Simple Prep iPad Activity: Creating iMovies in Class

“… ten years ago, not one student in a hundred, nay, one in a thousand, could have produced videos like this. It’s a whole new skill, a vital and important skill, and one utterly necessary not simply from the perspective of creating but also of comprehending video communication today.” (Stephen Downes)

Task design has a lot to do with choosing activities that will tap right into our student’s needs and interests. Teachers have known this simple fact for ages, but learners keep changing, evolving and developing, so teachers also change. I believe it`s safe to say that our learners nowadays love watching short movies on YouTube and vines, and if teachers are able to turn passive watching into a productive and creative learning process, students are likely to engage and experience deep learning.  iPads are truly an awesome step forward in technology because students can make movies easily and share their work with a broader audience.

So, if you like having a lively productive class in front of you that requires little preparation on your behalf, you might want to check some of the ideas below.

Make a commercial selling a product

Make a silent movie

Make  a personal narrative 

Tell a story - Use one of the texts in the book to make lexis come alive. My students drew target vocabulary and created a short video retelling the life lesson in the book in their own words.

Getting to know - make a short video with animoto or magisto (few clicks required) about yourself and let students make guesses about who you are. Ask students to make videos to introduce themselves too.

Have students create language tasks to practice language
1. Students can create a dialogue, but record only the answers so that the rest of the class has to write the questions.

2. Students make two short videos and the others have to spot the differences.
In the first video there is a students, and in the second there are two....
In the first video the boys are dancing, and in the second the boys are writing...

3.  Show and tell - share students work and practice language by playing a game - students have to recall from memory.

4. Ask students to make a video to teach the others how to make something. In this example, my son was teaching the other students how to draw a parrot fish as a follow up activity to a lesson about animal features.

5. Promote real communication among students by asking them to record questions to other students, teachers, or someone abroad.

Are you eager to try using imovie app with your students and see it for yourself? If you need some help to get started, watch this short tutorial and have fun in class!

Best,
Dani Lyra

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Simple Prep iPad Activities: DRAWP

My suggestion for a good application to be used in class is DRAWP. It is easy to use and, therefore, easy to teach students how to use it.  Some of the uses that can be applied to classes are for  making posters, flashcards, or even illustrations for their own stories.  Here is a tutorial video that will show you the ropes.  I am sure it will be fun!


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y2pC0mCvvAE 



Enjoy

Simple Prep iPad Activity - Creating Movie Trailers

Slide shows are definitely are good way to tell a story using pictures or videos. The web is populated by a vast amount of slide show services. As an educator, I am a subscriber to many of those services and have frequently used them whenever I want to display pictures in an animated fashion followed by music. However, many of the services available on the net require an internet connection and that might make it a bit challenging for creating such artifacts in class if you do not have a connection or the one you  have is too slow. 

One of the solutions to this problem is to use iMovie to create movie trailers. Such trailers look like slide shows and are quite easy to create. All you need to do is to open the iMovie app, click on the + sign and choose the trailer option. As I said previously, you can do it without internet connection, save and later export to YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, etc. It is very intuitive and your students can do it themselves. Another thing our teenage students can also do is to create movie trailers for the graded readers they read in class every semester.

Here is a short tutorial

Here is a movie trailer I created with our English Access students. Before creating it, I showed to them the theme we would work on. I divided the picture frames in terms of their experience as students so far asking what they had done, what they liked best. They wrote down their ideas and I gave them my iPad and my iPhone and told them to take shots. This is the final result.

Simple Prep iPad Activity: Creating Stories in Class

Stories help us organize and remember information and tie content together. I've already talked about the power of online storytelling and the myriad online resources available to experience such fantastic educational tool (click here to check this post).

With the advance of technology and the integration of iPads in the classroom, teachers are now able explore the power of storytelling in different ways. Some apps have been developed where students can imagine, create, and share what they make. Thus, students will be the ones creating content, putting their ideas together to tell a story using creative and engaging platforms.

Two of my favorite apps for creating stories are Scribble my Story and Creative Pad. These apps can be incorporated into your lesson plan with very simple previous preparation.

With Scribble my Story students can create their own story by picking a blank book, adding their own voice and illustrating in different ways.  There’s also the option of changing the background color, adding stickers and stamps. As a follow-up activity, students can read their stories to each other, or teachers can project students' stories and ask comprehension questions about them.

