Sneaker Teacher

Welcome to my summer series...

App-time at Naptime

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Educreations

Educreations is another one of my favorite apps that we use in Kindergarten because there are just SO many great things to use it for! Once the kiddos get the hang of it, the app is very simple to use and extremely versatile. And, it's FREE

My best friend's mom says, "If it's free, it's me" and I just love that saying.

I borrowed the list of features since they are already nicely listed in the app store on iTunes

One of the ways we like to use Educreations is to practice story retelling. Initially, we imported photos of the story retelling cards that accompany our core reading program. We had students create projects in which they imported each of those 4 pictures and then retold the stories using the pictures of the retelling cards as visual prompts. They can create a separate page for each image. This is a great way to ensure that each child practices story retelling and because students can save their work, teachers have the opportunity to listen to each child's work.

Are you interested yet?

The main screen looks like this...

You press anywhere on the screen and you can add text by typing. Typically, I don't have my kiddos type on this app, but it's easy to do.

By touching the icon with the mountain you can add pictures from various sources. We typically use photos from the camera roll on the iPad and access whatever album relates to the project. Just like I do with Pic Collage projects, I create albums that contain photos students can access for each project that we do. If students will be retelling a story, I might import photos of the retelling cards. Or, I might have them draw a picture that goes along with the story we read, save their picture to their camera roll, and then import their own drawing.

Once a photo is imported, students can make annotations using the drawing tool. They can choose from a variety of colors and can use either a finger or a stylus tool to write/draw with. I made a little example below with a photo of our newest addition. 

Students can also press the record button and record a description, explanation, story etc. that goes with their image. I often provide students with sentence frames in order to support my ELL students. 

For example, in science we learn about motion/speed. Students accessed an album with photos of different things that go including a jet, a race car, a van, a skateboard, a shopping cart, and a ducky pull toy.

Students had to import two photos on each page and complete the sentence frame: 

A ______ is faster than a _______.

By touching the triangle on the bottom right, they could access additional pages and could record for as many pairs as time allowed. 

I also created albums with all of the 2D and 3D shapes we learn in Kindergarten. For the 2D shapes, they imported one photo onto each page and recorded using the sentence frame: This is a _______.
For the 3D shapes they used the sentence frame A _______ is an example of a _________. (a soccer ball is an example of a sphere). 

The record function is continuous, so students should stop and then start recording again when they are ready to speak. The drawback to that function is that if they mess up, they either have to correct themselves and move forward or delete the recording and start all over again. 

I originally heard about this app being use in middle school for vocabulary practice. The teacher created an album with images that went along with vocabulary words/concepts. Students had to import the photos one at a time, type/write the vocabulary word that matched the image, and then record the definition. I love that we can also find great ways to use it in Kindergarten because there's a big difference in the skill set between those two groups of students. 

In order to have easy access to students' work, I created a single account in Educreations. When students save their work, all of the projects are saved on my account. That required logging each individual iPad onto my account initially, but once I did that students stay logged in. I can view all of their projects on either my iPad or my computer, which is really convenient. I love to listen to what they have to say and I love that I can listen to every single student. 

If you have any questions about Educreations, please ask in the comments! 

Or, if you have any ideas about how you might use it please comment as well!!