Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen Come to App Smashing

Last year I used the Numbered Heads strategy and it was okay, but not the most engaging strategy.
Two weeks later, I decided to try it again but this time I came up with a completely arbitrary points system, added a stuffed monkey to be a place holder for what group spoke next, and referred to it as a game to m students. It was the EXACT same strategy just with some bells and whistles. Kids in third period walked in with "I heard we are doing something really fun today!" Minus the obvious insinuation that my classroom is not always amazingly fun ;), I found this comment hilarious. Turn something into a game and add a points system and all of a sudden something is "really fun!"

Our rewards system of our brain rewards the brain with little bursts of dopamine every time kids get points. Watching Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen got be thinking of App Smashing. What is app smashing besides taking a bunch of ingredients (apps) to create a dish (objective of the app smash). 

Principles of cooking competitions:

- throw in surprises that make the task harder (Chopped does this with an odd ingredient that doesn't go with the rest and Cutthroat does this with sabotages)  

- make a challenging time frame

- narrows pool down with each round (apps, entree, dessert)

1. Introduce the concept as App Chopping and build up excitement. Explain briefly for students who are not glued to Food Network (Foolish youth!)

2. Explain there will be courses (if you choose) each with a time limit. Each course could actually feature its own app, which when combined with iMovie or similar app, creates the app smash

3. Give student task  - example: analyze a character's traits - and the apps to be used.

4. Post timer for board 

5. At intervals, add in the twists! You can make each twist offer extra credit to the presentation, that way instead of causing undo stress, it is more of a fun suggestion. Twist ideas:

• put random props - stapler, inflatable shark, a set of plastic cups - in bags and have students randomly select. They can include prop in video.
• give everyone a silly word - "pineapple" or "boomerang" - that they have to integrate in their App Chop and those who do so in a seamless manner get bonus points.
• If using an app with backgrounds like Tellagami, have students pick the most inappropriate background and have it make sense
• Have students use a feature in an app and make it work for their video. For example, giving an iMovie filter like "aged film"

6. Students create videos and can post to edmodo, google folder, or wherever you prefer. 

7. For additional "courses" you can build upon the first course. In my example, course 1 is analyze character traits with evidence, course 2 is analyze how the character's traits contribute to a conflict in the story, course 3 is what lesson should we learn about the way the character's traits influences the creation or resolution of that conflict (aka, theme!)

QR Code Museum Pieces

Turn your classroom - or school library - into a museum.

Student created art

Students create museum pieces and museum placards that indicate the information required. Perfect for history, prereading for historical novels, or post-reading for self-selected texts where each child can share an artifact from a book.


I wish I could show the kids' faces. There were smiles all around!

Students learn about lutes

Here are the directions for it as I applied it to pre-reading for Midsummer Night's Dream in which students examined the Elizabethan Era - so much better than a lecture from the teacher, right?

How I used this:

Shakespeare Centers (set up in ability groups of 3-5 with two of each type of center runnign concurrently)
Center A: Students participated in Shakespeare Museum
Center B: Students explored The Globe with the Shakespeare's Globe 360 App
Center C: Card Sort - advanced groups paired Shakespearean insults to their 21st century prose versions while struggling students worked on literary terms matched to examples from All the World's a Stage

Instant Poetry 2: Beautiful Poetry App

Instant Poetry 2 is a great app for teachers - students can make a poem quickly and it is a very non-threatening app. Teachers not used to iPads will quickly get their students making poetry in thirty minutes or less. The finished products are lovely and the free "stripped down" version does not feel stripped down at all.

Poetry and Tech Unite!

Inspired by the Color Splash that Jonas sees in The Giver and this lesson on ReadWriteThink.org,
students analyze and create imagist poetry. You by no means need to do The Giver to do this lesson, but it is a nice companion lesson.

How to use this technique for Adobe Photoshop (or iPads):

1. Students analyze “The Red Wheelbarrow”. This website is my favorite collection of commentary on the poem and a wonderful resource for upper level students to see there is no one correct way to view a poem. Personally, I tend to analyze it as the poem itself depends upon the image and therefore the role of the poet is to take note of things we might otherwise ignore.
2.  Open Photoshop or Get a free color splash app. I have used the one from Kite Games Studio which let me get rid of the watermark after I reviewed it. 
3. After showing them what a finished product will look like, help students download a large image that allows for use with modification or take their own images using the iPad camera.
   
4. Open the image in Photoshop or upload the image into the app and have students select the focus of the photo by selecting one object to have color. The easiest way to do this is put a black and white layer of the image over it and use the eraser to erase that back and white layer so the color original shows through.
   
