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Sunday, October 25, 2015

iPad Practice Day 3

Teaching technology literacy can be difficult with little ones (which you can read more about here and here). We are on Day 3 of learning how to use of iPads purposefully and we kindergarteners have some MAD skills!


On Day 3, we opened up our Showbie app again and practiced writing our letters with our new stylus pens. The kids showed me how to zoom in and out, follow 2- and 3- step directions on how to get to the document, and worked diligently on writing their letters. Since we have been doing a lot of paper work, it was exciting to change up our letter practice routine. 


Probably the most underrated feature of Showbie is the "zoom" feature. I love my kiddos are able to differentiate for themselves. Some need to zoom in more than others in order to be super neat with their writing, others like to challenge themselves and work with more control.  When I asked one little guy why he had an empty document, "Because I am trying to make it so nice and I keep wanting to try again!" 

It's nice to use Showbie because the kids can erase, practice an infinite amount of times, reflect on work, and come back to it to edit later! The new portfolio feature is fab for adding pieces to save for later!


Love these two friends! They are at such different places in their educational journey and both using the same medium to complete a task. One friend is showing me how she zoomed in to work and can use color patterns, and the other is challenging herself! Love, love, LOVE!


After we worked on our letters, we saved our Showbie work by pressing the "Done" button. I introduce the "Done" button as the blue word that starts with a D.  Since it is the only word on the page, there is more ease to finding it. I also get to call us all readers because we found the word! Major confidence booster for friends who struggle.

Next, we exited out of Showbie by "swiping out" and opened up Show Me - an interactive white board app. 


I let the kiddos play around for a minute - checking in to see which friends could utilized the similar icons and changing writing color feature. We wrote our sentence of the week "I see a..."


Next up - our friends erased the hand written sentence and opened up the keyboard.

We worked on using the keyboard to type the same sentence we had been able to write. Were all of us writing the whole sentence - absolutely not! But the kiddos who could, did and the kiddos would couldn't got exposure to finding letters in an unfamiliar arrangement. 


This friend wanted to add on! Way to go girl!

I cannot describe how fun it is to watch my kiddos explore working with tech in ways they haven't before. To recap:
Day 1: Explore, teach icons, home button, "swiping out," letting your iPad "sleep"
Day 2: Review Day, take selfies (save to home & lock screens), navigate 1 of your most important apps, show how to screen shot
Day 3: Review, work within 1 of your most important apps, introduce how to submit material, check for understanding of classroom material by using iPads

I am going to work on some video tutorials on how to teach tech literacy but I hate listening to myself talk so... right now I am just working on convincing myself it is a good idea. HA!

How do you teach tech literacy? What do you NEED your kids to know when they work with iPads?



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