Señora Ross teaches playground vocabulary to her second graders. Last year she recorded the students speaking about the different parts of the playground but never really did anything with her video.

This year, she wanted to make sure that the students’ work was posted somewhere. How exciting for parents to be able to hear their children share their Spanish knowledge with others!

Her idea was to have students work in pairs to take two photos each: one of a specific playground item by itself; the second with their partner on or next to the equipment.

In preparation, Señora Ross assigned partners and the item that would be photographed. Before starting, we discussed how to take a non-blurry photo (these were not to be action shots!). Next, we handed out their assignment cards and an iPad. Then we trekked out to the playground.

The students quickly took their photos (only had one instance where video was taken rather than stills) and gathered back together to go to the computer lab to finish the project.

There are many apps that would work for importing images and recording narration. For this project, I suggested we try Pixntell EDU. I hadn’t used the app with a class but felt like it would be easy for the students to upload images and record on each photo. Once finished, the user is able to save the work as a video file. Our goal was to collect all projects to combine into a class video using iMovie.

The app worked quite well for this project. It was easy for the students to use. Once the user saves, the video automatically saves to the photo roll where it can be air dropped to the teacher iPad.

Quirks of Pixntell EDU:

• Can’t listen to recording till it is saved. If you want to redo after that, it appears that all photos must be re-recorded.
• When images are added, there is no check mark to indicate which pictures are selected. This is fine for adults but harder for children. We had LOTS of extra images but they are easy to delete!

Señora Ross and I had quite an assembly line going – she helped with the Spanish vocabulary then sent the students to me so they could air drop their video.

Next, Señora Ross pulled all videos together in iMovie, added a quick title page created in Explain Everything, uploaded to our Vimeo account, and the work was ready to share!

Mrs. Garcia’s Class

Mrs. Cooper’s Class

Mrs. Shapard’s Class

This was a fun project – the students quickly learned the app and really did a great job saying their sentences in Spanish. And we are so glad that parents can get a glimpse into what their children are learning!