPads in Education – 32 Port Sync & Charge Station for iPads (prweb.com)
• Apps for Children with Special Needs:40 iPad giveaway starts November 10th, 2012 (prweb.com)
• Reading, Reading, Reading (evenfromhere.org)

I need a Graphing App

There is a bit of a popular myth around apps and iPads and it can be summed up in the phrase, ‘there’s an app for that’. Actually there isn’t always and maybe if there is then the app may be very hard to find. Or conversely it maybe that you just don’t use an app at all you actually use some other PC based or analogue resource.