Creative Pad presents a more comprehensive platform. There are several different themes students can choose from, with different settings for every theme available.  Students can add characters, all sort of objects, animals, musical instruments, nature elements, etc. In order to create the story, students can add dialog boxes and also write captions in each of the slides. In the end, the story can be sent via email in a pdf version. I guess parents would love to receive their kids’ production. What do you think?

How would you include storytelling production in your class?

Simple Prep iPad Activity - Power up Motivation in the EFL Classroom

 

    Have you ever been surprised by how creative our students can be? This post is about a task I asked my Teen 3 students to do that required no prep and surprised me a lot because they came out with outcomes that were way more creative than what I had imagined.

    I was teaching vocabulary to describe feelings, and I gave groups slips with some vocabulary related to the lesson. I asked students to take pictures to illustrate the words with the iPads. .

Students then had to make a short video using Educreations asking the group to guess what feelings their photos related to. We had a lot of fun, and they wanted to play the game over and over, which I did not mind at all because they got lots of personalized input.

Simple Prep iPad Activity: TELLAGAMI - Giving Life to Students´ Avatar and their Language Production

Tellagami is one of those multi-purpose free apps that will give an extra boost to your classroom activity, with lots of student production in English.

Here´s an overview of the app:



In the classroom, use Tellagami to:

• let the avatar tell a story about a specific place (you can change the background there)
• review a concept. Students have to summarize what they´ve just learned
• do a follow-up activity in which students tell their own views on the topic
• drill basic structures in a young learners´ class ( I like; I don´t like; I have; I don´t have)
• practice physical descriptions when students are creating their avatar; then, they record about their best friend´s physical appearance
• work on clothing by changing the avatar´s outfits; the avatar can record why he chose that specific outfit

Students can record their own voices, or even use the text to speech feature (they write the text and choose the accent of their avatar. Warning: this feature only works when there´s Internet connection).

GOING THE EXTRA MILE: there´s an editing feature on YOUTUBE that you can put your students´ Tellagami videos altogether in one single Youtube video. Here´s an example from a training session we had about high performance class. First, we used this poster as a discussion springboard.

http://www.teachthought.com/ 

Then, the groups created their avatars and recorded their main ideas about highly performaning classes. Finally, I edited them, using Youtube editor, after having uploaded all the gamis.

Ready to begin? We´d love t know what you´ve been doing in class with Tellagami. 

Starting Afresh with Ipads in the Classroom

Yesterday I taught my very first class to a lovely group of upper-intermediate teenage students in one of our many outposts. I'd made up my mind to try something different and fresh this semester so I went for an ice-breaker activity using Ipads in the classroom. Here's how it went.

My PicCollage

We used an app called PicCollage, which allows you to create posters with photos, stickers, and text, among other cool features. I had previously used it to prepare a poster of my own, so I began the lesson showing it to students so that they'd get to know me a little better. I then asked students to pair up and, inspired by the imagery, come up with some questions they'd like to ask me about the poster and about my life.

After about five minutes, students began asking me questions, which were, at first, mostly prompted by my poster, but once they began feeling more at ease with each other (and with the teacher), they began asking me other questions, such as "what does your tattoo mean, teacher?" (They never fail to ask me that one, I tell you.)

Sharing time!

Now it was time for the fun part. Each student got an Ipad to make a poster of their own - a small snapshot of who they were, so that later they would share it with everyone else in the group. I could literally see their faces light up the minute I unzipped the two suitcases and began handing out the Ipads. That in itself already gave me such a heartwarming feeling. They were truly engaged! So off they went, and began to work on their posters. I set a time limit of 10 minutes and made myself available throughout, walking around and monitoring. Some took a little longer to get started, as they were figuring out how they'd add their photos to the app and some ideas began to came up. Pairs were helping each other and English was being used for an authentic purpose (how delightful!) right off the bat, on the very first activity of the very first day of class.

A couple of students used
their own devices.

Once they were finished, it was time for them to share. I asked them to stand up and walk around the room, showing each other their posters, asking each other questions. I did, however, give them one very specific piece of instructions: they had to first talk to people they didn't know so well or had never met before. I also gave them a clear goal: in the end, they'd be asked to share something interesting, funny, or surprising about someone they had talked to during that stage of the acitivity. This stage lasted for about 10 more minutes. There were 12 students in the group so they could talk with absolutely everyone. We rounded up by sharing interesting things we'd found out about each other. 

The entire activity lasted for about a half hour and it was worth every minute. Students were using the language authentically at all times, they were curious and engaged, and were fully energized for the rest of the afternoon. They got to know me a little better, they got to know each other a little better, and I have a feeling they actually enjoyed themselves in their very first English lesson of the semester. Talk about good first impressions, huh?

