Category Archives: Technology

Free, safe images for students

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Oscar Meyer WienermobileLet’s imagine that you and your students have gone on a field trip to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan (which, if you can, I highly recommend that you do so because the place is a-ma-zing.) Imagine one of your students wants to write about his favorite part of the trip – seeing the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. He didn’t take any photos on the trip, so he wants to search for images online to add to his writing. Imagine what might happen if your student uses a typical search engine to look for images of wienermobiles.

Now imagine that you are a highly-prepared, tech-savvy teacher (easy to do, because you so are.) When your students want to add images of a wienermobile, or a titmouse, or any image, you guide them to search on Pics4Learning. It’s safe, it’s free, and the images are copy-right friendly.

Before you open up Pics4Learning, imagine the joy every artist will feel if you give your students a quick lesson on copyright first. Ask your students to imagine that they have worked tirelessly to create a fantastic work of art. Imagine posting a photo of said masterpiece online to share your art with family and friends. Now imagine that some random person online decides to right-click the photo of your masterpiece, copy and paste it, and use your work as if they made it. Imagine the outrage! Now your students may understand how artists feel when their images are copied and taken without any recognition or attribution. Just because you *can* right-click and copy an image doesn’t mean you *should*. Use a site like Pics4Learning instead, and there will be no breaking of copyright issues, or any uncomfortable discussions about when searching for images of blue-footed boobies.

Spatter and Spark – a free picture book app!

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Perhaps my dilemma is familiar to you. I have an iPad, and I want a great picture book app to share with early elementary students. With my tiny budget I’m always on the hunt for the free, but I also like good stuff, and unfortunately, that combination of free and good is often hard to find. Here’s an app that fits the bill – Spatter and Spark.

Spatter and Spark is a free picture book app from Polk Street Press. It’s an original story written by the talented and rockin’ cool Deborah Underwood with superb illustrations by Luciana Navarro Powell. Spatter is an artistic porcupine who would like to paint a picture of the baby crow, Hubert, as a gift. The problem is that Hubert is not quite ready to fly down from his nest, so Spatter isn’t sure what Hubert looks like. Spatter asks his inventor pal, Spark, to help him with his problem. She suggests that if Hubert can’t come down, Spatter should go up. Spark invents bouncy shoes for her and Spark to wear and the problem seems solved – until they are bouncing too high! The reader helps to save the day, and that’s one of the best things about apps like this: they encourage reader interaction.

The art for Spatter and Spark is large enough for a whole class to enjoy, but I think it’ll be best used either in small groups or 1-to-1 because readers can help build and paint the bouncy shoes (Spatter is an artist and must make the shoes sparkly!) I love how the shoes we see Spatter and Spark wearing as they bounce are painted exactly the way I chose, a bit of tech magic that delights me. There are activities within the app that can be purchased, but I want to use this with students to talk about Key Ideas and Details.

This story starts with one problem, but one answer doesn’t automatically save the day; the solution leads to another problem. After sharing this picture book app with your students, have them fold or divide a piece of paper into thirds labeled First, Next, and Last (or keep it teched up by using a “show me” app like Educreations to write and draw). In the “First” third, students can show the original problem. In the “Next” third, students can show the solution to that problem, which also caused another problem! In the “Last” third, students can show how that second problem was solved.

Because Spark is an inventor, ask your students to get creative. Bouncy shoes were one way for the friends to get up high – what other ways might there be? Encourage students to draw (or create!) another invention that might work, and make sure to plan for any problems this new solution might cause. In honor of artistic Spatter, students should make the inventions beautiful as well as functional. (Gotta say, I love that the girl is the inventor and the boy is artistic!)

So if you have an iPad 2 or later, and you’re on the hunt for a free picture book that’s also high-quality, download Spatter and Spark!

For more information about Deborah Underwood, please visit: www.deborahunderwoodbooks.com.
For more information about Luciana Navarro Powell, please visit: www.lucianaillustration.blogspot.com.
For more information about Polk Street Press, please visit: www.polkstreetpress.com

 

Doggone Feet is Doggone Fun!

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There are many perks to being a children’s librarian (no overdue fines has saved me a bundle over the years) but one of the best parts of my job is getting to know supah-cool authors and illustrators like Leslie Helakoski. Leslie is a Michigan treasure I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for years, and I’m geeked to share her brand new book with you: Doggone Feet.

Dog follows a pair of feet home from the park one day and finds her perfect place under the table. Life is good until two more feet come on the scene:
“They’re twirling leg twisters, toe-tapping kiss-kissers,
rule-listing insisters of doggy shampoos.”
So now the space under the table includes the dog and two sets of two feet, until another pair come along – tiny baby feet. As the family grows the dog must accommodate more pairs of feet in her shrinking space, and she’s not sure she likes the new additions. In the end, though the space under the table is crowded and cramped, the message is clear: families always make room for more.

