This week’s #EdublogsClub Blogging ChallengePrompt: Write a listicle.

From Wikipedia:  In journalism and blogging, a listicle is a short-form of writing that uses a list as its thematic structure, but is fleshed out with sufficient copy to be published as an article. A typical listicle will prominently feature a cardinal number in its title, with subsequent subheadings within the text itself reflecting this schema. The word is a portmanteau derived from list and article. It has also been suggested that the word evokes “popsicle“, emphasising the fun but “not too nutritious” nature of the listicle.^[1]

So, my listicle post is about what I consider to be the top 5 most versatile iPad tools/apps for elementary educators:

The Top 5 Most Versatile iPad Tools/Apps for Elementary Educators

To make my top 5 list, apps/tools had to fall in to the “creative” category.  (I have a sign by my desk that reads, “I want kids to create, not just consume.”  Click here to read more about my “motivation” wall.)  If you haven’t mastered these yet, be sure you do!

1. Camera and Photos (native iOS apps)
2. Seesaw
3. ChatterPix Kids
4. Pic Collage Kids
5. Book Creator

     Camera and Photos

Built right in to your iPad are a powerful camera and a tool for organizing, editing, and annotating over the top of your images.  If you don’t take time to get the most recent UserGuide when you update your iPad’s operating system, you might miss out on important and cool updates to the native apps that are part of the operating system like these are.  Here is a link to the current (10.2) iPad UserGuide that you can add to iBooks for free.  The userguide has a hyperlinked table of contents with links to chapters on the Camera and Photos Apps with great screenshots and easy-to-read instructions.  Some of the most recent useful additions is the editing option to “mark-up” a photo.  Think about having students snap a photo of something and then annotate over the top of it!  The annotations become part of the photo itself when saved.  Have them photograph and annotate text or go on a scavenger hunt for photos that contain a shape or other concept you’re studying and then annotate the photo to circle or even label what they want to draw attention to.

Many apps that encourage creativity use the Photos app as a project “library” where finished products are stored.  Any app that allows you to save a project as an image or video file, will likely send the finished product to “photos” for you to retrieve.  This means this app is often critical to being able to “smash” app features together.  Start a project in Chatterpix (see below), then save the “video” file to photos where you can then upload to Seesaw (see below) to share with families.  Understanding and being comfortable with managing your iPad’s Photos app is critical!

     Seesaw

Click here to see the teacher/student app in the app store.  Seesaw is an online learning journal that allows teachers to make a free account, add their class roster and share access with parents.  Students log in to the app on the iPad and make entries to document their learning using the built-in tools for drawing, recording audio and video, and annotating or labeling over images or pdfs.  Any other app that can save a product as an image, video or pdf can be appsmashed into Seesaw to share with families.  There’s so much more to this app, but that’s the gist of it.  You need to check it out if you haven’t already!

     ChatterPix Kids

Click here to see it in the app store.  So fun to use to let kids “show what they know!”  Find or take a photo of a topic you’ve been studying, give it a mouth and record your own voice to bring the image to life by chattering your words along the mouth you’ve drawn!  Save the finished project to the Photos app in video format and it can be shared anywhere you share videos:  Seesaw?  Sure!  YouTube? Yep?  Airdrop to a friend?  You Bet!  Set student examples up to play on their iPads on their desks and let your class roam around in a “gallery walk” to see and reflect on one another’s projects.  Don’t feel limited to projects that start with an image of a person because people are the only ones with a voice . . . give a mouth and voice to an inanimate object like a landform or an animal and have their “voice” share details students have learned about that topic.  If the 30-second time limit isn’t enough, teach students to record multiple video clips and piece them together using iMovie!  Or have students use Airdrop to share their projects with you and YOU can piece them together in iMovie to make a class video to share!

     Pic Collage Kids

Click here to see it in the app store.  So fun to put multiple pictures together in a creative way to tell a story or share what you know or can do.  Add pictures into provided templates, get creative with text, stickers, etc. to make it look nice, then save it to your photo roll as a single, finished image that can be added to other apps or uploaded into tools like Seesaw.  (Since Seesaw doesn’t allow multiple photos to be uploaded (yet), this can be a way to upload multiple pictures into one Seesaw journal entry.  Pic Collage Kids also has some search capabilities built into it that could be used to help teach kids about using digital images “fairly.”

     Book Creator

Click here to see it in the app store.  This is the only app on my list that isn’t free, but the full version of this app is worth every penny of the $4.99 it costs.  (If you’re lucky enough to be part of Apple’s Volume Purchase Program for Education, you can get it in bulk for $2.99.)  But give the lite version (which IS free) a try before you decide.  All the tools are in the lite version, but you can only have one active book at a time.    This versatile little tool lets students create digital books that can be exported off the iPad in a variety of formats.  Its tools include text, drawing, audio recording, importing of images and videos, and even hyperlinking.  Finished books will open as an ebook that can be read in the native ebook reader for iPad, iBooks.  But they can also be saved as a PDF or even exported in a “movie for web” version that goes nicely to Seesaw and web pages.