Students showing off their posters!

How about you? Would you be willing to try something like this? I certainly hope so!

Clarissa Bezerra

iPads in the Kids´ EFL Classroom - A Post by Two

I am currently on maternity leave, enjoying every little second of the gift I have received. This time has flown by, and has been a much-needed break from the hustle and bustle of work. However, I sometimes use some of my “free” time to read about educational technology (a passion) and many times ideas bloom in my mind.

Last September I received an email announcing a contest for CTJ teachers, where we should think of innovative ways to teach using iPads. As I read the email, I knew I wanted to participate, not only because of the chance of winning a really nice prize, but also as a chance to put into practice new ideas. Since I have no books at home at this moment, I had the idea to plan a lesson for my kid’s class (so I could refer to his book to plan the lesson). I called dear colleague Carol Godoy (my kid’s teacher) and proposed her to pair up with me in this journey, so she would be the one to test the ideas with her students.

It all worked out really fine. The students were engaged, motivated and most importantly, learning in different and meaningful ways!

So, here’s what we’ve done:

Students were studying about animals and superlatives and then we used the app Tiny Tap where it is possible to create personalized games. It is indeed a chance to spot students difficulties with the content they have been exposed to while they are having fun. I created the slides on a PowerPoint slideshow and imported them into the app, where I recorded my voice and set up the tasks.

As a follow up, students were supposed to use their knowledge to create a collaborative poster using the app Popplet, a well-known educational tool. So, students paired up and wrote sentences using the superlatives and images to come up with a beautiful poster. The final product could also be printed and become part of the students’ portfolios to be sent to parents by the end of the semester.

This was a nice and rewarding experience. Looking forward to test more apps and contribute to students learning next semester! 

Tiny Tap and Popplet - slideshows


-------> Now read Carol's version of this tech journey! :)


My name is Carolina Godoy and I'm a teacher at CTJ. Last semester I had two TPK classes and Lilian's son, Gabriel, was one of my TPK students. For this reason, Lilian invited me to participate in this project, and I'm really glad I accepted her invitation. To take part in this project wasn't a last minute decision, but we certainly did not have a lot of time to plan its execution. As Lilian previously explained, the project required us to use iPads in the classroom, so it was necessary to book them in advance. Since other teachers were also engaged in the project, it wasn't easy to have the number of iPads we needed when we needed them. However, I'm glad to report that everything went really well. 

Lilian did all the planning, whereas I was responsible for putting her ideas into practice. She designed two activities for the children. The first one was a multiple-choice exercise that included interesting and motivating pictures and sounds. The second activity required the students to take a more active role in the learning process and was, therefore, a bit more challenging. 

The students responded very well to both activities and seemed extremely engaged and motivated. When I told them that we were going to use iPads in the classroom, they got really excited and literally couldn't wait to touch the screens with their little fingers.
I believe that the use of technology in this particular class enhanced their ability to learn and boosted their confidence as students in this new technological era. In addition, students at this age are used to following a routine in the classroom, and this project was a very creative and useful way for us to take a break from more ordinary activities.  
I would like to thank Lilian for this great opportunity. It was a pleasure to work with her and to be her son's teacher this semester. I really hope we can develop more projects like this in the near future and learn a lot from each other while having lots of fun.

Self-Reflective Piece on One of my EFL Classes with iPads

For the first time ever, I decided to try the book projects with iPads. Until that moment, doing book projects (Teens 6) always involved cardboard paper, colored pens and pencils, glue, ruler, magazines and all the other classroom material available for such a task. But what about classroom management? Would I be able to control my big group of restless teens? Could I trust them to handle the tablets for a specific purpose? Would they know how to get around the device and utilize the specific app proposed? In sum, there were many  questions and few answers.
Therefore, I had to get ready, and my first step was to undergo the iPad Training Session at Asa Norte. In our daily busy routine, it is hard to find the time to go through all the apps available for educational purposes, but I expected to have a better idea of the most used ones in the classroom. Of course, I am still far from mastering every single one of them, but I had the chance of browsing through and by the end of the section, select the most adequate app to offer students for the activity I had in mind. Since I wanted students to prepare posters, I asked them to use Viz, but they had a second option which was Picollage.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/visualize/id444076754

https://itunes.apple.com/br/app/pic-collage/id448639966?mt=8

 Students had been told of the date they were supposed to do the book report long in advance, so they had time to read their books and decide if they wanted to do the book project individually or in pairs. On the scheduled day, they were only supposed to bring the books they had read and nothing else.

