Comments from 7P

Hi there Year 3,


I've been telling the year 7s about your blog.  Mrs Peasey's class has their own blog here:

http://kidblog.org/MrsPeaseysClass/

[Teachers if you want to take a look, you can select the parent login and use the surname of our favourite South African as the password.]
The year 7s have been visiting your Podwise blog, to see what sort of things you have been doing with the iPods and some of them had some comments for you:

From Mrs Peasey:

"Year 3, it looks like you are doing some exciting things with your iPod Touches. What do you most enjoy about using the iPods?"

From Sarina K:

"Hi That is sooo cool.I was just wondering what program(s) you are using.  Thanks,Sarina

By the way you all look so cute in those pictures."

From Jade S:

"hello year 3,
Do you like working on the ipods and why ?????
Do you like playing the programs????
and as Sarina said really cute pictures !!
thanks jade"

Looks like lots of people are interested in what you are doing, year 3!
Keep up your great efforts.

Our Favourite Apps

The children in Year 3W have been using the iPod touches in their numeracy groups. They all have different opinions about their favourite Apps. 


Serge liked Shape Lite because you got to make all different 2-D shapes. It was amazing to see what objects could be made by using all the shapes. Rebecca liked Shape Lite because it made a funny sound when you finished the puzzle.

Angus, Kayla and Flynn really liked Pop Maths. Kayla liked Pop Maths because she got up to level 54. Angus found it a challenge and it helped him with his sums and Flynn said it helped him learn.

Dante liked Clockmaster because this app helped him to learn o'clock, half past and quarter past and quarter to the hour.

Lara liked Apples because it was another app that helped the children learn how to tell the time.

Sums was Ella's favourite app because it helped me with my sums. I had to be really careful to write the numbers correctly or else it would be marked wrong.

Lara K liked Comp Carl because it was lots of fun because you had to drag the robot to the battery and you had to get the answers to the sums correct first.

We are looking forward to trying out some new apps this week. We have found the apps challenging, fun, interesting and we have learned many new things.

Amazing apps

3F used 3 different apps this week. We used I can animate, Puppet pals and Storycube. Here is what some of the children learnt and discovered this week.

Jacob says that on Puppet Pals he learnt how to turn characters upside down.

Maia found out that she could change the backgrounds in Puppet Pals by pulling down on the bell cords.

In Storycubes, Hannah and Joshua found out that if she put two fingers onto a cube, she could move it around the screen.

Zacharie and Daniel learnt how to make characters in Puppet Pals different sizes.

Rory discovered that you can buy more characters to play with on Puppet Pals ( though he didn't buy anything).

On Puppet Pals, Alex found out how to look at movies that other people have created.

Lucy learnt how to record her voice into Puppet Pals.

Jack learnt how to use a toy to make an animation in I Can Animate.

In I can animate, Matina discovered that she could turn the iPod and that it turned around the image on the screen too.

Tahlia discovered how to turn the characters to face different ways on Puppet pals.

We then started thinking about how we could use these apps in different subject areas. We thought we could use I Can Animate to make movies for science, like how a plant grows. Another idea is that we could use Puppet Pals to make a story with a message. With Storycubes, you could get great ideas for writing stories in class.

Next week we are using an app called Epic Citadel and then learning how to use Sonic Pics.

Come back next week to find out how we went.

Ipod Touch comics

This week in 3F, we were using the Comic Touch app to add speech bubbles and text to our Martian images. This taught us how to add text (words) into the speech bubbles. We also learnt how to correct our spelling if we spelt a word wrong. If we spelt a word wrong a red line would appear under the word and if we tapped on the mis-spelt word, we were given choices of how the word could be spelt.

Noah discovered how we could turn the point on a speech bubble around so that it could face in any direction. He was able to show other people how to do this. Hannah discovered that she could make the point on the speech bubble longer or shorter.

Luke thinks that learning how to put text into speech bubbles is a way of helping the class to learn how to write text messages.

It was great to see some of the parents using the iPods in the classroom. Some of the children were able to teach a few of the parents how to use the Comic touch app so they could make their own comic.

Next week we are going to use 3 different apps on the iPod touch. We are going to use the I can animate app, story cube and Puppet pals. On story cube we have to shake the ipod and tell a story with the cubes on the screen. The cubes move and sound just like real dice. With I can animate, we have to take a series of pictures which will be turned into a little animated story. Puppet Pals allows you to pick your own characters and backdrops to tell a cowboy story. Once we have put our characters onto a backdrop, we can then record our voice to tell the story. Alex said that he has seen Puppet Pals on the iPad in the library.

