Having technology in the classroom really does provide me with lots of opportunities to try new ideas out constantly so I am linking up with Fourth Grade Flipper and Technology Tailgate for another Tuesday Technology Tried It.
My new fun app that I tried with my little friends is Skitch.
It’s a free app that is associated with Evernote (my most favorite app of all time) and I only used it for one activity so far, but I’ve already got a list started of objectives/goals I want to use it for someday soon…or next year. 🙂
For this activity my little friends were working on using their knowledge of letter sounds to label their choice of stuffed animal and then writing a descriptive sentence about their stuffed animal. I have a basket of stuffed animals that is sitting in one of my bookshelves and my students constantly ask when we are going to use them. Well, occasionally we actually will use that basket of stuffed animals to practice our fluent reading or to write about, so my little friends were super thrilled when I pulled out the basket this time! I modeled how to use Skitch (and at this point in the year, it takes them very little time to understand how to use a new app because they are just so used to the iPads- which is quite nice) and explained that they would each be choosing an animal, taking a picture of the animal, labeling it and then writing a sentence. They were ridiculously excited about their choice of stuffed animal AND that they got to take a picture of it. The picture taking happens right within the app- you just select “Take a Photo” and it takes you to the camera feature and then pulls it right into your new creation. It did take a few reminders that they weren’t just playing with the animals, but rather actually supposed to be doing the rest of our activity, but once they got over that excitement their creations turned out very cute!
Once they took the picture, they started using the tools on the right write their label of the animal and then type their sentence about the animal. This student picked my favorite, a hippo which I of course was super excited about as well. They even got to add little arrows to point to their animal. 🙂
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| Hippo- My hippo is cute. My hippo is cute and blue. |
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| Seahorse- My seahorse it cute. My seahorse is pink. |
Labeling can be such a huge step on the path to being writers and I plan to use this earlier in the year next year solely as a labeling center and then we will gradually move on to writing sentences about our objects just like we did here. Who can get bored with labeling objects when they are fun objects that you can take pictures of on the iPad??
Some other ideas I have for Skitch in my classroom are taking pictures of fiction and non-fiction books and labeling the title, author, illustrator and then non-fiction text features. I have to say I find this to be a very kid-friendly app and just know that your students will likely find more features that they can do with the app before you! 🙂
Have a great day!
Aylin
5 Responses
Skitch is great for annotating and drawing. I've seen some teachers use it to take pictures of images and find area and perimeter, along with pulling/circling vocabulary out of articles. It works really nice if you take a screenshot of something too.
Great post
Matt
Digital: Divide & Conquer
I just downloaded Skitch today! So excited to see a post about it! Thanks for sharing. I'm your newest follower. 😉
Creating Lifelong Learners
Thanks for the post and thanks Matt for the other uses for it too- I think I've heard of it before but didn't know what it was for… time to try it out while I'm on holiday. Especially if it can be used for area and perimeter because my kids have a measurement test a few weeks after we start back. I just found your blog through this linky and am your latest follower… I too love pinterest and exclamation points haha!
x Serena x
Magic Mistakes & Mayhem
I have heard of this app another time but still have yet to try it! Thanks for the reminder and I have it pinned:) This is an example of a time that I wish I had more than one iPad!
~Holly
Fourth Grade Flipper
How fun! I bet your students enjoyed that app. Thanks for sharing!
–The Techie Teacher