5. Once complete, students save the modified photo.
6. Students then write a vivid sentence describing the focus of their image AFTER the teacher has MODELED.
7. Using the handout on ReadWriteThink.org  as a guide, I put students into small groups to answer those questions. When students are able to receive feedback on their writing and hear the writing of others, everyone improves! Students use an app like Pic Collage to put their poem on their image. Don’t forget to have students add name and class period if you need. If you plan on sharing the images online, make sure students use only first name and last name initial.
8.  My favorite way to upload these types of media rich items is to also publish it at the same time. Create a Google Slides with blank slides – I like using a black background on all of them – and then have students upload the image onto a blank slide. (There are some issues with students not being able to access Google Folders on an iPad app. Ugh! I get around this by having students upload and submit their work via Edmodo and then have them take turns on the back PCs to upload on Slides. It is annoying, but I prefer it over me having to take the time to pull them off Edmodo! This year we are switching to Office 365 for the entire district, so I see if we can upload it onto the 365 version of PowerPoint. While putting the finished work on a presentation is not a necessary step, I do feel is rewarding and important part of the publishing process.) 
9. Change the usage rights of the presentation to view only and send a link to parents, Tweet it, and/or show the presentation in presentation mode while parents file in for Open House!
   

How to modify for PCs:

Instead of using color splash app, students can use Photoshop. There are a lot of YouTube videos and websites that feature multiple ways to do this. They can add the text on Photoshop as well!

Adobe Voice - Hero's Journey Analysis for Full Tilt

I love apps that are versatile and Adobe Voice does NOT disappoint! It is one of the easiest ways to digital storytelling. Use it in science to create a digital record of a lab or in history class to explain important events or a foreign language course to practice pronunciation.

Why Adobe Voice?

It offers little options – just 5 layouts and a dozen themes, with no ability to alter things like locations of text boxes or transitions – students weren’t as bogged down with selecting visual effects. The focus was able to be on the content, while the technological components kept kids engaged.

How did I use it?

To analyze Hero’s Journey in Full Tilt! Students enjoyed themselves and it was great to see them try to think metaphorically about the colors and images used.  

Issues with Images?

When adding images, students can add from their camera roll or use the search function in Adobe Voice, which in turn searches the internet for images marked Creative Commons and labeled that search term. Issue is that images are not vetted for appropriateness of children, so in an effort to ensure inappropriate images would not appear, I asked students to only use the icons that were uploaded. It gives the presentation a very polished, clean look. Problem is there are some icons that are not appropriate either! Images “love” had some raunchy results. Solution? I think that a teacher would need to consider the age of their students and the way they would want images to be searched and collected. It would be absolutely perfect for having students act things out or draw their own images. 

TED Talks: perfect research project for any class

My persuasive/expository unit is focused around STEM fields: teaching organization patterns with spider goats (check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlkJyG1Oik ), audio/visual manipulation and logical fallacies with GMO propaganda (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkionqWPc-Q ), and a slew of other skills with Odyssey magazine articles (http://www.odysseymagazine.com/). So when it came time for me to work on the research component, I knew I wanted more than just the research essay, I wanted to use that essay for a purpose. And what better purpose than to convert the essay into a TED Talk!

What is a TED talk?

Ted Talks aren’t just for STEMs. The soft sciences, philanthropy, dietary philosophies, social concerns, all these things are addressed in the various TED and TEDx talks. They have their own YouTube channels and I encourage you to go there, watch the intro vids, and read about what they are. I simply couldn't do justice to the awesomeness that is a TED talk.

TED: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug

TEDx: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsT0YIqwnpJCM-mx7-gSA4Q

Why a TED talk?

If you asked students to give a presentation in class, let’s be honest: they have one shot and only one shot. With a TED talk, they are recording their movements and inflections, and then replaying them, and then rerecording as needed. The fact they can actually SEE how they present is the best feedback. Letting a child give a live presentation and then mentioning to her that she was compulsively touching her hair the whole time, it really too late for feedback. Where, if they student saw her own hair touching, she would be more aware of it as she tried her presentation again.

How do I do it?

The research essay, I grade as its own product looking at the usual suspects: organization and ideas, research, citations, conventions, and style. When I ask the students to convert these into TED talks, we examine TED talks and come up with a presentation rubric of visuals, volume, inflection, and non-verbals. Then, students take their essay and truncate it for a presentation. They cut things out and reword things once they discover that what looked okay on a page is not what sounds best aloud (Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Senate testimony that he submitted written was revised for his verbal testimony. We analyze the differences in class before we even begin our TED talks so when it comes time to make the TED talk speech, they kids already know it is not weird to change things up.)  In class, we use iPads with iMovie – although some of my students do go home that weekend and do it on their phones and submit it to me that next Monday. Those kids who have it in early are usually more than willing to play cameraman for their peers. To submit, I can pull the talks right onto my desktop and I put a student in charge of that. Some students submit via You Tube (DON’T DO PRIVATE!) and sending me the link.

I don’t have any samples I can post because they have the students’ faces on the videos, but it was really cool to see how creative students got with the presentation. One doing research on cochlear implants introduced her topic using sign language with captions at the bottom.  

No matter your subject area, TED talks are great platforms of student work!