Make a Jigsaw in Google Slides

I wanted to create an online puzzle activity for  Grade 5 now that everyone is learning from home. The problem with many sites is unwanted ads or that users often are required to sign up. I have been playing with the idea of collaborative puzzles so that students can work together whilst practicing using a trackpad. Using Google Slides makes it easy to share and control how many users are in each puzzle. There are no ads and I can check which students are working on what puzzle as their Google accounts will show me who is in which slide deck. And it's fun!

I thought that solving a jigsaw would give some practice in clicking and dragging the puzzle pieces whilst being careful not to resize them. I can also teach the students command-z which is undo on a Mac. 

How to make the Puzzle

Start by opening a new Slide doc from Google Drive and creating the image that you wish to use for the puzzle. It's a good idea to use a blank slide as the proportions match well with the puzzle website. 

Pro-Tip

In Google Slides you can easily search for images by clicking the photo icon from the menu bar and selecting 'Search the Web'. Be sure to use photos that are labeled for reuse. 

Once you have created your finished image - download that slide as a JPEG ready for uploading to the online jigsaw puzzle maker. 

Go to https://thejigsawpuzzles.com/ and create an account. It's free and it will save your project work. You can save up to 30 puzzles for free. Create a new puzzle and upload your JPEG. 

I prefer to leave my puzzles unchanged so that the pieces don't have to be rotated. This mode is easier for beginners and for students working in groups to solve the puzzle. 

When you want to create the pieces, mouse over the thumbnail of your puzzle to select what kind of cut and how many pieces you want. It's 100 pieces by default but I prefer 50 so it doesn't take too long to solve. Once the puzzle pieces have been generated, you will need to copy each one by one over to your Slides document. 

I like to use a split-screen on my Macbook so that I can copy-paste the pieces. You can't do them all at once as it will act as one image. You will need to copy them one by one. Do this by right-clicking each piece and choosing copy and then on your slides window click command-v. There are a couple of advantages to making the puzzle in Google Slides, no ads, no sign-ups, and students can work in small groups to solve the puzzle. Once you have all the pieces copied over, try making the puzzle to check if the size works. I didn't change the size which works well as it is smaller than the default slide. 

Once your puzzle is ready, all you need to do is share it with your class. You can even make copies so that you can have smaller groups working on the puzzles. It's a fun way to learn about controlling the trackpad which is such an important skill for students learning to use a MacBook. 

IB Dunia at Global Jaya School

 Today I presented at IB Dunia. I share about Augmented Reality and how you make it. In my workshop taught about how to create interactive augmented reality on an iPad using Apple Reality Composer. It was a pack session and I took a suitcase of iPads from school for participants to use. We also explored Merge Cube together with Tinkercad as older iPads can use this. I wanted to make sure that I offered a number of options for schools with different types of iPads.

I also share about my new book Create Your Own AR Pet. 

3D Printing with Grade 4 at JIS

3D printing is rapidly evolving and becoming more affordable and easier to do. I have been reading up on the subject and I am very curious about how this can be applied in the Elementary classroom.

The book that I am reading is called 'Fabricated' by Hod Lipson & Melba Kurman. It covers many uses for 3D printing from household to medical to even printed food that can be eaten!

I was excited to learn that one of my favourite apps - Trimble Sketch Up has a template for 3D printing. This is a great free program that is easy to use.  I worked with a small group of students from Grade 4 for extension Math. 

To start the lesson I asked the students what they already knew about 3D printing. Some students knew a lot. They knew that you can print edible food, print a car and even print models created in Minecraft.

Next I asked them if they would be interested in making something to be printed. Well, the reaction was of high excitement!

So, onto SketchUp. In advance I had already downloaded and installed this free program on some laptops from the school cart. There is no version of SketchUp for iPad, so the students would need to use a laptop for this task.

Inside SketchUp, there is a special template for 3D printing.You must keep your object within the box as this is the printable size for most 3D printers. I gave the students a lesson on how to create a 3D object using the Push/Pull tool and then asked them to create the first letter in their name. Some students were really quick so I asked them to look at the symmetry and make sure that their letter was properly balanced.

Here is a screenshot of an 'A' created by one of the students. The next job was to Airdrop it to me so that I could further prepare the file for printing.

To prepare the file, I had to export it as an .STL file. This is the file type for 3D printing. It is a good idea to have that exported file checked for errors. In order for a 3D file to be printed, all the surfaces must close properly around the shape. If there are any holes, it will not print. After some research, I learned that there is a free cloud service that actually checks and repairs your file for you. That service is called NettFab. All you do is create an account, upload the .STL file and it will repair it for you. When the file is finished, you just download it ready to use.

