Word Journeys on the iPad

 My current endeavor in the world of edtech, has been to figure out how to transfer our word study program from paper and notebooks to the iPad. As this is my first test case there are obvious things I would change as I move forward. The first pass has been laid out as follows: 

1. Students use educreations on the iPad and work with a partner so that word study becomes a collaborative task. 


2. Students log into their own educreations account rather than the teacher’s, as the company has made it possible for students to create their own videos that are private and can be shared with their teacher. 


3. Daily work is laid out as follows: 

• Day 1—students have their weekly words emailed to them as well as printed on a single sheet so they can keep track of the ones they have typed etc. On this day, students type the words in individual text boxes to allow manipulation of the words. Once each word and heading is typed into its own box, students move the words around to organize them based on their corresponding heading. After this is done, students record themselves reading off the words underneath each heading. Next, students either move the words around to sort them into alphabetical order or they can move to a new page in their video and type the words alphabetically. Then again they restart the recording and say the words aloud. 


• **At the end of each day students must save their videos as you cannot restart recordings in Educreations. A really good idea is to come up with a naming convention that the students will use for all of their word study videos. 


• Check out a day one video below: 

• Day 2


• Students will work with the same partner or a different partner. Today their task is to begin to look at the word definitions. Students will start a new video and type one word on the first page. Then they will take a picture of themselves demonstrating the word. If they do not know what the word means, they can look up the definition. 


• Next, for that word they need to type or to write a sentence explaining it. 


• Now I would have them record that word and then press pause and click the arrow to a new page. 


• Remind them to save their video and use the proper naming convention. 


• See below for a video: 

• Day 3/4


• Once again students need to log into their account and create a new video. 


• Today, students can continue to work on creating the sentences and photos. 


• When students finish logging their words, then they can create a song or a story with the words and illustrate it on educreations or take photos that would correspond with the text they type or write. 


• I am eager to see how this stage plays out as well as other ways to increase the student engagement with word study. 

Overall, students have been very excited about the process. A few of their thoughts are as follows: 

• "I like that we use technology and we can draw pictures using different colors. I also like that we use the iPads."—Caitlin


• “I like how we talk through our work and for me, I learn more than just paper. We have much more fun while working on word study.”—Stephanie


• "I like working with a partner and using technology. The word study became 100 times better with the iPad versus doing it on the paper. I like taking funny pictures about the words. I think we are having a lot of fun and learning at the same time.”—Tim
  

Some of the concerns I would like to work our are as follows:

• When the students type in educreations, the iPad keyboard covers up their text boxes so it is hard for them to see what they type.


• It is difficult for them to remember where they left off and since the video is housed on the device it was created on, they need a way to remember what work they are doing.


• I would ideally like them to be able to pick up and to restart the video.

So far we are doing well, but any comments or programs that could assist in this endeavor would be marvelous.