Biography Comic

iPad Biography Comic 

Instructions: Create a one page comic using an image and key facts  about an important person. Students add a title, image, and multiple speech bubbles to create their comic.

• Find and save an online picture of your important person.  

• Open the comic app on your iPad, create a new comic page and 

• add a title for your comic. 

• Add the picture of your important person to your comic. 

Create speech bubbles to add summary information about: 
1.Your person’s date of birth and where they were born
2.Your person’s family and childhood
3.Your person’s education and training
4.Your person’s achievements and awards
5.How this person overcame setbacks and kept trying
6.The main reasons this person is important

Teachers integrate technology into classroom curriculum by having students use the iPad and a comic strip app to create a brief biography. This activity can be a stand alone assignment or a supplement to a larger assignment. Student use an image of their person as well as key facts and details to create the comic.

Common Core Standards

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.5
Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.6
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.

From: http://oakdome.com/k5/lesson-plans/iPad-lessons/ipad-biography-summary-comic.php

Book Creator - Creating your first book

Here is a great Step by Step tutorial on how to create your first book, it is being provided to us from the creators of Book Creator.

http://support.redjumper.net/hc/en-us/articles/201908301-Your-first-book

Start by finding the app, it is located in the "books" folder, then follow the directions below: Happy Creating!

1. Add a new book

Tap the 'New book' button at the top left of the screen.

2. Choose a shape for your book

You'll then choose the shape of your book from the 3 available options, portrait, square or landscape. This decides which shape an individual page will be. Note: you cannot change the shape of your book once you have chosen.

3. Customise your front cover

Let's start by choosing a nice bright colour for the background of the page. Tap the 'Inspector' button in the top right of the screen to choose a colour for your background.

Choose from one of the standard colours or tap 'Custom' to choose the particular colour you want.

4. Add some text

OK, we're ready to give our book a title (make sure you've chosen a good one!). Tap the + icon and choose 'Add Text'. Type your text into the window and press Done when finished. 

If you need to change or add to the text, just touch the text and it will bring the editing window and keyboard up again.

If you make a mistake, you can always tap the Undo button in the top menu.

5. Edit the text

So now you'll have some pretty standard black text on the page. Let's bring it to life a little.

First, you can change the width and height of the text box by dragging the blue handles to the size you want.

Next, whilst the text is still highlighted with the blue border, press the 'Inspector' button to access the style menu. You can adjust the size, colour, and style of the text to your heart's content.

6. Add an image

"A picture tells a thousand words", so let's add a photo to bring the page to life.

Tap the + icon. You can either choose Camera and take a photo there and then, or you can choose a photo already saved on your iPad photo library.

Find the photo you want to use and select it to make it appear in your book. You can then resize it if you wish.

7. Add a new page

Adding a new page is a simple matter of tapping the large + button on the right of the screen, or you can use the Pages button in the top menu.

Note that your first 2 pages are already added for you, so from the cover page, tap the > button to start adding text and images to the rest of your book.

8. Preview your book in iBooks

Part of the fun of using Book Creator is seeing your book as a real ebook. Send your book to iBooks at any time to check how the book looks with all the page-turning fun!

Here's how to send your book to iBooks.

9. Saving your book

When you're done adding elements to the pages of your book, you can go back to the start menu by tapping My Books.

You'll see that your book is automatically saved and added to the list of books you've created. You book will have the default title 'A new book' by A.N. Author, so let's change that.

Tap on the 'Inspector' button below your book and tap on the book title or author to change it.

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Using Twitter in your Classroom

Why should you use twitter in the classroom? It is a great way to bring the world into your classroom!

• Start by setting up a class Twitter account (Most of the kiddos are too young to have their own twitter account so sharing a class one is most appropriate)
• What

How other elementary teachers around the world are using Twitter!

jhjhjh

• Ms. Lirenman is a fantastic K-2 teacher in British Columbia, she writes very detailed about the ways she uses Twitter in her classroom:  http://learningandsharingwithmsl.blogspot.com/2013/08/using-twitter-in-primary-classroom.html
• Here she gives a 5 minute talk on why she uses Twitter: http://eduslam.me/2013/08/01/episode-1-twitter-in-the-elementary-classroom/
• Kath Cassidy Starting the year with twitter: http://kathycassidy.com/2015/09/20/starting-the-new-school-year-with-twitter/
• 
  

Twitter

Harnessing the Educational Power of Twitter - A quick guide on how to and why you should use twitter.

Twitter Chat Schedule - a schedule of when twitter chats are taking place.

Popular Education Twitter Hashtags

Cybrary Man's Educational Hashtags - a very extensive list of educational hashtags to check out created by Jerry Blumengarten

Cybrary Man's Educational Twitter Chats - more great work by Jerry Blumengarten. His entire website has tons of great links.

35 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom by Tom Barret

Tweeting with a Class Account - by Hugh and Gallit

Who To Follow on Twitter

100 of the best Twitter Tools for Teachers

R U Ready 4 Twitter- An excellent set of slides created by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

Everything You Need to Know About Twitter - a visual from the Teach Thought Staff

Book Creator Lesson Ideas

Here is an awesome blog post from Chris Loat one of our teacher friends in Canada, on some of the many ways you can use the app "Book Creator with your students! Check it out and get inspired!!

http://www.redjumper.net/blog/2013/10/4-compelling-ideas-using-book-creator-classroom/

1. ‘How to…’  books

Kirsten Wallace at Steves Elementary first taught a series of lessons on procedural writing to her grade 5 class. After learning the skills required for procedural writing, the students used Book Creator on the iPad to explain ‘How To Tie a Shoe’.

