Making iPod Touch stands

Towards the end of the last academic year I read on @seomraranga school’s blog that his class made iPod socks. Click here to see what they made. I decided to have my class make something to hold their iPods.

Doing a quick search on Google I came across a French site that showed a paper iPhone/iPod Touch dock or stand with a very easy to follow tutorial. This was my mini DT project for last half term.

Dessinemoiunobjet has a design for a dock for your iPhone which can be printed off on a PDF. template_iphonepaper

You can make your own dock in a few steps

Print the template in a heavy (220-270gm) A4 paper
Cut and fold according to the instructions in the template
Voila!

We in fact laminated the card as the 1st attempt was not strong enough to hold the iPods.

Here are photos of some that we made:

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What comments would you say?

I have just read what I think is the funniest and most creative start to a story ever, from a boy in my class.

To set the scene

Yesterday the class (year 6 age 10) were asked to create a Martian using the Make a Martian app for the iPod Touch. I explained that we were going to be using the Martian they created as the basis for a story next week.

After creating and saving their Martian they had a grid on an A4 sheet of paper that they needed to fill in describing each of the body parts chosen with as much description as possible.

Child A finished his work and was allowed ‘Choosing Time’. Unbeknown to me he used the Notes app (don’t think I had ever shown him it before) and he wrote the following and then emailed it to me. I only saw and read it this morning.

Martian Story

What comments would you write/say if you read this?

Comments INSPIRE!!

I want to say a HUGE thank you to all who left comments for my class about their Lune poems. I showed them this blog 1st thing this morning. Most of them had not seen the Lune poems turned into a video as they had been at an away football match yesterday (They won!!!) so after reading what I had written about their writing I showed them the video. They wanted to see it over and over again to listen to theirs and each others work.

and then I started reading the comments………they were SO pleased…truly beaming faces!

Some of the boys were keen to write a comment back and then WOO HOO!!!! wanted to write some more Lunes…. so out went the planned lesson and a far more exciting one took place.

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So may I once again say thank you for helping to raise the self-esteem of a unique group of boys!

To create your own Lunes using John Johnston’s web app enter/or email the following url http://johnjohnston.info/lunes/ to the iPod Touch.
In order to save as a picture we needed to press the two blue arrows >>

On John’s site there is a great step by step picture that my class found helpful to start writing the Lunes.

Writing Poetry with an iPod Touch

Back at the beginning of 2010, in the dark days before I had iPod Touches in the classroom, I came across a blog post by John Johnston (@johnjohnston) It told about an app that he had developed using Creative Common searches in Flickr and how he used this with a class of children in Scotland.

I was greatly impressed with how simple it was to write a type of poem called a Lune (Lune (poetry) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and how interesting the result looked.

Every year my school gets involved with a poetry competition and this seemed the perfect opportunity to try this app out ourselves.

I showed my class the video of John’s Lunes and we then discussed what pictures they would use. Initially the boys were going to search quite different groups of things but it was decided as the final plan was to turn it into a film as well using my new MacBook! that it would be better for the Lunes to have a common theme.

The children quickly got the hang of the app and took care in searching for ‘just the right picture’. I even learned something… there is an animal called a Liger (Liger Wikipedia)

After choosing the picture, writing the Lune and saving the picture the children shared their work with me using the app Bump.

Here are the children’s first attempts at writing Lunes and my first attempt at using iMovie on a Mac. Many thanks need to be added here to John Johnston not only for his great app and blog but also for his very helpful How To movie about making a Lunes iMovie ;o)

Please comment on the children’s work if you have a minute. They loved it last year when people did this ;o)