The Sun and Publishing Student Created Books

He is making uv bracelets with the class.

Personal Connection

At the end of the school year, my son came home with a project. He was asked to design and teach a lesson to his kindergarten class.

We spent time talking about the things he knows a lot about. My son knows a lot more about the sun than the average kindergarten student. I'm not talking about facts like the size or temperature. He has to apply sunscreen 30 minutes before he goes outside, wear a hat, and wear long sleeves daily to keep his body safe. He is very sensitive to ultra violet rays.

Together, we worked on a book writing project. He read the story to his class and created uv bracelet kits to try out a few challenges with his classmates.

Here is his book, The Sun, on iTunes.
Here is his book, The Sun, in BookCreator On-Line.

The Sun

Click to read this book, made with Book Creator

https://read.bookcreator.co

Sharing with Teachers

During the summer, Kirsten and I shared the process of publishing student created books with the Book Creator App. You can view our examples and others that we discovered while preparing for our session. You'll also find a collaborative book that was created by our teachers during the session. They are so talented!

Hello Crayon + Chatter Pix Kids

HELLO Crayon + Chatter Pix Kids

I have been enjoying app smashing for some time now.  When you combine apps, educational fireworks fly in the classroom. If you haven't already, you've got to try HELLO Crayon and Chatter Pix Kids together.

I usually recommend HELLO Crayon when teachers are looking for a free drawing app in the elementary classroom. It has a few great features to make life easy when working with lower grades, there's undo and a fill can.  Trust me, that saves a lot of time when illustrating. ;)

Drawing a character from a book or an example of what you have learned in class is something that can be accomplished with paper and pencil.  When sharing this, I like to share Chatter Pix to allow students the opportunity to add their voice to their drawing.  Chatter Pix records 30 seconds of audio and will make it appear like the picture is talking. You can also download the creation to the camera roll for FREE! This is a great way to give voice to our Pre-K students. Imagine them drawing a circle in HELLO Crayon, they turn it into something they have seen that is an example of that shape.  Now they can explain how they know a whole pizza is a circle.

Check out the how-to my buddy Joe and I created and hear a few ideas for using HELLO Crayon in the classroom here.

Here is an example of something created by a 1st grader when she used Hello Crayon and Chatter Pix Kids.  She explains the problem in the story Chrysanthemum from the point of view of the character, Victoria.




Check out our how-to video for Chatter Pix Kids and learn a few ideas for classroom use here.

Educreations + Background Eraser= ∞ Digital Storytelling Ideas

One of my favorite apps to share is Educreations.  It is app that students can use to explain their understanding, present what they have researched, or even tell a digital story.  I like to pair a few apps to allow students to use their own drawings from an external drawing app to create their stories.

Step 1- Draw a character
Use a drawing app to create a character that you would like to manipulate or move in Educreations and save it to your camera roll.

In the "What's Appening" tutorial below, I used the Hello Crayon App to draw a frog character.  It's easy to use and it's FREE.




Step 2- Erase the White Background
Use the Background Eraser App to erase the background your illustration and create a .PNG image file.  It's very easy to use if the background is one color.  With this trick, you can bring in a nice, full screen picture to use as a setting in Educreations, then use your own drawing as a "puppet."Check out the "What's Appening" tutorial on Background Eraser below.




Step 3- Create a Digital Story in Educreations
Create a digital story in Educrations by bringing in your own characters and moving them as you record. Check the "What's Appening" tutorial below.  My buddy shares his genius as we bring all three apps together.