Kindergarten on the iPads

I braved using the iPads with kindergartners to start the Percolator Gumball Machine project today. I feel so fortunate that my colleagues were willing to let me borrow their iPads for the day! I will be doing this again with kinders twice next week, and starting with second grade next week as well. If anyone has an easier way of doing all this, please let me know. Here's what I did. . . 

My colleagues started dropping their iPads off right away in the morning, even though I didn't need them until after lunch. I used that to my advantage, and logged into Dropbox on each of the iPads. I then downloaded one child's artwork (which I had already photographed and put into Dropbox after loading them to Artsonia) to each iPad. I put a Post-It note on each iPad to let me know which child's image was loaded. I even went into Percolator and loaded the child's artwork to the iPad. After my demo, all the kid had to do was turn it on and start manipulating the image. 

I had one more iPad than I needed for the kids (it's a small grade level), so I used that to project on the SmartBoard and show the students how to change the different parts of the image. I then set them to work and as they finished I showed them how to save it to their camera roll and keep working. Most kids had more than one image saved-one even had eleven!

When the kids left, I went into each iPad individually and uploaded the images to my Dropbox. I changed the name of the image to the artist's class code followed by their name so that when the computer reorganized the photos the whole class would be together. Next, I logged out of Dropbox on the iPad and deleted all my students' work because they are not my iPads. If anyone knows of a way to change the image file name on the iPad, I am all ears as that would have been a huge time saver today (and even more so next week, when I'm doing more than one grade level!).

When I had all the images transferred, I was able to download them in one large group and load them to Artsonia. I love putting iPad artwork on Artsonia. Not only is it impressive looking, but it's so easy with no editing needed!

These images are all from the same class. I am thrilled with the variety of results and debating about making photo collages like the one at the top of this post to load to each kid's Artsonia account. It would be a fun triptych, but lots of work.