Today's is Dr. Seuss' birthday and the kick off of Read Across America Week. In the past I have done some cute book covers with teachers and students but this year I wanted to try something new (to me).
I follow art teacher Tricia Fuglestad on Twitter and I love how she integrates art and technology. I got the idea for book covers from her last year so I went back to her blog looking for more Seuss related ideas. She had done an "If I Ran the Zoo" project with students and I thought it would be fun to try this year.
I worked with an art teacher (Ms. Peterlin) at Beaufort Elementary School and, because the app was new to us, we decided to do the project with one of the second grade classes. The app, Brushes Redux, is only available for the iPad (it is FREE) and only our K-2 students have iPads so that limited us somewhat grade wise. Tricia used a different app in her blog write up but I could seem to find it so I found a substitute.
This took two 55 minute class periods to complete. They worked on their paper and pen sketches in one class and I came in and helped on the digital drawing day.
Here is a break down of what we did:
- First, it was good that we collaborated. In my position as a tech coach I was able to get the app approved and fast tracked to all the K-2 students devices in the school. I vetted the app before approaching our Instructional Technology Director for approval and she was willing to allow us to test it out. Ms. Peterlin is a first year art teacher and had not integrated technology into art (yet) but was excited to try it out. So our skills definitely complimented each other.
- I went in ahead of the digital drawing day and download the app to all of the students we were working with devices', thus eliminating a step for the classroom and/or art teacher and I was able to catch a couple of downloading issues.
- The app isn't super simple for kids to use...there was no way you could just put them in the app and they could figure it out. Ms. Peterlin and I both tried it out first and made a plan to introduce it to students. If you know of a better easier (FREE) app please let me know in the comments.
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| My Cover |
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| Ms. Peterlin's Cover |
- When the students came into the classroom I showed them what they were going to be doing (I had my iPad projecting to the interactive panel). As I was doing that, Ms. Peterlin opened up all the apps and set up the brush they were going to use (we had to adjust one of the brushes to be more "pencil like" and less "brush like".)
- Students took a picture of their drawing with their camera and then opened the app. We had to walk them through adjusting the layers...not hard but had to be done. Basically the photo they took is on the bottom layer and you have a clear transparent layer on top where you trace over the lines.
- The app allows you to SUPER ZOOM in making it easy to trace.
- We stayed true to the Dr. Seuss "If I Ran the Zoo" cover colors of black lines, grey coloring, and a pop of teal.
- Some kids did really well and some kids needed some extra love.
- I kept the iPads behind to "fix" some of the lines and download the finished pictures to the camera roll (the app allows you to download as a PNG with no background making it easy to insert onto the blank cover). I got the blank cover from Trisha's blog. I used Google Slides (adjusted to 8.5 x 11) to finish the project but I could have also easily used PowerPoint.
- At the "save to camera roll" part we ran into a HUGE unforeseen problem. Somehow the iPads at the school were set to not allow apps to access the camera rolls. After an hour of attempting to troubleshoot the problem I finally called the IT department and they are in the process of fixing that for me.
- While this is going on Ms. Peterlin is teaching the rest of her art classes around me.
Our takeaway is that there was no way one person could have done this by themselves...there were too many moving parts for just the art teacher to complete (remember she was teaching a full day on top of this). We also felt that maybe second grade was too early for this project. I am on the look out for a tablet based way to do this project with our older kids so if anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to comment. (UPDATE: I just found this web based site that works on our HP tablets GAME CHANGER!!!! - https://canvas.apps.chrome/)
It was fun to try and we went into it knowing that it might be a complete bust but Ms. Peterlin and I hit it off so I doubt this will be our last collaboration.
If you have any specific questions, suggestions, or feedback please feel free to leave them in the comments or tag me on Twitter @atechcoachlife.
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