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By Leslie Dent, October 17, 2011 11:36 am

This year I am teaching grade 5 and we are still enjoying the iPads and Ipods. It is incredible how independent these 9 and 10 year olds are with them. I thought grade 2 was impressive!

We have been using the iPads a lot for publishing our writing during Daily 5. Book Creator is an app I discovered recently and we like it a lot. The main difference between this publishing app and Storykit is that when a student is done with their story in Book Creator it can be exported as an iBook and is available for students to read on all our devices. Or, it can be sent by email. In Storykit there wasn’t much to do with it once it was complete.

The students that have used it so far have emailed me photos from home that I have synced onto the iPads for them to insert into their story. Alternatively, photos could be staged by the students, taken with the iPad and then inserted into the story.

The only option Book Creator is missing in my mind is the option to draw illustrations right in the app. This was a feature of Storykit that the children really liked last year. I think I will explore the idea of a doodle app to fill this void! Stay tuned!

A student created video of how to use this app is posted on my class blog.

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By Leslie Dent, July 6, 2011 6:20 pm

As I continue to wrap up things from grade 2, I thought I would post our Phosters that were created by students at school. This is another easy to use app that the children used independently after one demo. Select a template, add your image, change the text and presto, a phoster!

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By Leslie Dent, June 16, 2011 12:31 pm

We explore many ways to publish our writing in grade 2. A few students are working with Storykit, an app available at the app store. They write and edit  their story in their writers notebook and then move to an iPad to publish it. Text is typed in and then illustrations can be drawn write in the app or a photo can be used. Once the story is complete, it is shared online and can be emailed. My students are highly motivated to publish their writing using Storykit.

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By Leslie Dent, June 10, 2011 2:39 pm

This weeks app of the week on iTunes is WordFoto. I heard of it through a fellow educator on Twitter just last week! One of our classmates is moving to B.C. today so I just tried it out and made a “we will miss you” WordFoto for her.

To create your WordFoto you simply pick a photo from your library or take a photo, choose the words you want to apply and presto! A very cool mash-up of words and an image. There are even different styles to pick from. It took a matter of minutes!

Here is another sample using one of our butterflies just before it was released into the real world.