And the second graders finally have the chance to share their Heritage projects! (If you want to read more about the children creating a touching look at their family history, click here.)
We had a “dress rehearsal” this week – just to make sure the students knew how to access their video or ePub book created in the Book Creator app.
Finally, the big day arrived! The children led their special visitors into their classrooms, retrieved their iPads, plugged in the headsets, and shared their project. They knew exactly what to do!
Watching the expressions of the grandparents is priceless! Listening to the sweet voices of their grandchildren tell about their family history is such a special moment.
Here’s a very quick look at the children sharing.
Each fall our second graders create a Heritage project to share with grandparents and other relatives. They bring in photos of family members, sometimes from several generations back! Over the years I’ve tried a variety of online applications to make the final product but it’s always been more of a teacher-created project. Parents would email photos or send them on a CD. I would upload them to the student’s home directory. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes work that needed to be done before the child could even begin to record their heritage story!
This year we decided to use the Book Creator app, an easy-to-use ePub book maker that allows the user to import pictures and record narration. Besides saving as an eBook, the finished product can also be exported as a video.
We asked the parents to send actual photos. The students really giggled when I said they were going to take photos of their photos! After a photography lesson, the children scattered around the room in search of the perfect place to take their picture. They watched for glare from the lights, checked for blurriness, learned how to crop.
Next step was to insert the pictures into the Book Creator app.
The following week we worked on the cover of the book. What child can resist taking a selfie?
The students also added page colors and chose a font style and color.
The children are in the process of recording their heritage narrations. Then I’ll be uploading the finished ePub books and videos to the web so that their fantastic, student-created work can be shared with family and friends!
I love Grandparents’ Day! Yes, it is loads of work preparing for it. But grandparents come to be with their grandchildren, not to evaluate all that we do. It’s such a busy day but I truly enjoy the opportunity to visit with these wonderful visitors.
The second graders have done a Heritage Project for several years. In the past few years, this has evolved into a technology project. Students bring in pictures from the past and I am in charge of uploading these to the students’ home directories so that they can add them to VoiceThread, where they narrate each photo. It’s always fascinating to look at these pictures – some are quite old!
This year the students shared their projects using the iPads. We suggested that ear buds be brought so that the narration could be heard more clearly. Everything went quite smoothly. (Only one iPad decided not to connect to the Internet!)
Below are some snapshots of students sharing their projects with their visitors.
Finally, the big day arrived! The children led their special visitors into their classrooms, retrieved their iPads, plugged in the headsets, and shared their project. They knew exactly what to do!
