Camera, Meet Skitch!

I love fun words.  Snurky was what my supervising teacher used to call words that didn't fit the typical spelling rule.  I  named one of my pony's Widget.  And the word gnarly has always held a spot in my brain, even if it's not used much outside of Bill and Ted's world.

Skitch is one of those words.

Even more, though, Skitch is an AWESOME and FREE app!

I've played with Skitch before, and it's come in very handy when sending my order to my brother on family dinner night.  I just take a screen grab of the menu, open it in Skitch, circle the item I want, crossing out the toppings I don't.  Then I save and send!  (Sounds like way more work than just sending a regular text, but with my food allergies, trust me, this is much easier!)

Back to school.  (To prove to Daddy that I'm not a fool.  Sorry, can't pass up Billy Madison.)

We are currently knee deep in a measurement unit.  In the past, I've given my students a record sheet and clipboard and sent them on their way in search of items that are exactly one foot long, or between 20 - 24 inches long.  They then record the items they find on the record sheet and we have a jolly good comparison.

This year, I invited Skitch to the experience.

Each team was given a scratch sheet of paper and clipboard.  They were also given an iPad.

They they were sent around the school, as usual, but instead of writing down what they found and the measurements, they snapped a picture of the item, and jotted down the measurements on the scratch paper.  Once they found five items (all with specific requirements) they returned to the classroom and "Skitched" the pictures!

What do I mean?

Take a look!

They opened the images in Skitch and annotated right on top of them to show the measurements.  Slide show assembled and we were left with a colorful and engaging look at perimeter and area measures!

Tech Lab - Take 1

This year, one of my second grade colleagues and I decided to try something new.  We created something called "Tech Lab" and with this, comes a 30 minute "class" once a week where my third graders and her second graders get together to work tech.

Backstory - Two years ago, Ann and I had an awesome experience using an app called ToonTastic to create cartoons with our classes.  I was in fourth grade at the time, and she was in third.  Both of our classes were working their way through an economics unit, so we had the kids work in groups to create cartoons with economic problems.  As this was our first year piloting iPads, what a great way to incorporate technology into the writing process!

Anyway, fast forward to this year.  We were hoping to do similar projects this year, except I was moved down to third grade.  So instead of doing project based experiences with our classes, we created Tech Lab to give the kids weekly learning experiences.

So far we've created our Essential Agreements for when we meet, and we've explored different games and apps on the iPad.  We participated in Dot Day with the ColAR app.  Right now we're in the middle of creating App Review videos.  Each group had two weeks to explore different educational apps on the iPads and pick one that they wanted to review.  They then spent week three completing a written app review.  Next up is to find photos of the app and create videos using Explain Everything.

So far, the highlight of Tech Lab is the reflection piece.  After each meeting we gather back together and talk about the day's activity.  It's been quite insightful, as it's our first experience, to hear what the kids think of how things are going.  And it's going to be quite exciting to see where things go the rest of the year!