#Peel21st Blog Hop - Cool Tools for School

On Twitter, several #Peel21st folks were discussing their favourite digital tools and tools that they were planning on exploring this year. @tina_zita came up with the great idea for everyone who was interested to write a blog post and link those posts into this #Peel21st Blog Hop.  Please check the other blog posts linked at the bottom of this page after you read my post titled:

PUPPET PALS2 - Not Just for Primary

As the new Teacher-Librarian in my school, I wanted my orientation sessions to grab the attention of our junior students and teachers who already know the "Library Rules" but who might not already know that the possibilities are endless when you pair up with a Teacher-Librarian :)

I used a variety of my favourite digital tools and a few new ones to review the Library Routines. The new-to-me digital tool that I found most interesting was the free version of Puppet Pals. Many FDK teachers recommend this app, but I hadn't tried it until last week. Here is my first take - but I will warn you that it isn't very good.

Now the best thing about my attempt not being very good was that it prompted a lot of discussion with the grade 4s and 5s. In addition, the students were eager to come up with one important library rule or routine and create a digital text that I could share with students in lower grades.Many thought that my video would be too creepy for younger children and gave evidence from the text (creepy music, Abraham Lincoln in a police car was weird, Abe's voice was creepy). Others mentioned that the changes in music helped to set the tone for 'happy' kids and 'serious' man. Some students mentioned that the free version didn't offer multicultural choices and that they couldn't choose a character that looked like they did. They critiqued the movement of the car going through the bodies and were very serious when listing success criteria.

Not only were students engaged, they were demonstrating the expectations outlined in the Language Curriculum Overview for Grades 4-6:

The expectations for Grades 4 to 6 focus on students’ ability to use their knowledge
and skills in listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing, and representing to 
understand, critically analyse, and communicate a broad range of information

and ideas from and about their multicultural, multimedia environment. 

It is pretty exciting and powerful to see how digital tools can enhance teaching, learning, creativity, communication, collaboration, citizenship, character and critical thinking.

Puppet Pals 2 for the iPad is easy to use - just pick a setting and character(s) and record voice(s) while animating the character(s) using simple gestures. Finished videos can quickly be saved to the camera roll and shared in a variety of ways or exported to iMovie for editing. With the paid version, you can use your own photos and you have access to a larger variety of characters.

A Parent & Teacher Guide can be found here.

Please visit the rest of the Blog Hop Posts below

Notability by Phil Young

Pocket by Greg Pearson 

NFB StopMo by Graham Whisen 

Code .or by Erica Armstrong

Scratch Jr. by James Cash 

Educreations by Matthew Oldridge 

IFTTT by Jason Richea 

Photo Editor by Aviary by Tina Zita

The 6 C's Project - Creativity

About a week ago Tina_Zita & @MatthewOldridge asked the question:

"How do we measure creativity,
critical thinking, communication, or any of the 6 C's of 21st Century Learning
without a clear understanding of what we are hoping to
achieve?"

Jason Richea and I decided to join Tina and Matthew in taking on the task of defining the 6 C's, beginning with creativity. You can read all of our original input here. The next step was coming up with a 6 word definition.

My assessment hat seemed to be glued on. I kept coming up with success criteria for a creative product. Then, I got stuck on the 6 word limit. While blow drying my hair this morning I wondered if I could get around the 6 word limit by using symbols - and I pictured something. When I got to school I tried to create it  - ahhh, no Photoshop! So I quickly drew this (those are hands holding a brain, which represents imagination).

  I painted at recess. 

At the Tim Horton's drive thru at lunch I finally came up with my 6 word definition and went back to school to put this together.

Driving home, I wasn't satisfied. The hands were too stagnant - they should be transforming something! (and now I see that I wrote trasnforming - oops). Even though I liked that it was a visual representation & used symbols, my definition really called for some movement. I got the Play-Doh out and borrowed my husband's hands and filmed a quick Vine. Wasn't happy with it. So we tried something else and experienced audio problems. Finally, we came up with this:

It is still not exactly what I wanted, but it makes me laugh.

Creativity: transforming imagination into new, relevant products.

Please visit:

Jason Richea's blog at http://beyondangrybirds.blogspot.ca/ and follow him on Twitter @jrichea

Tina Zita's blog at http://misszita.wordpress.com/ and follow her on Twitter @tina_zita

and follow Matthew Oldridge @MatthewOldridge

Join the conversation & let us know how you define CREATIVITY and the 5 other C's