Now that I had all the prepared files, I needed to book a time for the 3D printer which is located in the Design Technology classroom in our High School. The teacher there was very kind and helpful. He made a further conversion of our files as the printer requires each file to be put through a program first. This conversion essentially turns each model into layers ready for the printer to process. 

On Monday we all walked up to the High School to see the printer in action. Luckily when we arrived, one of the files - this letter A was already in the middle of being printed. It takes over an hour for a 7cm letter to be printed! The printer is already 2 years old and I have read that the new printers are much faster. Here is a film that I made of the printer in action.

Technology in Chinese Lessons

I haven't written a blog post in quite some time. It's not that I haven't any content. I just don't have much time with my transition to a new school next academic year and a lot of demand for workshops :) I thought that I should share a recent workshop that I presented in Beijing. It is a collection of my tips for Chinese language teachers using iPads or Macbooks with their classes.

I am always careful to use creation apps on the iPad. There are some good content apps out there but you really need to look carefully as they often don't match with your curriculum needs.

Here we can see a teacher using a stylus to input Chinese characters. This allows for quicker typing of the characters. It is easy to set up via the keyboard options in your Macbook settings panel.

This is a very exciting way for students to write calligraphy on an iPad using an actual brush! You need a paint brush stylus. I have used the Sensu brush which feels so natural. I actually feel like I am writing calligraphy but there is no messy ink!

I really love the Drawing Pad app for iPad. I have been using it for several years now and it just keeps getting better. What a great way to make pictorial calligraphy to help learners remember their Chinese characters.

There are many Flash card apps for iPad. I like this one because you can draw right inside the app which is helpful for remembering Chinese characters. It is easy to make new sets and to share them across your classes. You can also download sets that others have made.

A few years ago I helped some Chinese teachers at my school to make Mr Bean movies with Chinese voice overs and Chinese character subtitles. It was so much fun. Here is a video made by a student. The learners gained so many new words from this project and had loads of fun!

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Here is the video that I made about Chinese books being creating using the Book Creator app for iPad. This lesson led to Keily Setiawan becoming the youngest child to ever publish an English/Chinese book to the Apple iBooks Store!!

Here is the link to the Apple iBooks Store for the book 'Chen Chen Goes to Space'.

Authoring eBooks with the Deaf School in Jakarta

My current class is working on a project to author eBooks with the deaf school here in Jakarta. We have already had two face to face meetings. In the first meeting the Grade 4 from SWA travelled to the Santi Rama Deaf school. We paired up each student and got down to work.

As preparation, both Grade 4 classes learned how to do some simple ASL - American Sign Language. We learned to perform the song Fireflies in ASL. It was interesting to learn the song and quite fun too!

We learned during our first meeting with the deaf school that Indonesia has it's own sign language. Luckily it is really similar to ASL so we were able to use a lot of what we had learned in preparation. We found that being able to spell out words came in very handy!! My first sentence in sign language was 'What's your name?' and 'My name is Jane'.

Prior to our first meeting I travelled to Santi Rama with my partner teacher Ade to meet with the principal and discuss the details of the project. We agreed that the deaf students needed to prepare their stories in advance by writing them down on paper. We also asked that each child supply some drawings for the book illustrations.

In that first meeting we were able to begin making the story in Keynote. The plan was to create all the layouts in Keynote and then do the final formatting in Book Creator. Out issue is that there is only a small set of iPads at our school and we can only borrow them for a short period of time. It takes time to create a quality book so I will do the final format for the students in my class. The students will simply export their Keynote pages as JPEGs and I will put the videos and pages together and export them out of Book Creator as an ePUB3 files. 

In the second meeting the Santi Rama students travelled on our school bus to SWA. They had a great time playing with our students and working on the final video shoot for the sign language. It proved to be challenging for the deaf students to sign each sentence as they were using vocabulary that was not common so they needed extra support from their teachers. This is the first time that they had ever tried to make a digital story book that included sign language videos inside. Take a look at the school Vice Principal supporting this Grade 4 student to do the correct sign language for the sentence, 'Ghina was really happy and thanked God'. This story is about Ghina herself and how she celebrated her recent 11th birthday.