Each student wrote about this topic and explained the process with text, photos, audio recordings, and video. The ebooks were shared with their little buddies in grade 1 (a true test of if their explanations were clear!).

The next assignment was to explain the steps to their Science experiment for the annual district Science Jam event. Again, the students used Book Creator to write, verbally explain, and show with photos/videos the series of steps for their Science experiment. Students used the performance standards (adapted to student language) to self-evaluate their assignment on ‘How To Tie a Shoe’ and then made changes to improve their work.

Using Book Creator allowed for easy edits to the digital work the kids had completed so far. These same criteria were used to self-assess their Science experiment procedures and make changes along the way.

2. Collaborative books

Sandy Sanderson and Susan Fawcus at Kingswood Elementary used Book Creator to make a collaborative ABC book on Ancient China, their theme for Social Studies.

Each student was given a letter of the alphabet and came up with an idea that started with their letter and connected to Ancient China. Students researched the topic and presented their information on one page in Book Creator. The pages contained text, images, audio explanations and videos. Some students created their own videos with the animation app NFB Pixstop or by filming themselves with the iPad camera, and then embedded them into their page.

When their page was done, students emailed their work to the teacher who collated all pages into one book.

Sentence starters

Another idea for a collaborative book is to give primary students a sentence starter to complete (e.g. One spooky night, I saw…). Students made a page in Book Creator and wrote their completed sentence on the page.

They then illustrated their sentence with a drawing app (e.g. Doodle Buddy or Drawing Box). After the drawing was finished, students saved it to their camera roll on the iPad and then placed it on the Book Creator page. When the page was finished, students emailed it to their teacher who collated the pages into one book.

>> How to combine books in Book Creator

3. Non-fiction books

Sonya O’Neill at Steveston London Secondary had her Spanish 9 students learn about a Spanish speaking country by researching the country and then making an ebook.

Students were asked to incorporate Spanish on each page, and since the audio function in Book Creator is easy to incorporate, it was a favourite among the students to complete this part of the criteria. Other students also filmed themselves speaking Spanish and included these videos in their books.

At the end of the project, students did a presentation about their country by sharing the book on a flat screen TV.

>> How to convert your iBooks into video

4. Photo books

When she taught at Blair Elementary, Janice Novakowski would take photographs during walking field trips and would make photo books for the class to reflect on the following day. Using Book Creator, she would present each photo on its own page, along with a simple sentence for the Gr. 1 students to read. Since the iPads were set to automatically sync books, the book could be put on all 30 iPads for each student to see.

Chris Loat
Technology Coach
Richmond, Canada
Integrating Technology for Teachers
@loater

Pic Collage Feelings poster

Today we learned how to use the pic collage app on the iPad to take pictures of each other and label the pictures. We choose the theme to be "Feelings" since those are easy to create. First we reviewed the iPad rules then I modeled for them how to use the app. Some of the students quickly figured out how to change the font, the color etc. others changed the background and the layout a few found how to add fun "stickers" to the pictures. The results where amazing, fun and creative!
 Here is a great blog post about it:
https://ipadcoaches.wordpress.com/tag/pic-collage/

• Talk to your students about feelings and what they look like:
• Brainstorm different feelings
• Happy
• Sad
• Find the Pic Collage App in the Drawing folder
• Click on the 

Digi Make 10

Digi Make 10 This app is about visualizing ten’s complements. About ten's complements: The "ten's complement" is the number that you must add  to get 10.  For example, the ten's complement of 6 is 4.  And the ten's complement of 3 is 7. Having a clear visual image of single-digit numbers and their ten's complements is known to be very helpful in doing addition and subtraction. It is also a key step in facilitating mental math. About us: Digi-Block provides a method for learning about numbers and operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There is a progression of steps. Each step is easy to grasp visually. The magic of math is that after mastering a relatively small number of steps, the learner is able to solve difficult problems! Check out digi-block.com to see what else we have to offer.

Hungry Guppy

Hungry Guppy App Your 3- to 7-year-old will learn numbers and basic addition with this delightful game. It's easy to play – simply drag bubbles together to add them, then feed it to your fish. Hungry Guppy is an interactive way for preschool and early elementary school children to build a strong concept of addition and to understand what numbers represent. For example, “●●●” and “3” have the same meaning. Motion Math: Hungry Guppy features a fish who loves to eat numbers, with 15 total levels: – In the Dots levels, young children who don't yet know numbers can practice addition. They'll learn, for example, that ● + ●● makes ●●●. – In the Mixed levels, kids will learn number symbols. For example, ●●● and 3 have the same meaning. – In the Numbers levels, learners can practice adding numbers up to 5, seeing the different ways to make a sum. – Fun graphics, music, and customizable colors make Hungry Guppy an experience children will enjoy for hours. Common Core Math Standards: • K.CC.2., K.CC.4., K.CC.6-7., K.OA.1-5. • 1.OA.2., 1.OA.7-8. • 2.OA.2.