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| "I Like Myself", by Karen Beaumont (illustrations by David Catrow) |
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| "Where the Wild Things Are", by Maurice Sendak |
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| "The Story of Ferdinand" by Munro Leaf (Illustrations by Robert Lawson) |
Got to hand it to Read Write Think....these Poetry apps are perfect, especially in April, when we celebrate National Poetry Month! The step-by-step directions to create the various types of poems make it so incredibly easy for students to get their creative juices flowing...and quickly! 
Acrostic Poems - I like how this site explains the dynamics and mechanics of the poem and gives examples before getting the user started creating. The Acrostic Poem app is fun for 2nd Graders and up! Students like to create poems with the letters of their name, favorite sport topic, hobbies and more. It's a win-win!
Diamante Poems - These little gems are a bit trickier to create. Luckily, RWT helps students frame up the diamond shaped poem - nice that it gives confidence and helps them feel success when their masterpiece is complete!
Word Cloud programs are great for those students that enjoy creating with words or have brain freezes getting started. ABCYa!'s Word Cloud is not only simple, but the end product, no matter what template, color, font and more...it always comes out looking brilliant! A great program hands-down!
Kids Magnetic Poetry Kit - Magnets on refrigerators always remind me of my own home where we like to leave magnetic messages for each other - love messages, funny stories, jokes and more - it's fun...and so is this program! This is so incredibly easy and contains loads of words...all kid friendly! (Thank you very much!)
Zookazam - by the folks of AtlantaAR LLC - allows viewers to interact with some 42 animals - seeing them in a panoramic view. Students can learn all about the animal and it's habitat and even get a selfie with the animal for kicks! Check mine out! We've used this experience with all grade levels at my school - for K & 1st grade friends learning about animals, what better way than to enjoy this experience and see the animal first hand! With 2nd thru 5th, our students learning about Augmented Reality, saw if from this clear leader in the field! I've been a fan for years now!
Spacecraft 3D - by the folks of Jet Propulsion Laboratory - is another wonderful experience that lets viewers learn about and interact with a variety of
spacecraft that are used to explore our solar system, study Earth, and
observe the universe! Viewers become real space enthusiasts quickly with this experience, with the ability to manipulate robotic arms and learn about each craft's mission and findings! This too works well with all grade levels in our STEM environment!
After getting a good look and interacting within these fun favorites - students then create their own AR experience by using Aurasma - we bring pictures, videos and more to life as we explore the possibilities and it's made super simple with this program. All that is needed is a still image as the marker and then content to layer (or augment) from that image. Students will pick from a variety of topics - digital citizenship, geography, Colonial America, state symbols and history, the week's vocabulary words, pieces of amazing art or their favorite sport - the possibilities are endless! These are then displayed in our Labs and hallways for all to view!
December came alive with Santa Tracker, where the user is transported to Santa's Village for a large assortment of games, coding experiences and a link to learn more about how the holidays are celebrated around the world (very interesting stuff!). Kinder thru 5th had a blast trying the various activities! This made Lab time that last week of School before break actually bearable and fun for all - thank you Google!
Being in the business of Digital Literacy, what better way to work those skills than to dive into several great programs and get Students writing poetry. My favorites come from the folks at ReadWriteThink. 
And then, there's this nifty poetry creator from the folks at Scholastics - Poetry Idea Engine. (http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/poetry/poetry_engine.htm#) The walk-thru instructions help Students create limericks, haikus, cinquains and free verse type poems. I like how they not only define each poem, but give easy to mange step-by-step instructions. One word of caution, printing in color gives a full sheet of olive green background. While it is delightful to look at, you're likely to run out of ink in fast order when printing the whole class's creations.
