Apple’s Hidden Gem!

You know that feeling you get when you find some money unexpectedly? Like the $10 bill you stashed in your winter coat on the last ski day of last year that you unexpectedly find when you put the coat on this year? It’s like a free gift! Pretty good feeling, huh?

That’s how I felt the first time I was introduced to Apple’s app, Clips (which I apparently had on both my phone and ipad for over a year but just hadn’t looked at)! I first “met” Clips at ISTE in June of 2018. It was one of the tools I meant to study more over the summer. Yeah. That so did not happen! However, since then I have had time to play with Clips and here’s what I’ve discovered!

1. Clips is an awesome little multi-media app that’s great for capturing short “clips” of life in the classroom (or elsewhere)!
2. It’s not as powerful as iMovie but it does some very cool things that iMovie can’t do.
3. Clips was created for social media, so if you are wanting to create a longer, more complex video, go with iMovie. Having said that, you can apparently record up to 60 minutes with Clips!
4. Clips has some cool filters that your kids will love to play with, including my favourite…Comic!
5. Apple has added speech bubbles, arrows, shapes, emojis, stickers and surprises you can add to your pictures or video. I mean, come on, who doesn’t love an app that lets you add Star Wars characters?
6. You can add music and do some basic editing.
7. You can use the voice recognition feature and “talk” in titles or video captions. While cool, I have to say this doesn’t work all that well in a noisy room!
8. It only works on iOS 10.3 and later, so for those of us who still have the really old iPads…sorry.
9. Aside from the learning curve of how to record, it’s pretty easy to use!

To start with, open the app and decide if you are going to use images or video you already have, or take new.

Recording is a little confusing at first. To start recording, you hold down on the big red button. To keep recording, you swipe up, which makes the button smaller and then to stop, you tap on it. Clips records in a square format, so you can hold your ipad or iphone in either landscape or portrait mode.

To take a picture, you click the round white button but then to insert it into your project, you have to do the red button thing again. You do get used to it! (To add existing stuff from your library, you also have to use the red button.)

Once you’ve added your images or video in, you can add titles or “posters” which are transitions. You can also click the little rainbow star and that will let you add all the “fun” stuff, like filters and stickers and emojis.

Once you’re finished your Clip, upload it to the photo file by clicking “Save Video”. From there, it’s easy to add to Fresh Grade, send via email or message, upload to Google, or add it to Book Creator.

Once you get used to Clips, it’s super easy to use. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles, but there’s certainly enough there to make it as useful classroom tool and one that your students will love using!

A Little Hollywood Magic!

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Do you remember the first time you realized that the ships in Star Wars were actually plastic models filmed in front of a green screen? Or the time that you realized the weather person on the news does not really stand in front of a giant tv screen showing the local weather? I do. I was blown away – it’s like magic! At one time, that magic was something that only big Hollywood production companies or television studios could afford. That’s no longer the case! Now, with just a few supplies, you and your students can create the same Hollywood magic at school!

How? Green screen technology! You only need three supplies: a green background, an iPad 2 or better and an app called Green Screen by Do Ink. (There are other ways to do this, but for elementary school, this is the easiest and it works really well!)

The first thing you need is a green screen, or green background. You can buy inexpensive green screens for use in a school, you could paint a wall green if it’s something your school is going to do often or, easiest of all, just pin up a couple of large pieces of green bulletin board paper up on a wall. Whatever you choose, you want the background to be as flat and wrinkle free as possible. Oh yes, remind the kids not to wear green clothes when being filmed, too (although it is kind of fun to see what happens when someone does wear green!) And, if possible, film in a tucked away corner of the school where you will not have as many interruptions or noises to content with.

The only other piece of equipment you need is an iPad (Gen 2 or higher) loaded with the Do Ink app ($3.99 CAD). A tripod for the iPad is a nice addition, as is an extra external mike, but neither is necessary.

