Guess My Number Activity

First grade students at one of my campuses have had a lot of fun playing ABCya's "Guess the Number" game. Ashley, one of the teachers on that first grade team, had a cool idea to let the students create their own "guess the number" game using Seesaw and Shadow Puppet, so she called me in to brainstorm during her conference period. 

{Side note: next to teaching the kids, this is my favorite part of my current position. If you are at one of my campuses, please don't hesitate to ask me to collaborate!}

The lesson we came up with sounds like lots of fun {I'm super-excited to help teach it to her kids tomorrow morning!}, so I thought I'd share! 

The Big Idea:

Students pick a number and give clues to their peers and parents to try to help the audience guess the number. 

Apps Used:

1. Whiteboard Lite
2. eGourd {optional but fun!}
3. Shadow Puppet Edu
4. Seesaw

Steps to Take:

1. Open the Whiteboard Lite app. 

2. Draw a clue onto the whiteboard, like so:

3. Save that image to the camera roll, then clear the canvas.

4. Draw another clue onto the whiteboard, like so:

5. Save that image to the camera roll, then clear the canvas.

6. AirDrop a photo to your students' iPads. Background info: Ashley had actual [physical] tens and ones mats already laminated and was going to have students use base ten blocks to create their number. She mentioned something about how both the mats and the blocks they have are yellow, so it might be difficult for the audience to see. I suggested taking a picture of the mat, importing into Whiteboard Lite, and drawing base ten blocks on top of the picture with a darker color. That worked perfectly fine, but when I went to create my own example this afternoon {to be ready to help teach her students tomorrow morning}, I ended up just creating a digital "mat" myself since I didn't have her picture. This is the "mat" I came up with, if you'd like to use it in your lesson. :)

click to enlarge, then right click to save the image to your computer

7. Import the above-mentioned photo into Whiteboard Lite. Draw on it to represent the mystery number, like this:

8. Save the image to the camera roll. Optional: Create more clues in Whiteboard Lite, saving each clue to the camera roll.

9. Open the eGourd app. "Carve" the number into the pumpkin and save the image to the camera roll:

10. AirDrop students a blank background. {I did a Google search for a plain, black background and saved the image to my device.} They'll use this blank background in their slideshow to write the words, "Can you guess my number?"

11. Open the Shadow Puppet Edu app. 

12. Students can choose the 5 {or more} photos they just saved to the camera roll and import them into their Shadow Puppet Edu slideshow. 

13. Students will record their voice dictating the clues and save the video file to their Seesaw journal. Here's my example {click here for a larger video screen}:

Afterwards, students can view each others' work on Seesaw and try to guess the number {and students' parents can try to guess the number at home, too!}. 

The eGourd app is totally optional, but it's a fun way to add a little fall or Halloween festivity into the lesson. I'm so excited to try this with students! 

My Favorite Evergreen Apps

iPads are wonderful tools, but in order to use them to their full potential, it's important to look at evergreen apps. Evergreen apps are "non-subject apps useful throughout the year for speaking, writing, listening, drawing, annotating, curating, collaborating, sharing, and more." (Daccord, 2013.) I find evergreen apps more convenient than content-specific apps, as students (and I) can use them for a variety of projects, regardless of the subject or grade level.

Here are my favorite evergreen apps:

1. The "does everything" app:  Seesaw (free) or Explain Everything ($3.99)

If you teach elementary school, Seesaw is the app for you. While I've seen high school teachers use Seesaw, Explain Everything might be a better bet for the secondary crowd. (Secondary peeps: if you prefer a free app, Educreations is good -- it just doesn't have all the features Explain Everything does.)

Both have a whiteboard feature (among many other components!) that allows students to draw on the screen with their finger or a stylus and a recording option where students can record their voice over a project. This link will show you a series of blog post I wrote on my technology blog about Seesaw.

2. The tutorial app: Shadow Puppet Edu (free)

Users can string several photos or videos into one slideshow, and then record their voice over the entire presentation, adding text, music, and drawings where needed. The Shadow Puppet website has great examples from classroom teachers on how to use the app.

3. The poster app: Tackk (free)

Tackk (available in both an app and on the web) allows users to create online posters with a variety of media inside. Tackk is much like Smore, except Tackk allows users to create an unlimited number of posters per account, and teachers can easily create lesson plan template for students. Click here to learn more about Tackk.

