Show Me

Last week the 6th and 7th grade social studies teacher asked if I could  be one of his centers today. He wanted students to create a podcast of a letter they wrote about the three ancient African Empires. He wanted me to use VoiceThread which is an app I have had downloaded on my iPads but haven't really explored. I did some research, created an account and was excited to use it today...

Not so fast, do you ever have a lesson that goes GREAT in your head but as soon as you begin to execute it crumbles...

First, the iPods were not connecting to our wireless network. As soon as they would agree to the acceptable use policy they were booted. Then, I finally got 4 kids logged in and started and VoiceThread informed me that I needed to upgrade to add more comments.

Since these two things were out of my control I had to quickly come up with a back up plan because sometimes things just don't go how we planned. AND sometimes Plan B ends up working out even better than you could have imagined Plan A going (actually that happens in real life too;)).

While quickly flipping through pages of apps I realized that Show Me would be a good substitute! I grabbed the iPads and we got to work! We ran into a few snags BUT they were able to take a picture of their letter, add photos and record their voice. One problem we had was with the photos, we couldn't figure out how to easily edit and move the photos once you had got out of the add screen. Another problem we had was the inability to "start over" with the recording. The third problem was that we didn't have enough iPads with cameras available so students had to work in pairs. We worked through all of these issues and figured out simple solutions.

Here are a few examples....