Staff ask for programs Students can use to create their own games. This is a hot question, especially since we have a whole-School Genius Hour initiative going on. Here's a look at my favorites:
crop it and reposition it, all to your liking. Moving events on the line is also easy, by dragging and dropping where they need to go. Saving, Printing, Re-Opening and even emailing are all easy to navigate steps for Students. The end result is buttoned up and looks nice. One thing to note, however, is that if you add a 'Short Description', it will stay with the picture on the timeline; however, if you add a 'Full Description', that part will appear on a 2nd page away from the timeline entry. Why not keep them together? When printed, you'll get two pages regardless if you added a 'Full Description' or not. Before printing, change the Print Settings to print the 1st page only, to save paper and ink.
Hstry.com (https://www.hstry.co/timelines) - is another favorite of mine. A registration is required to get started, so I rate this for the older Students. A Class Code is created and given to Students, who will then signup with name, a username and password. I like how interactive the timelines appear, the themes, fonts and more. It looks very much like a social media page, where you add a banner, a photo and timeline materials like videos, surveys, a variety of texts and pictures and more. Sharing with fellow classmates is also quite easy. As much as this is a great timeline tool, I have also used it with Students as their Digital Portfolios. Nice, overall product.
Now
don't get me wrong here, I'm a huge iMovie fan! In fact, I use it each
day for the daily broadcast of our School's morning news. Sometime,
however, and especially with our our younger Students, we need a program or
app that will be easy for them to use and create a movie that has nice results.
These four are among my favorites. Essentially, for each, select the
pictures and video clips to use from the device or from DropBox, select a
theme and music from within the app, clip ends and crop images, press
'create' and away you go! Check these out! They are all Free for iPad & iPhone devices, safe for
Students to use and their final product can be shared on webpages and
through social networks.
Educreations (https://www.educreations.com/) is one of those programs that comes to mind with so many uses. Today, I was talking with Kindergarten Teachers who needed an easy way to display sight words, a picture and a sentence. Then, they wanted to be able to record their voice for their Students to see and hear during Centers. To add to their wishlist, they then wanted whatever they created to be placed in a QR code so that the Student only needed to scan the code to view and hear. The first program that came to mind? Educreations. This is a very simple web-based & iPad program, that clouds very nicely. Sign up is necessary and Student Accounts can be created with no issue.
Here's one I created about Elephants. When younger Students go to the Zoo this year, we'll create an Educreation about the animals they see on their trip! Check mine out here: https://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/elephants/8455158/?s=ogurgj&ref=link
We create a lot of Digital Stories in the Lab. It's an excellent way to get the creative juices flowing and helps with many types of learning...Digital Citizenship, Tech Literacy & Fluency and so much more.
Storyboard That (https://www.storyboardthat.com/storyboard-creator) is another favorite. Without logging into an account, the user can create 3 panels of a story using the many backgrounds, characters, texts, shapes and more. It's all very elaborate, the selection. And with the characters, you can change hair color, eye color, clothing color and more. I'm talking elaborate! We use this application not only for fun storytelling, but also biographies, historic fiction, to discuss digital citizenship and then some. I typically like for older Students to pick their favorite genre and begin building their own unique story. I put this example together in a few minutes to give you an idea of what it can look like, but this doesn't even come close to displaying just how much this little program offers.
KidPix is another program that is ideal for our younger friends, but amazingly, older Students pick it because of the variety of things you can do in this program. A few years ago, I would see Staff 'plant' students at a computer and have them use KidPix and call it "technology". It used to make me crazy. Now, years later, I have found that I can use this program to help with keyboarding skills, mouse manipulation, help with navigating within the program, sizing & moving pictures around, and then (and now) digital storytelling. Also, up until a couple of years ago, I wasn't aware you could add your own audio or your own pictures. Well, it turns out you can. You can create a slide show of all your pictures and the final product is a moving story to share. I have Kinder & 1st Grade Friends creating slideshows of the animals they've seen at the zoo and have them add text boxes telling about those animals. It adds to the amazing field trip they just took and the research project they will start in a few short weeks. This is tech integration at it's finest!
