Soft Technology

With Lego Movie 2 hitting cinemas this week, I decided to embrace the children's enthusiasm to introduce stop motion animation. Stop Motion Animation is a brilliant and creative way for students to tell stories, explore ideas and explain different concepts. There are plenty of different stop motion animation apps. My go-to app is I Can Animate. There are so many possibilities with this app as you can link it with greenscreen to add an animated background before editing further in iMovie. Here is an example of something we created: I have posted a step-by-step tutorial video for how to create something like this exclusive to the supporters of my facebook page. Click here to sign up.

I love using Christmas as a way to engage children in their learning. They are excited, inquisitive and generally really interested in anything Christmas. Recently, I worked with Year 2 where they created their own Interactive Christmas scene using Chatterpix Kids and Thinglink. Here is an example of what they created: I have posted a step-by-step guide for how to do this activity on the supporter part of my Facebook page. Sign up by tapping the picture below: This idea can easily be adapted to other areas of the curriculum, such as: Read more about this idea here. Read more about this idea here. Read more about this idea here

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a project my Year 4 class had started, inspired by the recent Greenpeace advert - There's a Rang-Tan in my Bedroom. To read that blog post, which includes original questions linked to the advert, please click the picture: The response we received from the video the class created where they wrote in role as a helpless Orangutan, seeing their home destroyed was so positive and empowering.  Again you can read more about this by clicking the picture above. If you haven't yet seen the video, here it is: From the reaction to the video, my class were inspired to go further and investigate the issue more. We discovered this from Greenpeace, which identifies companies with links to Dirty Palm Oil: According to Greenpeace, these companies made a promise to be clean of dirty palm oil by 2020. My pupils decided to write to these companies to provide a polite reminder and ensure they are on target to keep their promise.  After drafting their letters, I gave...

I think music is one of the most powerful yet underused tools in the classroom. If you've joined me on my training, you will know how I use it in class to support different areas of the curriculum. There are plenty of examples on this blog which demonstrates the power of music. You can see them here.  BBC Teach  Supermovers is a brilliant and FREE resource which gets your pupils moving, singing and remembering! This video explores the Supermovers resource: I was very excited when they asked me to get involved and make a video for their website. You can watch it here - 

In Year 4, we have been inspired by the latest Greenpeace Advert - There's a Rang-Tan in My Bedroom. The advert tells the story of Rang-Tan, a young Indonesian orangutan that has been forced out of her home by humans. It is a beautifully animated video with a very powerful message: We decided to look at the text used in the advert in more detail: There's a Rang-tan in my bedroom and I don't know what to do. She plays with all my teddies and keeps borrowing my shoe. She destroys all of my house plants and she keeps on shouting 'oo'. She throws away my chocolate and she howls at my shampoo. There's a Rang-tan in my bedroom and I don't want her to stay, So I told the naughty Rang-tan that she had to go away. Oh, Rang-tan in my bedroom, just before you go, Why were you in my bedroom? I really want to know. There's a human in my forest and I don't know what to do. He destroyed all of our trees for your food and your shampoo. There's a human in my for...

I am not going to lie, I am very jealous of all the amazing teachers attending the Global ADE 2018 summit in Texas. I have been closely following the hashtag #WWADE2018 and #EveryoneCanCreate and enjoying some of the amazing content being created and shared. It has reminded me of all the brilliant new additions to the Keynote app and inspired me to try some with a project with my children. They are going on a school trip tomorrow to the zoo and so created this animated quiz about animals: Keynote has been an app that I have used personally in my CPD and training sessions for years. Essentially, it is Apple's version of Powerpoint. At the UK ADE summit last year I was very fortunate to get a one to one tutorial with a Keynote expert, Alan Rosenfield , who really opened my eyes to creating engaging content to support my training sessions. More recently, Apple have announced a number of new updates to Keynote which take the app beyond a simple presentation app to an incredibly powerfu...

Before I start discussing what we did, it is only right to share where the original idea for this project came from. This blog post by the brilliant @Joe_Moretti  gave me the inspiration for this project - AR STORYCUBES PROJECT I have been using my iPad with my children to support them with their reading journal homework for a while now. My boys struggle with their handwriting and find it very onerous to write even though they have some great ideas. As discussed by @MrTullock at the Animate2Educate conference last week, technology should be used to enable children to show their knowledge and understanding even if they struggle with an element such as decoding or handwriting or spelling. I loved a quote he shared, and I have linked it in a poster to the story @CarolJAllen shared around the latest BGT winner. I want to use technology so my children and pupils can create content to express themselves, their knowledge and their understanding. Making our own Interactive Avengers ...

Over the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure of working in Year 1. Their topic for this half term has been mini beasts and so I wanted to share with you some of the work we have been doing through technology. First, you may have seen the Hungry Caterpillar video we made, you can read about how we created this here . The children have also been learning about different mini beasts, researching facts and information and then creating these videos using the app - Shadow Puppets Edu: Last week, students were writing their own mini beast poems, focusing on the use of alliteration. To add an element of performance, the pupils recorded themselves sharing their writing using the app ChatterPix Kids. Here are some of their examples: These are just a couple of example of how I try to promote the use of technology in the primary classroom. It is about children creating content through these creative apps. Each of these ideas can easily be adapted to any topic you are doing with your pupils....

You may remember a project I did with Year One last term: I decided to do a similar project with Year Three for their science topic about the Human Body.  We started with the Curiscope Virtuali-tee. This amazing augmented reality t-shirt never fails to create a lesson of awe and wonder! If you've not ordered one of their t-shirts, I would highly recommend it. Buy a t-shirt here. As a class, we explored all the different parts of the body and used the guide to learn facts about how our body works and what each organ does. The children were then given a part of the body and given some more time to find other facts about it. Using the app Chatterkids Pix, the children had to create animated videos sharing their learning. The students also used Greenscreen to create images giving the illusion we could see inside their body. Using Seesaw, they labelled all the different parts of the body: To link everything together, we used the app Thinglink. This allowed all the pupils to em...

Viral crazes, you either love them or hate them. As a teacher, it is probably the latter. There is nothing worse than trying to explain the past progressive tense and spying a pupil trying to perfect the latest dance craze.   We've had everything - dabbing, bottle flipping, even the Harlem Shake... remember that? The latest seems to be the Floss Dance. My pupils have been doing it so much they seem to have forgotten how to walk, they just floss everywhere. Dentists up and down the country must have been buzzing when they heard there was a floss craze. "FINALLY, people are taking our recommendations seriously" I could hear them cry. Imagine their surprise when they realised it turns out to be an awkward, Dad dancing move. The look on their faces! In the past, with some of the crazes, I have used them to great effect when it comes to writing in class. I truly believe children will do their best writing when they are writing about something they are truly engaged with. One o...

Today I worked with one of our Year 3 classes and I eventually had the chance to try out a new app I've been desperate to use - Figment AR . I first heard of this app after reading a blog post from the brilliant @ICTEvangelist . You can read his blog post here: Figment AR For Story Telling And Re-Living Field Trips In IOS   The feature in the app which I was immediately drawn to was the portals feature. This allows you to place a portal within your world. This portal allows you to travel to any 360° image. There are a couple of pictures included but you can also add your own. Straight away I knew this would be something that would inspire some amazing writing in my class and today I finally got the chance to have a go with our brilliant Year 3 pupils. But as I always discuss on my CPD and INSET the big hook was what they were going to do with their writing which was to bring it to life and create their own movie! As their topic is linked to space, we decided to use a 360° image of ...