The books are looking quite nice and I am slowly putting the final touches on them in Book Creator. Take a look at these cover designs. My students are currently making Book Trailers in iMovie to promote each book. I can't wait to show you the finished products. It's certainly keeping the teachers; Jocelyn, Ade, Julie and myself all very busy!

Backpack Classroom Level 2

Tomorrow marks the second time that I will run the Backpack Classroom. This time I am taking my current class which is a Grade 4 class. They use Macbooks 1:1. Actually I will go with the whole year level. Our aim is to create 39 books.

What is the Backpack Classroom? 

This is a simple idea that I had at the end of last year. It is a way to help children with limited access to technology to create a digital book and to publish it. I originally took a backpack of iPads to a remote village in Sumatra to teach the children there to create digital books. It resulted in 9 books that to date have been downloaded over 20,000 times.

So what is different this time?

This time I am taking my current class from the International school that I currently teach at. My class has Macbooks as their 1:1 devices. We will keep it simple by using Keynote and Photo Booth to record the story. 

Where are you going?

We will go to the Santi Rama School in Jakarta. This is a school for deaf children. We have chosen to visit this school as our current topic is about how we can modify messages to suit a particular audience. The books will be tri-lingual. That means that there will be 3 languages included on each page. The children from the Santi Rama school understand Indonesian. They are all deaf children and use sign language to communicate. To make the books more accessible for an international audience we will translate the stories into English. My students will act as publishers and then promote the finished books to an international audience via their blogs and other online forums. 

Where did you get the idea to go to Santi Rama?

I have been visiting this school with different classes over the years. I have always gone to see them so that my students can make new friends and learn about communicating in sign language. This time the focus will be on to help each deaf student to create a digital book that we can publish to the world for other children to read. 

How will you make it work?

The idea is for each SWA student to have a Santi Rama student partner. The Santi Rama students have been preparing for tomorrow and have already written their stories on paper and made some illustrations. My students have been learning about how to create a digital book with embedded video on each page. They have also been learning how to create digital artwork to illustrate the book.

We are really looking forward to tomorrow. More information to come after our visit.

Rethinking Technology Integration

A couple of days ago I tweeted about my misgivings about being a tech integrator. Don't get me wrong - there are parts of my job that I really enjoy. I do enjoy getting to see the big picture and being involved across the school. My problem is that I have been in this position for 3 years but the last 2 years I have been doing the Integration for 100% of my time. As you all know technology changes rapidly. I have had no class of students of my own so I never get a chance to do any real deep learning with technology. I do a lot of assisting, giving ideas and supporting of other teachers but I work in fragments. Most of it is small projects and a lot of quick solutions or problem solving.

I miss having a group of students with whom I can develop their digital literacy over a long period of time. I miss real teaching where I get to decide on what to do and then make it happen. I miss that connection with the students where I can see development over a longer period of time.

I'm a creative person and I have a lot of ideas - but I then have to persuade other teachers to allow me to act on these ideas. It doesn't happen very often so I am left thinking - Why am I in this job? I have to give up and compromise which leads to a much different outcome.

So where do I go from here?

ANPS - Collaboration Online

I have been preparing for my next presentation which will be at the next ANPS Forum for Emerging Leaders on the 30th April. I am trying to make a more dramatic kind of presentation by using the skills that I learned at the recent ADE Institute in HCMC. I am trying to break out of my slideshow habit and engage the audience by telling a story but using visuals as a support.

As a part of my preparations for this workshop I have been interviewing the technical support at my school to find out about the current size of the Internet bandwidth and how many users that can support at the same time. We are indeed fortunate to have 8 megabit bandwidth.

One of the biggest problems that the local schools here in Indonesia face is access. Most schools still use computer labs which offer limited access for teachers other than the computer teacher. On top of this the Internet access is barely sufficient for the teachers to access let alone the students.

This issue of computer access and Internet access will be the deal breaker for most national plus schools. It is very costly often costing more than other school needs - never less it is essential.

Things can only change here if schools consider computer and Internet access as equally important as staffing. It needs to be considered as an integral part of the school and not just 'added value'.

Weebly Portfolios

The Grade 4 and 5 students at SWA have been trialling the use of Weebly portfolios. Last quarter the Weebly sites were started and the expectation this quarter is for all subjects to have a page for portfolio work.

At SWA the Grade 4 and 5 students are in the 1:1 laptop program. This gives them easy access to be able to create most of their school work in a digital format. It is a natural extension to make the portfolios in digital format.

