Mother’s Day App Smash Project

 

I always try to do a video or something sweet to show the mom’s of my students just how special they are! This week, as we celebrate our moms, my students did some “App Smashing” (When you use one or more apps together to achieve a final product) with ABCya’s Word Cloud App, Photo and Video Transfer Over Wifi, Explain Everything, and I put it all together in iMovie.

The first step was brainstorming words that described our moms. Since I did this project with first and second graders, I knew the words written on the board would help them tremendously once they began working on their word cloud. Once we brainstormed the words, then the kids were all set to add the words they wanted (about 10 words) and customize the font, color, and layout to their word cloud. Once they finished, they saved their creation to their camera roll. Next, they used the app Photo and Video Transfer Over Wifi (a personal favorite of mine) and sent it to my iPad. From there, I saved all of the student’s work in my camera roll on my iPad. You could most certainly have each student open Explain Everything on their own iPad and do the next step at individual iPads, but from a classroom management perspective (I only have 45 minutes with my classes), I chose to do it this way. Once I had all of the student word clouds in my camera roll, I called them over one at a time and they recorded their narration with their picture in Explain Everything. Once all student’s voices were recorded, then I imported the whole movie to iMovie to add background music and text, but you could just end this project with a finished Explain Everything movie…either way works! When you are finished, you can upload this to YouTube, Vimeo, Blog, Website, etc. and make a mom’s day! Happy Mother’s Day to all those hard working moms out there!

Here’s a sample video:

 

 

Here’s a video I did a few years back that just warms my heart! Thought I’d share it!

 

 

My Favorite File Transfer Apps

One of the big issues I have in working with 650 students is getting their creative work from the iPad and onto my computer or their computer so that it can be shared with others. One of the things I love to do is to take their work and create a video to share their work with their teacher, parents, and the world. I’ve found this to be challenging, therefore, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find the right app for the task. Here are my top 4 (in no particular order).

1. Chirp:

I love this app for little ones because they don’t have to type anything, which can delay the process when time is scarce. Both teacher and student must have chirp opened, and they add a photo and through sound waves, the photo is transferred to your device! How cool is that! Chirp is an iPhone app, but can be used on the iPad as well. Chirp is a free app.

 

 

2. Desk Connect:

I really like this app for a couple of reasons. You can not only transfer photos, but you can also have students open to a particular website and it opens right to the URL that you sent. I also like how you can transfer from a computer to your device as well as from your device to a computer. Desk Connect is a free app.

 

 

3. Good Reader:

I like Good Reader for file transfer because unlike the first two mentioned, it transfers images and video. There is some workaround, which makes it harder (actually very hard) for K-2 but is a nice solution for file transfer. This works well in transferring images and video from iPad to computer. Good Reader is $4.99 (but is very useful for MANY other things other than file transfer).

 

 

4. Photo and Video Transfer Over Wifi:

This one is hands down my favorite! And, it is FREE today 1/30/14! This app allows for photo and video transfer and it is so easy, but youngest students can handle it. If transferring from iPad to computer, you just select the photo or video from the camera roll and on the computer type in an IP address and viola! You can then download it to that computer. Photo and Video Transfer Over Wifi is $2.99.