Stop Consuming and Start Creating

presented by Katie Seveska, Becky Labbe, and Courtland Funke

PDF list of Materials

Quicktime Movie of Presentation

The description stated that the session would focus on generating teacher created contend and student created work, and it certainly lived up to expectations. While the presenting team works at the elementary level, the concepts of simplicity and efficiently generating content apply to any level. The session used some simple apps for the iPad, along with the hardware, to help students create projects quickly and with minimal intervention. Some apps were also discussed that facilitated this creation.

The first app presented was Sonic Pics. This is a slideshow program that allows simple voiceovers. Simplicity is the name of the game, and this app fulfills that both in its ease of use and its compatibility with other computers. Students could take pictures of what they are doing, whether it is a field trip, group project, or homework, and then report on it using the voiceover feature. The second app, Moodboard, worked on a similar principle, but uses still images to build a bulletin board type story. Not as useful, in my opinion.

Photosync was the key to many of their successes. It is a program that allows the Photo Gallery to sync with a computer on the same network. With the push of 3 buttons, student’s projects were uploaded to the classroom workstation. Any app that would not export a finished product was put onto their Do Not Use list, and so every project that a student wanted to make can be uploaded. This program is similar to Dropbox, but does not use the cloud. It can, but it is faster and safer to skip this step. The only caveat was that they found the device and computer had to be on the same network, and they had split their network between devices and computers (they quickly changed this back).

Other programs such as Skype and Facetime were discussed, and you can find out more about these by watching the quicktime video. As a Choir director, this presentation sparked some thoughts about advantages and disadvantages of the iPad in a choir setting. These included: Sound Isolating qualities are excellent – students recorded voiceovers in Sonic Pics while on a Bus, and you can barely hear any road noise. Recording quality is very good – Little to no distortion, as there is on a smaller device with a small mic packed in. Record portions of class for home practice – Post videos online, then have students practice with them. Students can even record their practice sessions on the iPad to turn in at a later date. Section leaders are trainers – teach other students how to record class for posting. Voiceover for the assignments – no typing necessary for the teacher, simply speak in the directions.