Need to teach your students technology skills for distance, hybrid, or in-person classroom learning? Let them teach each other!
Our student Genius Squad tech teams learned new tech skills, leveled up and earned badges as they moved through synchronous and asynchronous course resources, and put their skills to work through service learning to support their teachers & classmates. Check out the work of our elementary Genius Squads & resources that helped them level up their skills & created an interest in computer science careers.
For anyone who wants to follow along with our elementary Genius Squad program, click the links below for each challenge to see the details and resources for each iPad challenge if you want to share these resources with your students to do in class or independently.
I will continue to expand these challenge resources over the summer and throughout next fall so please keep checking back if you are interested in more resources similar to these.
For anyone following along with our elementary Genius Squad program, here are the details of our third iPad challenge if you want to share these resources with your students.
This week students are exploring shapes in the Shapes Library in Keynote and how to break apart some shapes and then assemble shapes to create an original robot. Then they will create a stop motion animation robot video by animating the shapes in the Keynote app. Finally they can watch their video in the Photos app on the iPad and share it from there.
Challenge #4
Goal: Create a stop motion animation robot video out of shapes.
What do you need?
Your iPad
Keynote app
Shapes in Keynote
Photos app
How To Find Shapes In The Shapes Library In Keynote
Watch the video to learn how to find shapes in the Shapes Library in the Keynote app on your iPad.
For anyone following along with our elementary Genius Squad program, here are the details of our third iPad challenge if you want to share these resources with your students.
This week students are exploring how to create a digital thank you card with the Camera app, the Photos app, and the Pages app on the iPad.
Challenge #3
Watch the video below to hear about this week's iPad challenge.
Story about something good, fun, or funny that you remember from this school year.
Explore The Pages Templates
Watch the video below to learn about the templates available in the Pages app.
Want To Know More About Lorem Ipsum?
Were you wondering what lorem ipsum meant when you were looking through the templates?
Lorem ipsum is placeholder text used in templates to allow users to keep formatting like spacing, fonts, colors, and styles but change out the words.
Read more about the history of lorem ipsum in this blog article. It is actually based on Latin.
How To Create A Digital Thank You Card
Watch the series of videos below to learn how to create a digital Thank A Teacher card with the Pages app on your iPad. You can pause after each video to try out what was shown as you create your own card. Make sure to check out the challenge page to find out what is required for this challenge.
Select The Photo Card Template
Add And Format Text
Customize And Format Shapes
Add Photo And Format Message Page
Add Message And Sign Thank You Card With Digital Ink
Export Thank You Card As PDF
Digital Thank A Teacher Card Challenge
If you didn't know how to find and customize the template documents in the Pages app before, you do now! Good job!
Ready for the Digital Thank A Teacher Card challenge?
Think of a fun, funny, or good memory of lesson or activity one of your teachers did with you this year.
This could be a story about something you enjoyed, learned about, didn't know before.
You could write a thank you card to your classroom teacher, a specialist teacher, your principal, or someone else at your school.
Make a list of some good memories.
After you have a list of story ideas, tap on the Pages app and find the Photo Card templates in the Stationery section.
Open the template and create a customized thank you card for one of your teachers.
Submit your finished thank you card in the assignment.
Email your card to the teacher using your email app on your iPad. This will make their day!
Create more cards for other teachers if you have time.
I can't wait to see what you create!
Email Your Thank You Card
Don't forget to export your thank you card as a PDF and email it to the person you wrote it for.
They will really appreciate getting a thank you card from you.
Resources:
Check back for future blog posts on new tutorials and challenges for elementary Genius Squad students.
For anyone following along with our elementary Genius Squad program, here are the details of our first iPad challenge if you want to share these resources with your students.
This week students are exploring the Photos app and the Markup Tools.
Upload Your Personified Object Photo To The Media Album
Watch the video below to learn how to upload your personified object photo to the media album. If you already know how to do this, go ahead and upload your video.
iPad Challenge If you didn't know how to use the Markup Tools in Photos before, you do now! Good job!
Ready for the Markup challenge?
Check with your parents or teacher to see if you can take your iPad outside at school or at home to take a photo.
Remember to keep yourself safe when using the iPad outside.
Ask your parents to help you find some things to take pictures of.
You can also take a photo through the window instead of going outside.
Find something that you can make better by drawing on the photo.
Or you might have an idea of how you can draw something into the scene that makes you smile. 😀
For example, I saw this really interesting big tree, but the grass had not started growing yet, so I drew in some flowers to make it look more like spring and I also put some party lights in the tree to brighten it up. I couldn't resist adding the face.💡
After you have some photos, pick one and use the Markup Tools to change the world!
Share your finished photo in the next media album.
I can't wait to see what you create!
Resources:
Check back for future blog posts on new tutorials and challenges for elementary Genius Squad students.