Originally the students made their portfolios in either Keynote or iWeb on the laptops. This made it difficult to access in that students had to have their laptops in order to see the portfolio. By having the work online, it has allowed parents to keep up to date with their child's work as often as they like.



What's Good About Weebly
Weebly allows the teacher to access the student websites from inside the admin controls for editing. It also allows for a class password to be used which gives extra privacy for younger users. It has an easy drag and drop interface which is simple for even the most tech-challenged to use.
I personally like that students can upload a video directly to their sites without having to host it elsewhere and embed it. Weebly is also integrated with Scribd.com so that Word or Pages documents can be directly uploaded to be embedded in the page. There are many options for photo displays with galleries or simple photo+paragraph choices. For more information - check out the video overview of the site

A True 21st Century School - The Future is Here!

Pangeran Katak - The Frog Prince in Indonesian

This story was made by a Grade 2 student during Indonesian language time. The characters were hand drawn and captured with a digital camera. The frog was made using Spore Creature Creator. The story was completed using Keynote with voice overs and animation. This is the level that Grade 2 children can get to given support and plenty of access to technology. We run a mobile lab of Macbooks for Grade 1-3 students at Sinarmas World Academy.

Digital Storytelling in Grade 2

The Grade 2 students have their end of year class party today. They will present their digital stories to their parents.
Each story was written by a student, then the characters were hand-drawn on paper, photographed, then saved as a gif. These pictures were then put into Keynote and each student made their story with 'move' animation and voice overs. Here is a finished example:

Press Reader for iPad

I came across this brilliant app for iPad called Pressreader


Pressreader is a fantastic app that allows you to download the print version of newspapers from all over the world. You can get current and back issues. Papers are in full colour and in HD. Double tap zooms on text making it easy to read. Drag your finger around the paper to view all parts of the page. The app is fast and responsive.
This is a FREE app. You get a full version trial for 7 days. After the trial is over you can subscribe to the service and enable the reader to download newspapers of your choice from all over the world. Currently there are over 1400 newspapers to choose from. The app includes a built in emailing option allowing you to email articles. It also has a voice reader that reads the articles to you with a very realistic voice that has intonation. It sounds quite human!! There is also a search feature that can be used to search for keywords in articles or headings.

IPad - my initial thoughts

Our plan at Jakarta World Academy and Sinarmas World Academy is to use iPads 1:1 with the students. I managed to get one on the weekend and have had a chance to test it out on my children. I have an 11 year old son, an 8 year old daughter and my youngest son is 4. All of my kids loved trying out my new iPad, but it was my 4 year old that took to it the most.

My plan is this:

* At JWA we will use iPads 1:1. Firstly I will image the iPads with Apps that connect with the current unit of learning. I will arrange for the wallpaper to be a photo of the student in uniform at school taken of that child engaged in some learning. We could also arrange to get Jakarta World Academy sleeves made to store the iPads in.

* I would identify apps that encourage creativity that connect with the learning. For example if the focus was on Sea Creatures, I would put Clicky Sticky on the image so that the students can make scenes and even act out stories using the different stickers. I would also include fish apps and virtual ocean apps.

* I would load songs that connect with those stories onto the iPod feature and make it into a Sea Creature playlist.

* Classroom activities can be filmed and loaded onto the iPad for viewing at home with the parents. Videos of teachers using flash cards for key vocabulary could also be included.

* Sets of Flashcards could also be loaded onto the iPad in the Image library as an event. Perhaps using the First Words app as it allows sound recordings to be made.

* I would make sure that there is a drawing app so that students can draw different sea creatures.

* Keynote app could be used to create student digital portfolios with scanned paper based work and photos of 3D work.

Prezi

I made this Prezi last year. There has been a lot of improvements made to this app since then. Take a look at my presentation about 1:1 at SWA. Of course things at SWA have changed too. Our 1:1 laptop program now begins in Grade 4, Grades 1-3 share a mobile Mac lab and Kindy have sets of iMacs in each classroom.

21st Century Shopping Documentary

This documenary was made by a Grade 3 student. All the students have been learning about different money systems as a part of their latest inquiry. Liam created this documentary by himself. He was able to edit, add voice overs, music, titles, transitions and credits. This is only one example of the films that were created by Grade 3. Each student has made their own documentary. The students in Grade 1-3 share a set of laptops on a cart.

Virtual Monas - created by Grade 5

Take at look at the sophisticated work in this Sketchup model that was created by a Grade 5 student. This was done as a reflection exercise after a field trip to the real monument.