We are a 1:1 district for 3rd through high school and I am always looking for new ideas to be creative with our devices especially since this is MY first year teaching in the lab! All this "butterfly business" started when I found this post on Tricia Fuglestad's blog! The timing was great as one of our Art teachers had just been doing pointillism butterflies with first graders AND we have a local butterfly garden that one school's first graders would visit for a spring field trip! So even though this project would be for older grades this led to the idea of keeping the first graders involved at this specific school.
Since our first graders don't have iPads I connected with teachers of older grades who are matched up as reading buddies for the first grade students. I asked them to have the older student take a green screen photo of their buddy during their regular buddy time. This was a HUGE help in saving us time during our weekly 30 minutes in the lab!
We began our work for this project by practicing drawing the wings using tux paint on our computers. This program has a symmetry tool and even though it's slightly different than the app's symmetry tool we would use it gave them a chance to get the feel for drawing a mirrored image.
This also helped give me time to get the necessary apps installed on our iPads during this same class session. (At this time I have to run around and enter a password for all 25+ students in every class!)
We studied the photo of real butterfly wings from Tricia's website for inspiration and discussed the symmetry we noticed and the unique details!
That could have been the end of the lesson right there as THESE butterflies were AMAZING! Be sure to press play for the two Flipagrams I quickly created so you can hear the perfect songs I found!
Install the Flipagram app for an easy way to share digital work in its true form! I quickly snapped a shot of students' screens and threw them in the app with a FREE 30 second music clip included right in the app!
The best part was that I never got tired of hearing the excitement in the lab as they learned how easy it was to change the whole mood of the butterfly with a few clicks on the magic paint bucket tool! They were all so unique and colorful and amazing!
In our next class session we were ready to start using the FREE SketchbookX app to make our wings we would use for the finished piece. Getting students used to the tools in this app was a little tricky at first. We had to learn how to choose colors, brushes, click the symmetry tool and SAVE.
Thirty minute class sessions go by quickly so we got as far as we could!
Thirty minute class sessions go by quickly so we got as far as we could!
We were planning to use Keynote's instant alpha tool as the best free option in place of the Superimpose app Tricia had used. After much searching I found a fabulous free app (except I think it has since gone to a paid only version) called PW lite photowizard photoeditor. And it coincidentally has a butterfly on the app icon which helped students remember it!
The app let us mask the green screen image and save it to the camera roll for smashing with our SketchbookX wings!
The app let us mask the green screen image and save it to the camera roll for smashing with our SketchbookX wings!
In SketchbookX we started by getting our wings ready to edit. We added a layer and learned about how important that step was to be able to place and size the body image! We practiced inserting images from our camera roll, using the transform tool, manipulating with a two finger pinch/zoom, and the again SAVING our final work!
These were a lot of steps to manage in our short time together but once a few got through to the end they were able to help each other better. The absolute final step for students was uploading the image to our shared google drive folder for printing!
Now, after spending many hours downloading the images to my home computer out of google drive so that I can upload them to a photo printing site, I'm anxious to search for a faster method!
In between organizing and uploading folders for each class I also started playing around with the masked version of final butterflies to create an animated garden using the DoInk Animation App! After I created the video and saved it to my camera roll I imported it into imovie to add one of three fun butterfly songs I found!
Mariah Carey- Butterfly
Little Mix-Wings
Miley Cyrus-Butterfly Fly Away
These students are now getting ready to "Fly Up" to the next grade as we are wrapping up the year! What a fun project to remember in the lab!
These were a lot of steps to manage in our short time together but once a few got through to the end they were able to help each other better. The absolute final step for students was uploading the image to our shared google drive folder for printing!
Now, after spending many hours downloading the images to my home computer out of google drive so that I can upload them to a photo printing site, I'm anxious to search for a faster method!
In between organizing and uploading folders for each class I also started playing around with the masked version of final butterflies to create an animated garden using the DoInk Animation App! After I created the video and saved it to my camera roll I imported it into imovie to add one of three fun butterfly songs I found!
Mariah Carey- Butterfly
Little Mix-Wings
Miley Cyrus-Butterfly Fly Away
These students are now getting ready to "Fly Up" to the next grade as we are wrapping up the year! What a fun project to remember in the lab!