The first time I read this book, I immediately thought how it perfect it would be for a math lesson. If there were two dogs and three humans, how many feet would be under the table? It’s also a great book to talk about point of view – both figuratively and literally. The story is told from the dog’s perspective, and we don’t see the faces of the humans, just their feet, until the end of the book. You can talk with your students about author/illustrator’s Craft and Structure – why did Ms. Helakoski choose to frame all the illustrations from this different point of view? How might a mouse see life under a dinner table, or a fly over a school cafeteria table at lunchtime? It’d be fun to have students spend a writing session on the floor under their desks, to inspire them to write and draw from a different point of view.

Then I saw the terrific trailer that Leslie’s son, Connor, made for her book:

How cool would it be to combine book-trailer technology with a math lesson centered around Doggone Feet?! Using a free app like Educreations on the iPad or a program like iMovie on computers, students could make a mini-movie to retell the events of the story (check off Key Ideas and Details on your Common Core State Standards score card) either by drawing the action or physically acting it out, adding up the feet as you go. With all the wonderful rhyme and wordplay, it’d be great for Reader’s Theater!  Doggone Feet will be so doggone much fun for your students!

For more information, please visit Leslie’s website at helakoskibooks.com.

The Day-Glo Brothers on a free app – what a bright idea!

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I’m a librarian partly because I couldn’t afford my book habit if I had to buy every book I read. So when I’m looking for e-books, I usually look for free ones (some call me cheap, I prefer “fantastically frugal”). But I don’t want crummy books – I want the good stuff! Leave it to Reading Rainbow to hook me up with quality children’s books for free (and a huge variety of even more titles if I want to pay for a subscription).

I downloaded the free Reading Rainbow app to my iPad and was greeted by Levar Burton ( a man who has lured more children to reading  than the Pied Piper lured rats, but you don’t have to take *my* word for it.) I was thrilled to find one of my favorite biographies, with complete text and art, a bit of fun animation, and even a game to play.

The Day-Glo Brothers: the true story of Bob and Joe Switzer’s bright ideas and brand-new colors is written by Chris Barton and illustrated by Tony Persiani. Bob and Joe Switzer were in their father’s drugstore when they discovered that certain chemicals glow under ultraviolet light. With lots of experimenting and some accidental luck, the brothers invented colors that would glow even in sunlight, those neon colors called Day-Glo. It’s a “brilliant” story about perseverance, for, as Joe used to say, “If just one experiment out of a thousand succeeds, then you’re ahead of the game.”

So now you can share this enlightening biography (CCSS Range of Reading – check!) with your students for free in paper-book form from the library, or you can share it on iPads with the free Reading Rainbow app. Charlesbridge has a free activity guide to go with the book, along with an author interview and an animation on how fluorescence works.  How fun would it be to put a blacklight  in a lamp in your classroom and get fluorescent markers for an art project. Students can try making one of the props Joe used in his magic shows, or you can have students demonstrate with Day-Glo colors why we see the phases of the moon. A great biography on a free app – what a bright idea!

 

Got a new device? Play with “Chalk”!

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If you were lucky enough to get an iPad, a Kindle, or some other fun e-gizmo this holiday season, and you’d like your kids to use it for more than just throwing (understandably) angry birds, get yourself some Chalk.

Chalk by Bill Thomson is a visually stunning wordless picture book available as a Kindle e-book. (If you have a tablet or an iPad, you can download the Kindle app for free and read Kindle books – cool, huh?) Three children find a bag of chalk on a playground. The things they draw come to life. When one of the children draws a dinosaur, how will the children stop it?

Wordless books like Chalk are a great choice for young readers, and not just because they can “read” the pictures to get the whole story. When children read a wordless book with adults, typically the language the adults use to describe what is happening in the illustrations is of a more complex nature than the sentences and vocabulary usually found in picture books for young ones. (Want to know more? Read my article about wordless picture books for ReaderKidZ.com) So a wordless book can actually work well to teach the Common Core State Standard of Craft & Structure. I love that Chalk offers a great opportunity for problem-solving. When the dinosaur comes to life on the playground in the story, you can ask your young readers, “What would you do?” Kids can brainstorm how they’d solve the problem and discuss Thomson’s solution – the child who drew the dinosaur draws a rain cloud, which becomes real and washes all the chalk (including the dinosaur) away. Talk through the problem and the solution, the beginning-middle-end, and you’re hitting Key Ideas and Details as well!

After you’ve enjoyed Chalk on your device, pair up students and have them sit back to back. If you have a classroom set of iPads, you can use a free drawing app like My Blackboard, or you can go old-school and use real chalk and construction paper, dry erase markers and white boards, etc. Have each student draw something that, if it came to life, would cause a huge problem. Then, students swap pictures and draw something that can then solve that problem.

So, tech it up with your students with the Kindle book and a fun, free app, or embrace the paper and get the book from your local library, but either way, don’t miss out on Chalk!

For more information, please visit billthomson.com.