With iPads in hand, I began the class by showing them the basic devices and the app that I wanted them to use. That was part of my organizational scheme. Students were warned of basic care needed and time available for the project, which was 50 minutes. Also, I wrote the questions I wanted them to answer in the project, which were:

1-What ´s the story about?

2-Who or what are the main characters?

3-How does the story end?

4-Would you recommend it to friends? Why? Why not?
Pictures and organization was up to them and they were free to use their creativity the way they wished. For my surprise and relief, they were acquainted with the app and did not have many doubts. And the ones who were not, had the help of more experienced peers. The student´s sense of collaboration and engagement was overwhelming. Then I was free to help with the English. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ctjonline/sets/72157638121516873/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ctjonline/sets/72157638121516873/

The result was superb, and I couldn’t have been happier. The following class, I projected their work in the classroom, and friends had the chance of judging and making comments on each other´s project. Finally, I could feel students were proud of the outcome, and I had the chance of proving iPads relevance for education.

mLearning - The One Ipad Classroom

I had the wonderful opportunity of going go to Dallas last March to attend the TESOL 2013 Convention.  It was great, not only participating in workshops, plenaries, and a variety of presentations, but also meeting other English teachers and exchanging ideas and experiences with them.

Before choosing the presentations I wanted to attend, I focused on the ones which involved technology in the classroom or the ones related to practical activities for EFL classes. After attending so many presentations related to these topics, I came across the theme: The one iPad classroom.  The concrete ideas I was introduced to made me feel enthusiastic to use more technology in class. In this post, I would like to share some of those ideas related to the use of only one iPad in an English class.

Although we are in the 21^st century and technology is all around, teachers still face difficulties in having computers available for each student in all the classes of the course. Having iPads in the classroom is a trend, but not the reality we have today. Only few schools offer iPads to the students’ use in class, and even then, teachers have to share those iPads with their co-workers.

What I would like to show here is that, if a teacher has his/her own iPad, she/he can make use of it in class and benefit students with technology. Or, if the school provides one iPad for teacher use only, it is still possible to make a profitable use in class.

Here is a list of apps that can be used in class and my suggestions for their uses.

PingPong ScoreBoard Lite (Lin Huangchun)

This app is wonderful to score points when using a game in class.  The teacher does not need to stand and score the points on the board anymore. The teacher may use the projector for the game, and the iPad for the score.

Stick pick (Buzz Garwood)

This app helps the teacher to call on students in a fun way.

Timer (Francis Bonnin)

This app is very useful to establish time for the activities. Students can keep track of the time they have to do the activities.

Bola de Cristal HD Free (CATEATER, LLC)

It is useful if you are working the second Conditions. Students formulate questions, the teacher shakes the iPad and the students see the answers in the projector. They usually have a lot of fun.

Word Game: Taboo – Free (Yasarcan Kasal)

Students sit in pairs, facing one another. One student sits back to the boards. The teacher projects the word on the board and the other students has to describe the word avoiding the taboo words.

Tap Roulette (Laan Labs)

Students have a lot of fun. It is useful to decide which student answers the question, or in many other situations. Up to 5 students tap the iPad using one finger and the program chooses only one person.

Doodle Buddy for iPad – Paind, Draw, … (Pinger, Inc.)

The teacher can call on one student at a time, offer an iPad pen, and ask the student to draw something related to what is being studied so that the other students have to guess. The image is projected on the whiteboard.  Alternating students, they have a lot of fun.

Dice!  (Russel Gray)

Games are part of our classes. Teachers can vary the way of scoring them by giving dice (in the iPad) so that students have to roll it and get the points. They have a lot of fun!

Books 

there are many free books for young children which you can project on the board and read to your students or even play the audio.

Dictionaries 

Having one iPad available in class when working with literature books reading, facilitates students access to the meaning of the words. The iPad can be connected to the projector so that the other students of the groups have access of the definition of the words.

These suggestions will provide an opportunity for teachers to reflect upon the use of technology in the classroom taking into consideration the many ways of using iPads with students, even if there is only one in class.

Dare, innovate, ask experts, read for extra information, but put in practice everything you know and see what can happen if you have the will to go beyond.

After pointing out these suggestions, I would like to add that I strongly believe teachers must never give up going the extra mile and looking for challenges to enhance their careers. I would like to thank Casa Thomas Jefferson for giving me so many opportunities to improve my teaching skills and make myself a better teacher.