Digital Bytes - 19th June 2017

 

	Book Creator Summer Journal A fantastic way to remember some of the details from your summer is to keep a journal. Last summer, both my kids used Book Creator to capture some of the things that happened on a daily basis. It was great for photos and video and voice records.
	Pages, Keynote and Numbers for iOS get over 500 Shapes Creating infographics in Keynote or Pages just got way easier! Instead of going to the Noun Project or Flaticon, you can find icons right on your iPad or Mac with the update to the iOS iWork suite. You can change the colours of the icons and even copy and paste them into other apps like Book Creator.
	Storybird Images inspire writing - we know this to be true. Storybird helps with this process by providing hundreds of images for students to use in their writing of online, digital books. From single images, to picture books and longform books, there are a range of illustrative styles to choose from. Teachers can create class accounts, books can be downloaded or shared online, and even printed into physical books. Definitely one to check out!
	Once Upon a Picture Staying on the theme of images to inspire writing, Once Upon a Picture is another fantastic website you will want to bookmark. Organised into collections, such as Fiction, Inference, PSHE etc, each image comes with a series of questions to encourage students to “read” the image carefully. This approach helps when writing, but also when viewing a range of visual media. Enjoy!

The Noun Project

Thumbs Up designed by Nick Holroyd
from the thenounproject.com

I would like to highlight one of my favourite sites ever:
The Noun Project. It is incredibly useful in the classroom, and is a delight to use.

You can search for anything on The Noun Project and find a graphical representation of it.

Designers upload their creations to the site, and people can download and use these icons as long as they attribute the designer. Attribution is made incredibly easy: all you do is click on the 'how to attribute' button, and it's all ready for you to copy-and-paste.

The really exciting thing for me, is the ability to change the colour of the icons using a simple Chrome Extension called
'The PNG Project'. Provided you know the hex code (I use the websafe colour palette in Pages or Keynote to find mine usually - though a google search of hex codes would lead you to some great sites), you can change the icons to match whichever colour scheme you like.

For details on how to use The Noun Project, please watch the tutorial below.

The Noun Project from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Attaching New Keynote or Pages Files to Email or Putting Them in Google Drive

When using the new Keynote or Pages applications, you cannot attach the files directly to emails or put them right in to Google Drive. There are two simple solutions to fix this problem. Save the files as Keynote '09 or Pages '09 files or compress the files before attaching them to emails or inserting them into Google Drive. Have a look at the screencast.

Design for Informational Writing

Recently, I worked with the Grade 4 team to help them present their informational writing.

The students had all chosen a non-fiction topic to write about and done some research. They had then gone through the writing process and created a piece of writing. We wanted to help them to take their writing and display it in a way that was clear and interesting for the reader.

Working with the Grade 4 tech mentor, Haidee Betts, we started with a mentor text about bulldogs that the students had used for this unit. It had one small picture and a chart, but it was far from appealing to the reader.

I then took all the words from the text and put them into an A3 Pages document in separate text boxes. I found some Creative Commons images of bulldogs and used Preview to select the part of the image that I wanted to put into my document.  

Once I had a number of pictures and the text in the document all placed when I wanted them, I decided to try to make a few tweaks to the document. But I didn't want to change my original document, so I made sure that the page thumbnails were visible by clicking on the view button on the top left of my Pages document, and selected Page Thumbnails. I then selected the first page and selected Edit > Duplicate or the keyboard shortcut, Command (⌘) D. 

This is a crucial stage in the process for the students. Now they have the chance to try out some different things with the layout and design of their page and still have the ability to go back easily to their original layout. Most importantly, they can continue to duplicate their pages and this is a great record of their learning. 

To support the teachers and students, I decided to make a number of tutorial videos to help explain some skills that might be used when creating this type of document in Pages. I put these tutorials on the school Vimeo channel and arranged them into a portfolio.

http://vimeopro.com/uwcsea/pages-tutorials

In one of the videos in the portfolio set, I talk through my design thinking in relation to the bulldog article. This is one of the skills that students need to continue to practice and work on in everything they do. We can't have one unit during the year on design and never talk about it again. We must cultivate the skill of design in our students in whatever they are doing. This goes for our teachers too who, whether they realize it or not, are modeling their understanding of design in everything they produce. They are our best resources when it comes to helping students get their message across clearly.

After working with some of the students, it was great to see them work to create some great informational posters.

Grade 5 Exhibition - Printed Display Boards

This year at East we are lucky to have access to a large format printer. I say large, and I mean HUGE! It is about the size of a piano (see the door in the picture as a frame of reference!).

The Grade 5 students were given the option of printing their display boards in one piece using the large format printer, or they could assemble their boards by printing individual sections, as usual.

The majority of the groups chose to print using the large format printer, which was quite a leap of faith. Time was tight, and deadlines were shorter for those wanting to use the printer (we had to factor in time to print, after all).

I presented to students about: 

• The elements of design (CARP - Contrast, Alignment, Repetition & Proximity)
• How to pull people in by maximising visuals and making numbers pop
• Choosing a font which is clear and easy to read
• The importance of a minimalist colour scheme

I showed some boards which had been poorly designed so they would know some pitfalls to avoid. I showed some board makeovers, so they could see the difference CARP can make in a viewer's understanding of a display board.

We created some blank Pages templates for the students to use, which were set the right size for their display boards. From there, the groups decided on colour schemes, images, statistics, and most importantly - which information was the most important to share on their board.

Some tips which helped students included:

• Breaking information into sections, so that related information was in the same section (Proximity)
• Having a semi-transparent shape behind a text box to make text stand out.
• Arranging text in columns or chunks, instead of going all the way across the page.
• Using Creative Commons images, such as the wonderful ones found in The Noun Project.
• Searching for the largest image size, so no pixelation occurred in the finished poster.

My colleague Dave Caleb and I touched base with as many groups as we could to give suggestions. It was lovely for us to see the different ways the groups chose to display their understanding. The other powerful thing was seeing the students' faces fill with pride when they saw their printed work. 

One student said, "I never thought I would be able to create something THIS professional!"

Some of the advantages to using printed display boards include:

• An understanding of proportion and scale of the finished product. A big blank space on the page equals a big blank space on the poster. 
• The ability to experiment and make changes easily. Want to know which font is easier to read? Duplicate the page, and test them out - look at full screen view to see which is clearer (see image on right by way of example - 17 pages of changes!).
• The range of colours available to use was wider than the colours of backing paper we had available in our store room.
• Access to tools like the colour dropper in Pages, which meant we could customize colours to images used on the boards.
• Tools such as the edges and midpoint alignment rulers, which enabled students to align objects easily.

We were very proud of the students' efforts, and hope that even more will take up the opportunity to choose a printed board next year.