We are feeling excited to try these new apps next week in our Language groups. We all think that using the iPod Touches is lots of fun.

Here are some of the comics the children created using Comic Touch

iPods in 3W

The first week of iPod Touches was extremely exciting in 3W.

We have used a few apps already:

1. Apples - we used this to explore telling time.
   
2. Pop Maths - working on numeration with addition and subtraction.
3. Camera - we looked for 2D and 3D shapes in our environment and took photos of them to share with others. This is important learning - being able to apply mathematical understandings to the real world.
   

In our learning journals, we are making comments about how the iPods are challenging us in our learning while we are having fun. We write in our learning journals every week about our iPod activities.

It was so exciting for the children to be "let loose" outside during their shape search. For Mrs Walker the shape activity was also a great assessment tool. It was really easy to pinpoint those who can grasp the difference between 2D and 3D shapes, from observing and listening to the children's discussions while they took their photos.



Why not talk with your parents about these shapes and their features.
What 3D shapes do you think these are? Why do you think this?
It's the conversations and critical reflection that make these activities so valuable. Here's a good debate that occurred during this lesson:
Is the bell at the top of the church tower a ... cylinder? Or not? Why?

Mrs Mead's Martian

Year 3, I had a go at making a Martian too.  I wish I could keep him at my house.  How would you describe his features?

Our Blog Visitors

Year 3, did you see your "Cluster Map" this week?  The map shows where our blog's visitors are coming from.  We have already had more than 10 visitors from Brisbane, but did you notice something else?  There are some other red spots on the map this week.  Can you see what countries the spots are in?  [They are very tiny but if you click the little map on our blog it will open much larger.] 

We have had visitors from elsewhere in Australia too.  Perhaps you can use your atlases to work out where our visitors are coming from.

How exciting!

iPod Touch Martians

The year 3F children think that using the iPod touches this week has been lots of fun because they got to make their own Martians. As a class, we tried to use the iPod Touches safely and to follow our rules.

The program Martian was really good to use and it was fun to try and create a Martian which was the same as our partner's Martian. We had to think

how to describe our own Martian so that our partner could create one that looked the same. We had to listen carefully to our partners and

to think about how to create the Martian. This activity helped to improve our listening and thinking skills. It also gave us time to learn how to use the iPod Touches while we made our Martians. In this activity we really had to thin

k carefully about how our Martian was going to look, so it didn't look silly and

had lots of interesting details.

We also learnt how to take

a screenshot of our Martian. This was fun because then we could save all of the Martians that we created. It felt very exciting to take a screenshot. When we heard a sound like someone taking a photo, we knew that we have captured the screenshot.

Next week we are going to learn about the program "comic touch". This program will allow us to add speech bubbles and some other comic features to a screenshot. We

will tell you more about this activity next week.

We are very happy that we are able to use the iPod Touches in our class this year.

iPods get some Fresh Air!

Well, can you guess what happened to me today?  I was walking back to the library just now when I saw a very interesting sight...

The gardens were full of year 3 people brandishing their little silver treasures.  The students were in groups of three, excitedly discussing the plants in the gardens, pointing out their features and taking photos of what they could see.  Miss Sams tells me they are going to share their photos back in class and discuss what they noticed about the plants.  They will take plant photos from different areas of the school and discuss any differences they find in the plants there.  What wonderful little detectives!  I can't wait to hear what they have to tell us about plants.

Getting ready to use the iPod Touches

We don't know much about the iPod Touches yet but we want to learn all about them. We have to be careful with them because they belong to the school. To help us to look after the iPod Touches, we made up some rules.

We are very excited to be using the iPod Touches in our Language Groups next week. We are going to use a program called Martian. In this program you get to make your own Martian. After we have made our Martian, we will take a screen shot of our creation. We will then try to describe our Martian to our partner and they have to try to make the same Martian on their iPod Touch. We think we will really enjoy doing this activity. Miss Ferguson showed the class how to use this program on Friday using a special projector that let us see the iPod Touch on the big classroom screen.

We think that the ipod Touches feel really comfortable in our hands. We will be bringing in our own earphones to use in class with the iPod Touch.

Don't forget to come back here every week to find out and check out more things that we are doing with the iPod Touches.