Before I get into using the app, I will say that the first time I do this with kids, we do it for fun. No marks, no assignment. Let them experiment and learn what they are doing without the added pressure of assessment. I often have them do a mock newscast. A few weeks ago I worked with a whole school and the kids used a set script, as follows:

• Student One: Hi, my name is _______ and this is the Vancouver News for __________, 2018.
• Student Two: The weather today will be ______________.
• Student Three: In sports, the Canucks beat the ________, 3 to 1
• Student Four: And finally, in entertainment news, Alessia Cara won best new artist at the Grammys.

Once I move onto a serious project, I make sure the kids have spent a fair amount of time in the planning and storyboarding and scripting stages.

Once you’re actually ready to start, I would recommend working in small “chunks”. Film a bit, add it to the app, edit and then film again. Trying to do it all in one “take” can be stressful and difficult, especially for younger students. While you can film and take pictures from within the app, I find it easier to do all my camera work before opening the app.

Do Ink is relatively easy to use. Here is what the interface looks like:

And here’s an explanation of what you’re seeing:

For the bottom (background) layer, kids can add still images or video or even, if you also have the Do Ink Animation and Drawing app, animations.You add by clicking the bottom plus sign and then choosing the source. The middle (video) layer is where you add the “green screen” video you’ve taken. The top layer is for further animations or images you want to add in. When I start working with kids, I tell them not to use this layer for at least their first project – no point in getting too complicated right away.

Here is a how-to video:

Here is a little “cheat sheet” I created to walk you through the first few times (Green Screen with Do Ink!) and here is a link to Do Ink’s Instruction page on their website.

Once you have finished the project, you can save it to the camera roll and export it or, take it even further by uploading the video to iMovie where you can add titles, transitions, credits and sound affects!

So, how could you use this? A million ways! Create a documentary about an animal and its life cycle. Illustrate one of the human body systems. Have students dress up in pioneer clothes and pretend to be settlers talking about what it was like to travel across Canada, or be gold miners talking about the Gold Rush. Be space explorers looking for habitable planets. Really, whatever your imagination can dream up you can probably do!

If you have camera-shy students, or students whose parents would rather they not get filmed, there are other ways to use the green screen. For instance, if the students are talking about ocean exploration, they could draw or build a model submarine which you could then hang in front of the green screen (use a green painted string or a see-through fishing line to suspend the sub). Students could still read out their script but do it off-camera. Or, if you have puppets, you could have students sitting down, holding the puppets up in front of the green screen. They can still use their voices and you won’t see their faces.

So, what do you think? Is it time to add a little Hollywood magic to your class?

Graphing the Winter Olympics!

I have a confession to make. I’m really more of a Summer Olympics person that a Winter Olympics person. Yeah, when the Olympics were here in 2010, I went as nuts as the rest of us (I had to go outside for the last few minutes of the men’s gold medal hockey game – I was so nervous and excited I thought I was going to throw up!) and I love watching Canadian athletes succeed! But let’s face it – the Winter Olympics happen during the school year, so I have very little time to watch. And they usually happen when report cards are looming, so I am a little pre-occupied.

But when I really think about it, the Olympics provide so many awesome teaching opportunities, and the Winter Olympics are great just because they DO happen during the school year!

The other day I was chatting with Sara Bell, one of the great vps here in our district. We got to chatting about learning resources and she showed me the website Power of Ten (awesome site – thanks Trevor Calkins!) and the free Winter Olympics Math resource – Sports as a Teachable Moment – updated and includes the 2018 Olympic Games on the site. That got me to thinking….sports statistics! What an fantastic real world way to talk about data and graphing and to build number and time sense! Just how much faster did that Canadian skier go down the hill? How many degrees did the snowboarder rotate if they did a backside triple cork? Which country has the worst record for penalty minutes in an Olympic hockey game?

