Basecamp - Cooking with Apps iTunesU

Thorughout the project the pilot schools made use of Basecamp, a project management tool and online community portal. Cedars School of Excellence provided support throughout.

Follow-up to Launch

From: Andrew Jewell
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012

Hi Folks,

I hope you all found the launch day inspiring and I'm sure are already back in the hurly-burly of a teaching week.

Just thought it would be good if there was somewhere we could all chat online about what we are experiencing and share our successes and challenges.

This message thread includes all the primary schools in the pilot and would be an ideal place for conversations.

Look forward to hearing from you

AJ :)

Lucy Gallagher Mon, 19 Mar

Hi Andrew

Great kick off and certainly mobilised us! Over weekend we were on phone, text, email and portal. Wendy went into school on Saturday to update the iPads to iOS5 and install some of the great Apps shared on Friday. Increasing our wireless connectivity and setting up new iPads on new admin account as well as getting ready to share information with parents and pupils are immediate to-dos. Thank you so much for sharing your AUPs which have saved us a huge amount of time.

Andrew Jewell Mon, 19 Mar

Sounds great. I wish I'd had more time to chat to you on Friday but we had so much to cram into the day. I'd love to set up a visit to the school at some point if you felt that was appropriate. It's great to see you guys taking advantage of this forum. It's an excellent tool for running a project like this. 

Lucy Gallagher Mon, 19 Mar

Andrew, you are very welcome to visit anytime. I agree - the portal is extremely helpful and will really help us work as a team.

Jane Glover Tue, 20 Mar 

Andrew
Victoria has briefed me on the day. Both Kerry and Victoria found the day both intense and stimulating.
We are going through the preparatory stages
Kind regards
Jayne Glover

Andrew Jewell Tue, 20 Mar 

Did you guys all manage to get the Cooking With Apps iTunesU course and materials?

Gillian Rae Tue, 20 Mar 

Hi,
Got the materials downloaded and, after trying it out at home, today I
attempted the Silhouette Sandwich activity. Took quite a few attempts to
get the layers right with the children but quite pleased with the results.
The children were “wowed”!! Sent from FirstClass with my iPad

Andrew Jewell Tue, 20 Mar 

Good stuff. Feel free to post some examples of what the kids have managed to do here. I've put up a couple of examples from a lesson I did called 'Reaching for the Stars'. 

Fiona Breen Tue, 20 Mar 

Hi!
Unfortunately have still not managed to download Cooking with Apps i TunesU course and materials – help! Loved your ‘Reach for the Stars’!
Fiona
Sent from my iPad

Wendy French Sun, 25 Mar

Hi Andrew,

We have downloaded 'Cooking with Apps' onto our devices and we used it to create silhouette pictures.  We watched the bad dancing video on You tube where Matt goes to different places around the world and dances badly.  The children then chose an interesting or famous place as the background for their pictures.  See attached examples.  

Wendy French Sun, 25 Mar

We have been making videos where the children give advice to Bonnie Prince Charlie about whether to carry on from Derby to London or whether to turn back.  We are about to use imovie to edit them.  Can you suggest any good introductory guides to the imovie app?

Lucy Gallagher Sun, 25 Mar

Hi Wendy

This YouTube tutorial is more for staff than pupils, but gives detailed overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEaWuCrI24s

Apple has this online guide: http://help.apple.com/imovie/ipad/1.3/index.html

Lucy

Andrew Jewell Mon, 26 Mar 

Wendy, the examples are excellent! How did the kids enjoy?

Andrew Jewell Mon, 26 Mar

Relative to iMovie - the new upgrade includes something called 'trailers' which was previously on the mac version. The great thing from an introductory point of view is that the structure of creating a trailer is built into the app and so the results are also great! The kids will be amazed at what they produce.

Have a look and get back to me to let me know what you think.

Jen Brown Mon, 26 Mar 

We've been creating i-books this week for the infants and it's going really well so far. We've been using Idea Sketch to plan our books which has worked really well and the children are really enjoying it.

Hoping to try the silhouette activity tomorrow - was wondering if it was possible to do it with Art Rage app instead of Brushes?

Some of the ideas on here so far have been great, very exciting seeing all the things we can do with this.

Andrew Jewell Mon, 26 Mar

Excellent Jen, why not share a few screenshots from your iBooks?

Artrage would work fine :) if you need walked through it we could set up a facetime? :)

Jen Brown Mon, 26 Mar 

Thanks Andrew. I'll have a play around with it tonight and see how I get on, if not may give you a shout :)

Will get some screenshots up over the next few days, will see if I can show some of the planning maps we've done and hopefully we'll be a bit further on with the actual books tomorrow and will get some pics from then.

Jen Brown Tue, 27 Mar 

We managed to do the silhouette pictures this afternoon and the children really enjoyed it. Will try and get some exemplars of work up soon.

Wendy French Tue, 27 Mar 

Sorry I didn't reply sooner.  My school computer gave up the ghost today and crashed.  Luckily, I have my own laptop.  The children loved creating the silhouette pictures.  I think the 'Where's Matt video?' caught their imaginations.  We used the video from the cooking with apps book and it was so easy to follow.  I liked the fact that we could go back over bits for those who hadn't quite caught what to do the first time.  I'm looking forward to seeing Jen's pictures.  It is fun to share.  

I found a good tutorial for imovie on itunes: Imovie for ipad 2 tutorial by Detroitborg.  I think the children are used to learning how to do things from movies on youtube.  My nephew has built a computer from scratch, redesigned it, added a cooling system and lights, increased it's processing capacity all by using youtube videos and then playing about with what he makes.

Wendy French Tue, 27 Mar

Hi Andrew,

I think you said that you had found a good app for searching for creative commons images.  Could you give us some advice on that?

Wendy

Wendy French Tue, 27 Mar 

We have been using the I can animate app and the programme on my laptop to animate Tam O Shanter.  We had a few problems with the sound as the file was big and the programme crashes if the laptop doesn't have a lot of usable memory.  Converting it into a wav file seems to change the speed the frames run at so the version on I can animate was better, this seems to go too fast and be a bit jerky and the sound has been cut off at the end.  This is only half of it.  The other half still has to be reedited.

Wendy

Andrew Jewell Wed, 28 Mar 

Hi Wendy et al, Fraser wrote an app called 'Viewfinder' which is available on the store and allows searching for creative commons images.

I'm really glad you guys are liking the Cooking with Apps framework. The silhouette lesson is fun and teaches some fundamentals that are useful in many apps, such as the concept of layers.

Relative to YouTube - I totally agree that the kids love working from a YT video. It's great to be able to toggle between tutorial and task at their own pace.

Really looking forward to our recall day already!

Andrew Jewell Wed, 28 Mar 

The Tam o'Shanter animation is great. Another animation app which is super simple and creates a fantastic output is called 'Puppet Pals'. It's slightly easier version of PhotoPuppetHD which is also great but requires a little learning about frames and layers.

Wendy French Wed, 28 Mar 

Thanks for the tip on the cc search app. We'll have a go at puppet pals after Easter. I had a go at a book creator mini Math text book. Your percentages book inspired me.