The second graders recently went on a geometry scavenger hunt and found examples of math all around our school. Each student took pictures of items from the geometry list on their iPads. Then they used the Skitch app on the iPad. The second graders learned the app so quickly! Check out the cool video of their work!
The 2nd grade Spanish class used the iMovie app on the iPads to create videos using the three new vocabulary words we learned today. Check them out below! This was their first experience using the iMovie app to make their very own videos. They did a fabulous job! The students chose their own pictures doing a Google image search, saved them to the camera roll on the iPads, bounced the pictures they chose right into the iMovie, and then recorded their voices saying the words in Spanish and in English. We watched the videos in class today. It was so fun! It was our first experience hearing our recorded voices in Spanish! 
We laughed a lot. Enjoy the videos! 
As I finished teaching 3rd grade Spanish class today, I heard my iPad ringing in the back of the classroom. I thought, “Hmmm, what is happening over there?” As the 3rd graders left, I ran to my iPad to answer it and found one of my 5th graders calling me from home. 
I tell all my students in 5th-8th grade that if they are every absent from school, my Skype is always connected and my FaceTime on my iPhone or my iPad is always ready. Many of them have added me as a contact on Skype, and we’ve used Skype many times to bring students into the classroom when they are sick or on vacation. I am always so impressed that they are motivated to call in and be here!
I have never explained how to use Skype or FaceTime to any of my students. They just know how and I am constantly surprised when they actually call me from home to be part of our class.
So far in 5th grade, we’ve had several students call from a vacation that they were on with their families! So awesome! Joey used FaceTime to call while he was on vacation and Gaby called us using Skype from her car! Amazing! Today Kallie called us from home because she was sick. Awesome!
Unfortunately there is ISAT testing this week and Kallie and I were waiting in Spanish class for her classmates to arrive, and they never came. So we walked down the hallway (me walking, Kallie on the iPad screen) 
to see where everyone was and what the delay was…
We arrived to her classroom to find Mrs. Wilson and her class taking a break from ISAT testing. Kallie and I were able to say hola and adios and realize that no one was coming to Spanish class today because of ISATs. 
Sadly, we said adios to the 5th grade class and walked back to the Spanish classroom.
Technology continues to enrich my classroom, my life and my students’ lives in ways I never thought possible. It is so exciting to see my students motivation to be a part of Spanish class even when they cannot be here physically. 
I carried Kallie around school today on the iPad and my iHome portable speaker system to amplify her voice. I use it outside to play music with my students and now I’ve found a new use for it! I can carry my students any where when they decide to be a part of class form where ever they are!
The 5th and 6th graders love this app called Fetch Spansh! I am absolutely horrible at it, but the students do great!
Here are the 6th graders enjoying themselves at the end of a class period playing!
Look what we painted with 123 Color HD: Talking Coloring Book!
Here is a link to 123 Color HD in the App Store: 123 Color HD: Talking Coloring Book
Here is a link to the 123 Color HD website: http://123ColorApp.com
We are learning our numbers, colors, and alphabet comes in 1st grade, so this app was perfect for Spanish class today! We just had to change the language to Spanish and away we went! We are also learning how to say fish, so this coloring page was perfect as well. Check it out in the app store. It practice fine motors skills too.
Futaba has been an excitement amongst the Kindergarten ELL students. With Futaba, each player takes a seat around the iPad and taps in to start. The game begins as images zoom into the playing area. The first player to match the word to the image scores a point. Win 3 rounds and you’ll be awarded a giant (but very friendly) seedling… They get an absolute kick out of this. Another advantage to this application is that you only need 1 iPad for every 4 students!
Check out the fun…
The 6th grade Spanish class used the iMovie app today during the last 10 minutes in class. We had a quick introduction to show us how to use it and then…check out below what we created in 10 minutes or less!
These are just a few of our vocabulary words from our new episode in our books. Great app!
The 8th graders and I attempted using an app called iTalk yesterday in class. We were able to record ourselves and then hear ourselves during a partner speaking activity in class. That was good, but then we wanted to be able to easily upload the sound file to our blogs or our social networking site for education Edmodo. The file was a .aiff file. We could easily email it to ourselves from the app, which was helpful, but from there we could not post the sound file for easy use in class to share and save for future reference. So oh well! That’s okay! That was the first app that I have used with all ages and classes that I did not achieve success, nor what we had set out to accomplish.
SO now we are on to using an app called Sognify that turns our text into a song. It did not function properly today, but hopefully tomorrow will be a different day! It is a really fun app! It is actually for use with iPhones and iPods, but works on the iPad as well.
This week the 6th-8th graders and I learned all about Guatemala. We studied a bit of the country’s culture the week before winter break and this week we continued on to geography. Usually I turn Google Earth on my Smart Board and my students and I go on a virtual tour of each country we study. This week we used the Google Earth app on the iPad to travel to Guatemala. It was so simple, yet such an incredible experience for me and the students. It was like we were actually there! The kids were amazed and so was I! There is such a wealth of information at our finger tips on that app! We were able to place some Mayan ruins and different lakes, volcanoes and cities we had studied on our paper partner maps. Here it is below….
Partner Maps
As we explored the ruins, different cities, lakes and volcanoes (we felt like we were actually there with the amazing pictures quality and touch screen), we were able to touch a bunch of little hyper linked yellow and blue squares on the screen at each location that taught us EVEN more about the ruins, lakes, volcanoes and cities. Honestly I was in in awe of the wealth of information right there at our fingertips and so were the students. They couldn’t get enough. There were over 20 different videos, pictures and articles linked at each location. If we did not know what a word meant, all we had to do was click on it and it was defined for us, complete with definition and some times a picture of video to explain further. All in one place! What an amazing teaching tool Google Earth is. Amazing!
One of my favorite uses of the iPad in the classroom is its easy video recording function. I quickly recorded two students showing how they figured out the question of the day in math. Check out the answer to this math puzzle from Mrs. Hughes’ room.