Google Education on Air Online Conference

On May 8 & 9th, Google for Education is holding a free, online conference called Education on Air. The 8th is a Friday, so many of you will be in classrooms, but the 9th has sessions throughout the day you can watch. Best of all, the sessions are recorded so you can watch just the sessions you'd like afterwards if you register.

A lot of the sessions center around Google Apps for Education (Drive, Docs, Slides, etc.) but many include other topics, such as app smashing (combining apps), flipping lessons, Nearpod, etc. I'm most looking forward to Day 2's sessions- register and check them out!

App Update: Toontastic

Toontastic is a storytelling app that allows our students to animate and record their voices. Our 1st-5th graders have it on their iPads. Back in February, Launchpad Toys released an update of the Toontastic App, which made it much more useful to us with our 1:1 iPads in 3rd-5th and shared iPads in 1st-2nd.

Before:
With our free version and no in-app purchases, backgrounds for setting were extremely limited (I think there was one free one), as were characters. Students needed to draw everything they wanted to include in their videos. Also, students needed to connect to their teacher's account in order to share the video, and the only way was through ToonTube, their own video site. No saving to Camera Roll option!

Now:
Students can save to Camera Roll and then share with the teacher! Backgrounds and characters are now free! It is easy for students to animate characters they draw so they look like they are walking, instead of being a static drawing they simply move across the page.

Using Toontastic

The app allows for multiple scenes, in a story arc format, with scenes for story elements like conflict, climax,  and resolution. You could also add scenes or delete them, and even ignore the story arc idea altogether. Students could even do short, one scene animation videos that don't necessarily tell a story.  Ideas: an animation explaining meaning of figurative language, explaining a science concept using, or animating a historical moment.

With the new Save to Camera Roll feature, your students could easily do an app smash combining a video created in Toontastic with other images and/or video in iMovie.

Student Examples from our Third Graders

Cinderella from the perspective of the prince

Cinderella from the perspective of the caterer of the ball!

App Update: Adobe Acrobat DC- PDF Reader

Adobe Reader is now called Adobe Acrobat DC. The app update came out on April 6, 2015, so some of our students have gotten this updated version. If you use this, you'll want to note the change in case  any of your students have this version.

Our district supports this app for students to be able to annotate PDFs. Many times a teacher will share a text or other PDF through email, Edmodo, etc. It doesn't work perfectly and there are several features you have to pay for in order to use, but it does allow students to "write" on a PDF and then share their work with their teacher. 

At the top left you can access the menu. (You'll probably start with the Home icon in that place, or if you've opened a PDF you'll start in the Viewer.)  Comment and Viewer are pretty much the only options on the menu that don't require a pro subscription.

Tapping Comment will bring up the tools to annotate, such as drawing/writing with the pencil and adding text. I will say I unfortunately did not get the highlighting, underlining, or strikeout tools to work, but underlining with the pencil accomplished the same idea.  Tap a tool a second time to deselect it. That's when you are able to scroll up and down in the PDF again. Again, not perfect, but you can annotate. 

Tap Viewer in the menu and tap the up arrow/send and share icon in order to share the finished, annotated PDF. This is where the option appears to open in another app (such as Edmodo to turn in as an assignment) or to email.