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!

 

 

App of the Day: Banana Hunt

Today’s app is a welcome conversion of a game that I used over and over since I first got my Promethean board a few years ago.  Banana Hunt featured as a game on the Maths Pack series of Interactive Maths tools from Interactive Resources. At the time they really helped my classes to visualise difficult concepts and made the Primary Strategy’s ITPs look very BBC 4. Upon returning to the classroom back in March I was pleased to find them preloaded on my class laptop.

Anyway, Banana Hunt is simply a great game that works on a very strong visual of angles on a circle. You have to guide your monkey around the circle to find some bananas. If you get to the exact angle then you will get 10 bananas, whereas if you get within 10 degrees you will at least get some. As this is now an iPad app you can now put the game into more hands than just  the teacher and the occasional child you call out to use the IWB with you.

Here is a brief video of me talking about the app and illustrating it with some Year 6 SATS questions, which this app really supports.

 

App of the Day: Toca Kitchen Monsters

As his Dad is quite busy tonight, Charlie has stepped in to do App of the Day. Charlie (4) is keen to share his current favourite Toca Boca app, Toca Monsters. He talks us through in the badly shot video below.

This is another app that is ideal for Foundation Stage and playing it together generates lots of  talk about food and taste. Each monster has a cupboard full of food items. These can be chopped, fried, blended or microwaved before offering to the monsters. Though be aware that they do not always eat what they are given and will reject food.

My boys love the gross monsters and their equally gross fridge of food. Charlie likes to move his finger over the frying foods and offer them to the monsters.

As this app is free and so much fun you need it on your Foundation Stage iPads!

Related articles

• Toca Kitchen Monsters – Toca Boca AB (itunes.apple.com)
• App of the Day: Christmas Hair Salon Free (antsict.wordpress.com)
• 5-A-Day – Special Toca Boca Games Apps – Digital Toys (funeducationalapps.com)

iPad Events Part 4 – Teachmeet iPad – Lisa Stevens and Idletim

Here are two more videos from Teachmeet iPad, which really are invaluable guides to two essential apps.My thanks to Lisa/ @lisibo who specially recorded her video for the evening for use at both TM iPad and TM Brum. Lisa talks about an app called Explain Everything, which can be a powerful way for children to demonstrate what their learning through animation and annotation. We also have a guide to one of my favourite apps, Book Creator, from the very knowledgeable @idletim from Bradford. Book Creator is a brilliant way for children to create their own ebook and the video provides a brilliant introduction for new users.

Explain Everything Explained. from lisibo on Vimeo.

Book Creator guide from Innovation centres on Vimeo.

Related articles

• iPad Events – Part 2 – Teachmeet iPad – the Videos – Joe Dale and Bev Evans (antsict.wordpress.com)
• iPad Events Part 3 – Teachmeet iPad – Steve Bunce and Huntz (antsict.wordpress.com)
• A Teachmeet on iPads (antsict.wordpress.com)