4. The interactive images app: ThingLink (free)

ThingLink (available in an app and on the web) allows users to upload a photo and then apply "tags" -- in the form of plain text, links, or other embedded content -- across the photo. Click here to learn more about ThingLink.

5. The mind map app: Popplet Lite (free)

Popplet is a brainstorming app that allows users to create bubble maps. You can save bubble maps as PDFs or image files, and then import into another app such as Canvas or Seesaw to share. Click here too see a popplet my students made when discussing science tools. Click here to view public popplets for more ideas.

6. The assessment app: Socrative (free)

Socrative (available in an app and on the web) is my favorite paperless assessment tool. Teachers can ask questions on the fly, give students a pre-planned quiz, or engage students with a "space race" competitive assessment before receiving data quickly in the format of their choice.

7. The brainstorming app: Padlet (free)

Padlet (available on the web and in a brand new app) lets users create a central hub for collaboration. It's great for discussion questions, mind maps, virtual "parking lots," and much more.

8. The collection app: Google Forms (free)

Technically, users can only create Google forms from a computer. But since finished forms are accessible from a mobile device, I'm throwing this one in the mix. Google forms are so versatile! Once you create a form from the computer, send students the link or attach it to a QR code for students to scan at their convenience. This blog post tells you how to create a Google form and suggests ways for using it in the classroom.

9. The collaborative drawing app: Whiteboard Lite (free)

On the surface, this just appears as a plain whiteboard app, but there's an awesome feature that will help students write/draw collaboratively from different devices: users on the same WiFi connection can draw on the same whiteboard simultaneously, and the other person's drawings appear in real time on your device.

10. The note-taking app: Paperport Notes (free)

This is a nice alternative to the widely-hailed but expensive (for an app) Notability. Paperport Notes lets users add blank or lined pages, camera images, files from cloud services, web snippets, and clipboard contents to digital notebooks. Users can then type, draw, or highlight with their finger or stylus, and/or record a voice over each page.


Tweet This:

• 10 awesome evergreen apps for iOS via @ckarasedu

References

• Daccord, Tom. "The 'Evergreen' iPad: Why All Your Apps Should Fit on One Screen." eSchool News: Daily Tech News and Innovation. 28 May 2013. Web. 1 Oct. 2015. 

App Smashing: Using 3 Apps to Create a Virtual Food Chain

Sometimes one app just doesn't cut it, you know? Combining two or more apps into one project is called "app smashing." Here is how my 3rd grade students used 3 apps to create a virtual food chain:

Step 1: Think of a food chain. My third graders had been studying barn owls -- their adaptations, their prey and predators, and their owl pellets. For this lesson, my students were instructed to create at least a 4-step food chain.

Step 2: Open drawing desk. (I prefer "doodle desk" or "kids desk" mode.) Draw the first step of the food chain, save it to the camera roll, and then make your way to a blank screen in Drawing Desk. (Learn more about Drawing Desk by reading this blog post.) Draw all 4 parts of your food chain this way, making sure to include only one energy source/plant/animal in each picture.

Drawing Desk (free)

Step 3: Open Shadow Puppet Edu. Each of the 4 pictures students just drew in Drawing Desk and saved should be in the camera roll. Students should load each of the 4 pictures into a Shadow Puppet Edu slideshow in the correct order. Use the narration feature to record your voice on each picture, telling us what the item is, if it's a producer or consumer, and if it's a carnivore, omnivore, or herbivore.

So, for example, we might hear these narrations:

• First slide: "This is the sun. It is the energy source for the plant, so it is not a producer or a consumer."
• Second slide: "This is grass. It is a producer because it uses the sun's energy to make its own food." 
• Third slide: "This is a grasshopper. Its prey in this food chain is the grass. It is a consumer and an herbivore."

...and so on. :)

Shadow Puppet Edu (free)

Step 4: Export the Shadow Puppet Edu show to Seesaw and submit under your name. 

Seesaw: The Learning Journal (free)

I think the kids had a good time "app smashing" to make our digital food chains, and I love that the creation process allows me to see each child's personality in their work! Here's one example of the work I received:

 

Fun!