Power of Ten’s Winter Olympic resource is aimed at Grades K to 8, with lots of great information as well as charts where information from past Olympics is recorded, with a place to put the information from this Winter Olympics as well! You can use the charts as is, or better yet, start creating graphs!

For K to 2 students, this is something I would likely do as a class. You can, of course, go old school and use paper for the graphs or you can go digital.

Apple’s Numbers app is a spreadsheet app that can quite quickly make simple graphs from a spreadsheet. Here is a quick tutorial.

There are a few graphing apps specifically made for elementary students and, while I can’t say I’ve tried them all, some of them don’t look that great. However, Teaching Graphs is made by the company Little Monkey Apps and their Math apps all seem pretty well thought out. The Teaching Graph app is not perfect but it does let kids make some pretty great looking graphs quite quickly. Finished graphs can be saved to the Picture gallery. Here’s a graph I made quickly:

Although I have not used this app with primary students, I would think that Grade 2 and 3 students would be able to use it quite easily after a little modelling.

For students from Grade 4 to 8 we have access to Google Sheets. Like many spreadsheet programs, Sheets can seems a bit intimidating at first. There are certainly lots of bells and whistles! However, it can also be used for simple graphing.

Here is an image of the Gold Medal data I used for the previous graph, put into Sheets.

To create a graph or chart from the data, I simply highlight the data and click Insert then Chart. Google will build the chart it thinks work best and you can then go in and change or customize the graph or chart.

Once you’re happy with what you’ve done, you can save it as an image by clicking the three vertical dots in the top right corner.

With all of the information coming at us on a daily basis, teaching kids to read, interpret and represent data is an important part of numerical literacy. Being able to use real-life statistics from something cool like the Winter Olympics makes this a more enjoyable task for both the teacher and the students!

Digital Citizenship – Be Internet Awesome!

During the course of the year, I often come across new sites and apps. Some are awesome (my favourite this year is Quizlet) and some are so-so but I try to take the time to check them all out and at least “kick the tires” to see what they do. A few months ago I stumbled across this digital citizenship and safety offering from Google. (I have previously written about internet safety, here and here).

The site is called Be Internet Awesome. Google has created a straight-forward curriculum guide for teachers, based on their 5 fundamental tenets of digital citizenship and safety:

• Share with Care (Be Internet Smart)
• Don’t Fall for Fake (Be Internet Alert)
• Secure Your Secrets (Be Internet Strong)
• It’s Cool to Be Kind (Be Internet Kind)
• When in Doubt, Talk It Out (Be Internet Brave)

The curriculum is aimed at students in Grade 3 to 5, which is a great age to really delve into these topics. Many children at this age are beginning to interact with one another on the internet, either through social media or online gaming. Helping them learn good digital citizenship skills at this age will pay off as they get older.

The curriculum is organized into the 5 sections above and includes easy to organize discussion activities, games and vocabulary. This is all well and good (and certainly helpful for many teachers who struggle with knowing what to say to kids when it comes to these topics) but for kids, the best part is that the culmination of 4 of the units is a chance to put what they’ve learned to practice by playing “Interland”, Google’s online digital citizenship game, designed to compliment the curriculum. In Interland, you become a colourful Internaut who battles hackers, oversharers, phishers and cyberbullies by using the skills you’ve learned.

Players work their way through Tower of Treasure (where they learn about keeping things secure), Kind Kingdom (where they battle cyberbullies and build up other characters with kindness), Reality River (where they learn to spot fake), and Mindful Mountain (where they learn to “share with care”). The graphic interface is bright and geometric and the characters are generically cute or scary. Kids do not need to create an account and it works well on both laptops and iPads.

Teaching kids good digital citizenship skills is an “it takes a village” kind of thing. In its teacher resource package Google includes an information letter you can send home to parents and there is also a safety pledge that kids can sign with their families. In addition, you can print off posters, badges and certificates.

I have to say, I think Google has hit a home run with this one and if I were teaching Grade 3 to 5 students, this would definitely be a part of my year plan!

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