Kindergarten Family Tech Night

Kindergarten Family Tech night was a blast! We had a pretty good turnout as several families were able to see what kinds of fun learning experiences their young ones can have using their school-issued iPad. We even had some students in more advanced grades join us with their iPads from home to try out the activities! 

For Kindergarten Family Tech Night, students made a video project using several tools. Here is an example: 

Here is a rundown of how they made it: 

1. We first used Photos for Class to find pictures that match a specific color. I love Photos for Class as it provides students with creative commons photos with the citations directly on the images. For the most part, the search is safe for elementary students. From time to time, a questionable photo appears, but users can press "report photo" so that Photos for Class can review the image and determine the future of it on their site. For the images in this project, the students searched a color and numerous images popped up to match it. 
2. Next the kindergarten students used either Hello Color Pencils or Hello Crayons to write their name and a sentence in relation to the image. So I shared the example of a green pepper and wrote, "The pepper is green." Make sure students save when they are finished so that they can use the annotated image in another app. 
3. The third app we used was Chatterpix. The students imported their annotated images into Chatterpix, drew a smile and recorded their sentence read aloud. Kids love to make images come to life with the use of Chatterpix. Teachers love it as they can glean a lot of information about the student's learning through these 30-second videos. 
4. Last step was to upload all the videos to a shared Google Drive folder. Not only does this allow me to receive all the videos, but it creates a gallery where they can view their friend's final products as well. Students love the ability to share their work through Google Drive. 

Want to view a few fun samples? Look no further. 

We wrapped up the evening with a quick game of Kahoot with kindergarten sight words. I used number and color words and the students had to select the correct spelling. If you are not familiar with Kahoot, please check out my post about it so you can familiarize yourself with this valuable teaching resource. If you are already a Kahoot user, here is the direct link to my Kindergarten Sight Words Kahoot game. 

I look forward to doing more Family Tech Nights next year. It provides a fun opportunity for the students to share the benefits of technology in the classroom with the community.