Creating on iPad

      Over the past three years, we have learned so much about using iPads in the classroom!  We now use the device for content delivery in eBackpack, for real-time feedback and assessment with apps like Padlet and Socrative, and for communicating with outside experts using Skype, Google Hangouts, and Twitter!  Students are also creating using the iPad.  They use iMovie, Keynote, and Shadow Puppet for presentations and create their own books and comics using Book Creator!  Here are a few more ideas for you to think about over the holidays!

Video Collage and Digital Storytelling
    
     There are so many ways to incorporate these creation activities in the classroom!  Students can create a video collage in iMovie or Shadow Puppet using a series of images.  They can record their own narration along the way and insert subtitles to label important information or terms.  This would be a great way for them to demonstrate their understanding of historical concepts, novels, vocabulary, and more!  Using copy-right free images from the Library of Congress and other sites, students can create powerful movies to show what they know, recreate historical events, and teach their classmates! They can create interactive book talks, commercials, or public service announcements!  They can use images and record themselves reading their original stories or poems, too!

Keynote

     Many people have been using Keynote in their classrooms for presentations, but it can be used for much more!  Because students have Keynote on their devices, teachers can put a slide or presentation into eBackpack, and students can open the file in Keynote on their devices and edit it.  Some teachers have put slides with images on them and students then create their own versions of it.  Perhaps they label a diagram, explain a concept, or point out examples of literary elements.  Students can create animations using the build and magic move tools in Keynote, too.  They can make interesting stories with their own uniquely-created characters.  Keynote could also be used to create post cards with pictures of places important in history.  Students could then send the post card via email or share it in eBackpack and ask their peers to investigate that particular location and to come up with important facts about it.

Aurasma

     Students and teachers can use Aurasma to create a learning wall full of target images that when scanned launch informational videos about the image.  Historical newspapers, primary source photographs, diagrams, math problems, vocabulary words, mentor text book jacket covers, etc. could all be the triggers on the wall that launch student-created iMovies, book talks, PSA's video collages, Doceri whiteboard tutorials, and more!

eBackpack File Sharing

     If your students have created something in digital format, and you would love for other students to be able to see it, you can create a group for the project in eBackpack.  Call it oral history interviews, Book Creator books, or iMovies.  Then, add your students or have them join the group with a code.  In the class settings, turn on "Member File Sharing."  Now students can load files to the group and view other students' work as well.  Be sure to tell students what to name their files so it will be distinguishable among all the other creations. You can also turn on "Member Commenting."  This will enable students to be able to comment on others' work as well.  Since their comments always include their names, it will be simple to see who says what.