At Montlieu
Elementary School, I worked with a fourth grade student. It seemed as if she
really had a grasp of working with the iPad and did not seem to have too
much trouble figuring it out. Sometimes she had a question about how to do
something, but it was more of a review for her. The first two projects we had
to do seemed as though they were a little boring for her. I felt as if she was
just going through the motions and that projects had no real value or meaning
to her. I liked how the two projects were set up so that when we started, it
was a way to learn what she needed in terms of working on the iPad.
She was quite
experienced when it came to working with Comic Life. She showed me some of the
comic books she used in her classroom. When we worked on the comic, she just
went through the motions of doing the assignment. The same thing continued when
working on the Keynote project. We went through this project quickly because
she understood how to use the program, as it was very similar to the
information used in the comic we made.
After these projects were
completed, I was able to choose my own projects to work on with her. The first
one was to create a name poem in Keynote. A name poem is where you come up with
an adjective that describes you for every letter of your name. My iPad buddy
had a blast with this project. She came up with many good adjectives and even
helped me work with my name. This project was, not only educational, but the
most fun of all during my time at Montlieu. We later did a similar project,
coming up with a word poem for the season of fall and adjectives that describe
the fall season.
Since my iPad buddy knew how
to use the iPad and many of the programs, it was a bit difficult to come up
with projects that would be new to her. In class, we had used the movie-making
site, Animoto. I thought it would be fun to create one or two of these videos
because I was fairly certain she had not used the program before. The first
video we decided to make was about fall. Since it was close to Halloween, we
included it in our fall video, as well as Thanksgiving. She had a lot of fun
making this video. I think this was a great project for her because it allowed
her to work with an app that she had no experience in using. She enjoyed it so
much that when we finished with the fall video, we decided to make one about
Christmas. I think Animoto is a great tool, for both students and teachers, to
use in the classroom because it is a creative way to learn.
During my time at Montlieu,
whenever we finished a little early, I would have her show me some of the apps
on her iPad that she liked the best. I would have her explain what they were
about and how she used them in the classroom. She did well in explaining them
to me. One of the last things we did together was the Mad Libs app. I thought
she would enjoy it because she seemed to have fun coming up with adjectives
when we created the word poems. At the end of Mad Libs, the parts of speech
make a funny story. At first, she did not fully understand the purpose of
putting in random words. When we got to the end, I read her the story she had
created, and she thought it was a lot of fun. Then she wanted to keep working
on other stories. I choose this app for her because it was our last day, and it
was fun and educational.
It is hard to say what would
have made this experience better, because the time I spent working with my
student went smoothly. One thing that might have helped is to have had a
discussion in class regarding ideas to use when we finished the assigned things
to work on. Although I always thought of something to do, having a list of
back-up ideas would be helpful. Overall, I would not change a thing in the time
spent working with my buddy. It was a great learning experience for both of us
and very enjoyable.
