An Afternoon with iPads and New Friends

This past Thursday we were lucky enough to have six children from Cindrich Elementary (a nearby school) come and visit us.  But they didn't come alone, they came with 16 iPads from their school.  As you probably already know we LOVE the one iPad we have in the class so you can only imagine how excited we were to have 16 plus our 1 iPad in our classroom.

Our Wonderful Cindrich Visitors

At first we were a little nervous because we didn't know these children, or their teachers, but we quickly realized that they were just like us - kids wanting to learn and share.

For the first part of the visit Ms. Lirenman and Mrs. Walia (their teacher) had us working either with a partner, or on our own exploring the many cool apps they had on their iPads.  The students from Mrs. Walia's class were so patient  sharing their favourite apps with us.  We discovered some that we really liked and quickly told Ms. Lirenman so that she could add them to our class iPad.  Time went by really quickly because all of a sudden it was lunch time.

We took our new friends outside to play during lunch time, and then made sure they came back safely with us to eat our lunches.  Already we were feeling very comfortable with our new friends.  They were super friendly children just like us!

After lunch Ms. Lirenman and Mrs. Walia gave us a job to do with the iPads.  They demonstrated the app Scribble Press which was new to all of us.  Scribble Press is a pretty cool app.  It allows you to either fill in a pre-written story, then edit it, and illustrate it or you can make your own story.  The app allows you to add photos and text, change backgrounds, add stickers, and draw.  It's a really easy app for kids, and even kids in Grade One! So our job was to work together (we ended up in groups of three because we really wanted to share the kids from Cindrich) and create a book about the experience we were having - sharing iPads between two classes from two  different school.

It was while working on the iPads together that our friendships really started to blossom.  Ms. Lirenman and Mrs. Walia walked around and helped us out as we tried our best to create collaborative stories about our experience.  It was a lot of fun working with one another and we all got along so well.  Some of us were better at one thing, while others were better at other things but together we could do it all.  We think Ms. Lirenman and Mrs. Walia were really impressed by how well we worked together and how well we were getting along.  It was a really positive experience for us and for Ms. Lirenman and Mrs. Walia too.

Time passed way too quickly because all of a sudden it was time for us to share what we had been working on.  A few of the groups shared their work using the projection device so we could all see what they had done.  Ms. Lirenman also shared our class blog with Mrs. Walia's class and she showed them some of our individual blogs too. It was a really fantastic opportunity.

This opportunity would never have happened if Mr. Chila, the vice principal at Cindrich, hadn't taken the time to organize this meeting between two like minded teachers with like minded students.  He saw the power in his schools iPads and the power in collaborating with other schools.  We can't thank him enough and hopefully we can do it again soon.  Thank you Mrs. Walia for bringing your awesome students and wonderful iPads to share with us.  Maybe next time we can visit you!

Here is a little video of our time together.