Shared Photo Streams

A second grade teacher at Icard Elementary approached me about a project idea for reviewing Life Cycles. She wanted to recreate a project she'd done previously, so I started brainstorming how best to get the project completed.

I needed a way to get images for the various stages of the life cycles for several animals/insects. I wanted to have the images prepared ahead of time so that the collage creation was seamless. I found the images on Pixabay and Discovery Education and created individual Photo Streams in iPhoto on my MacBook. This could be done with an iPad or iPhone using the Photos app. Just click on "Shared" to open your streams, and click the "+" to add a new stream. You give the photo stream a name, and then add the accounts to share. I created a photo stream for the following critters; praying mantis, sockeye salmon, ladybugs, stink bugs, Appalachian Snaketail, frog, and butterfly. I shared the streams with two Apple ID's, the ID associated with the teacher's set of six iPads, as well as the school set of iPads.

When the students began working with the PicCollage app they would add photos by choosing the photo stream and select all the photos to add to the collage. They were able to arrange, add text, and customize the collage from there. The kids were engaged, the teachers were excited for the ease of success. I liked the ease of using the photo streams, but wonder if the students should have been taught how to find the images on their own...

Comments

BreakoutEDU, YES!

Plan. Schedule. Print. Prep. Hide clues. Set locks. Test locks. Double-check clues. Breathe. Engage. Breakout! I won't sugarcoat this, the process of preparing for my first BreakoutEDU session took me a long time! (I used a pre-made game, Grammar Guru, it was great by-the-way!) However, every bit of time I spent printing, cutting, re-printing, scanning, and building was WORTH IT! Cyndi Childers, a 6th grade teacher at East Burke Middle School, was looking for something to get her students engaged, and I knew Breakout was just the trick. We ran two simultaneous games in two rooms, with Cyndi facilitating one room and myself in the other. We had groups about about 12-15 students in each room. The group size worked, it could have been smaller, but it really wasn't bad at all. This game has a progression of clue finding, one leading to another, so they were all somewhat forced to be working together on 1-2 clues at once, which I liked. This help...

This week was the first of the BCPS summer schedule, Monday through Thursday, with 11 and 12 month employees working 10 hour days. On paper that sounds awesome, a three day weekend, and getting your 40 hour work-week in. Well, I completed this four day work week. And... I. AM. TIRED. It didn't help that I forgot to turn my 4:50am alarm off, and was wide awake this morning well before sunrise. However, its after 10am now, and I've had my coffee and shower, and I'm feeling alive. This week has been productive, successful, and exhausting! The team of Instructional Tech Facilitators had been assigned the task of setting up all the school/grade level sets of iPads with Apple Configurator in an effort to get them managed by Filewave. We met Monday morning at Salem Elementary to get started with a cart of 30 iPads. This was a teaching/learning session in which a team of all the ITFs serving the elementary schools wor...

Upgrade your phone and upgrade a classroom.

The students in Mrs. Moody's third grade class are working in a 1:1 environment, but it's not like other classrooms you may have seen. The students in her class are using iPhones that have been deactivated from a cellular service provider. These phones range from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5c, and have been collected over the past three to four years. Mrs. Moody, fellow teachers, and even the BCPS Technology Department have contributed their older model iPhones after upgrades. The students had been using iPhones in the classroom for several years, but now each student now has their own device to work with in the classroom. While the iPhone may have its limitations, it also has its benefits. The students can essentially have the world in their pockets, and they are using them to the fullest extent. Check out just a few things the students have been doing: Taking pictures Accessing Google Drive, Docs, and Classroom Using QR Code Readers for scavenger hunts ...

Reflections in Tech

Search This Blog