Hello, Readers!
iPads in classrooms have been around for years, but teachers are still finding new and elegant ways to allow their students’ voices to come through more uniquely with the help of these powerful tablets. And in this next case, it’s literally the students’ voices that play the starring role.
Clips in Class
by Jennifer Chen
Louise and I first started talking about ways to incorporate more iPad use with her students a few months ago. As a second grade French immersion teacher, she’s constantly looking for more speaking opportunities in the classroom, especially because they’re still in the earlier stages of learning the language. One of the units Louise does near the end of the school year is a project on animal life cycles. Students choose an animal they want to study, and then use their library time to fill out a worksheet with questions about their animal’s life cycle. I suggested we try having the students create a short Clips video on their animal, so that students can record the facts about their animals in their own voice, and add it into the project.
This week, we sat down to have our first planning meeting for this project. We went over the ideas for the project again, and Louise downloaded Clips onto her teacher iPad. She is excited for the possibility of having her students work in pairs, so they can learn to work together and help one another out on the app. Normally, this project is done individually. Before our next planning meeting, Louise is going to try out the Clips app on her own. Once she has a better understanding of it, we’ll be able to figure out what features she thinks her students can handle, so I know what to introduce them to eventually.
Our next goal is to sit down and create an example of this project together. This way, Louise will have something to show her class when she assigns this assignment. Then, at the end of April, I’ll be going into the class for a one hour Intro to Clips session, where the students will watch me give them a quick demo of the app, before diving in and creating something of their own. Once they’ve learned and are comfortable using the app, it’ll be up to Louise to assign this project to them to wrap up their Animal Life Cycles unit.
The Clips app is a free, Apple-made app that makes editing video, audio, and graphics super-duper student-friendly. Maybe we should have made this edition of the newsletter using Clips… 🤔.
Until next week,
The Classmate Team
Tech Tip
Have you ever needed a PDF filled out by your students by posting it to Google Classroom? Here’s a quick hack that allows you to do so, without relying on any extensions or add-ons!
Open the PDF in preview > Convert the page to an image > Create a Google Slide and make the page 8.5"x11" (or whatever size the sheet is) > Set the image to the background > Profit!
When posted to Google Classroom, students can add text boxes wherever the worksheet expects them to write something. Voila!