 is Caroline Dowdy. I teach second grade in Alexandria, Virginia right outside our nation's capital of Washington DC. I'm so thrilled to join you all today as I share with you my experience of app smashing as students are creating stories for learning. App smashing is a technology integration technique where students take more than one app to create an original product. The most important thing about app smashing is that students are creating. They are creating a project in one app, creating something different in another app, taking those two projects, smashing them together for one final work. Still don't understand? Let's have some second graders further explain. It's when you put a lot of apps together and smash it into one big project. App smashing is when you take two or three or however many apps and you put them together in one app. So how exactly does app smashing work? I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to share some of the examples that I have done in my class so your students can start producing their own stories for learning. One of the very first app smashing projects we did was in our math block. Students had 45 minutes to put together two apps to create one original product. We started in the app pick collage. Pick collage is a great collaging app where students can add pictures, text, arrows, and symbols. Students were learning how to tell time to the nearest minute. The first step students did was use pick collage to create to take a picture of a blank clock. The only thing I had provided on the clock were the hands that told a specific time. The clocks were differentiated based on the needs of my students. Some were working on telling time to the nearest minute, others working on telling time to the nearest half hour. Students took a picture of that clock using pick collage and once they took the picture were required to label the clock. They added the numbers to the clock and also added a title to tell you what time it was. This was a great opportunity for students to look at a clock and strictly just tell me the time. After that students saved their work from pick collage in the camera roll. We then visited the app telegami. Telegami is an avatar app where students can create an original avatar and record themselves speaking over the avatar for at least 30 minutes. The first step students did was they smashed that first product from pick collage. They uploaded their picture of the clock from pick collage as the background of their avatar. Then they hit record and explain to others how they would tell time on the clock that was in the pick collage. They saved it. This was a great opportunity for students to tell me yes they know the time on the clock, yes they are able to label the hours on the clock and finally are they able to explain their thinking and teach others how to tell time. This was a fabulous activity where many mediums and domains were reached. In addition we shared our learning at the end of the day and students were able to tell their other students their classmates how they did, what did they like best, how were they able to help others and teach them how to tell time. Need another example? Let's go back to my students and they will further explain how they use pick collage and telegami in an app smash. Well first I got a sheet of a clock and then I took a picture of it and I cut it out and then I labeled the clocks hours and put my name and the time and then I put a background and I got out. In telegami I made my avatar and then I put my background as my collage that I made in pick collage and then I recorded me talking but it would look like the avatar is actually talking and then I saved it put into um um I put it into camera roll and then I saved it. Hello my name is Cassidy and this is how you tell time. First you go to the hour hand and sometimes it goes between the two numbers in this program it's between the eight and the seven always go backwards so then I cut my minutes one two three so it's seven or three thanks for watching bye. Tell me a little bit about what you did in this project Cassidy. We did we put pick collage and photographed a and it labeled the minutes and told what time it was and told um clock there and then in telegami we um recorded our voice for less than 30 seconds and talked about um talked about how you tell time. I truly believe that digital storytelling can enhance one's learning and understanding. I'd like to share one last project with you. It is an expert project that my students created at the end of the year. We were studying ancient civilizations particularly ancient Egypt and ancient China. I wanted my students to create an expert project where they could showcase their learning and also teach others about the civilization of their choice. I gave them two class periods to pick from six different apps that we had used throughout the year and that they were very fluent and comfortable with. During those two class periods students were able to create anything that they wanted in the parameters of the six apps that I gave them. Students created a word cloud where they listed all the inventions from ancient China. Students created a chatter pics where they took a picture of an Egyptian pharaoh cut out the line and recorded themselves pretending to be that Egyptian pharaoh. Students created a dosary report where they took different pictures used different pictures of the Nile river and recorded themselves explaining the different facts. In addition we used pick collage which we were very familiar with to take pictures and write captions about the ancient civilization. Once those two class periods were over students saved all their work in the camera roll. The camera roll is huge if you do not create a project that can be saved in the camera roll then it is very difficult to smash with another app as you're unable to get your work and export it or import it. After we created those different works in those six different apps many students got to three or four some of mine even got to five or six. We used the interactive whiteboard app explain everything where you can import different pictures where you can import different videos where you can even include videos of yourself. Students took all of their original works that they had made put them on a different slide of explain everything and then recorded themselves explaining the entire thing. This project was wonderful it gave students an opportunity to work with different mediums and different apps so sometimes it was a drawing app sometimes it was a word app sometimes they were recording themselves moving you are really hitting a variety of intelligences mediums and domains and then at the end they have this wonderful project where they have showcased everything that they have learned throughout this unit and then at the end the students were able to watch each other's and talk about okay what did I learn that was new from this person's app what would I recommend that they would add next time my students love this it was a great way to end of the year and I hope now that you'll have a chance to see why it was so productive and so wonderful to do in my class. We did this app smashing project to tell each other more about Egypt and what we know. Well first we went to Chatterpicks and we did easier Talking Pyramid or Pharaoh which is an Egypt king. We did word cloud to list vocabulary words and then we just explained everything to put all the apps together. Many teachers use digital storytelling in their classrooms to have students explain thinking share original works and teach others. I'd like to share why I think app smashing enhances stories for learning. One it boosts critical thinking skills for example the time telling app smashing activity I shared at the beginning of the presentation where students had to smash together a picture of a labeled clock and over the oral explanation of the time. Sure I could have had my students complete a worksheet where they had to label a clock and write the time underneath the clock in addition I could have had an open response question where my students wrote down their thinking however this wasn't a writing activity for my students nor was I looking at who could best write an explanation. I wanted to hear what my students were truly thinking when they first looked at that clock. What was the first thing that came to mind? How did they process all the numbers on the clock? In addition when I asked students to record themselves teaching others they were forced to think critically about how to best explain it in a concise and coherent manner. In addition app smashing embraces creativity when students are given a chance to use different apps it's amazing what they could create. For example when my students created the expert projects on ancient Egypt and China you were really able to see what was important to these students. What did they really take away? How did they use the ancient Chinese inventions to teach others? It was funny some of my students had talking fireworks where the fireworks would explain how they were invented in ancient China and what they were used for. When there's less parameters given like there are in app smashing many creative projects can be achieved and you'd be amazed at what even seven and eight year olds can produce. We've seen the effect that digital storytelling can have on a student's oral storytelling abilities but also their fluency and expression. I work in a school where there is a high English language learning population and many of my students are learning English for the first time. Wow I was amazed at what app smashing could do to help increase their oral and English language abilities. It's fascinating to see a student who at the beginning of the year has a very limited vocabulary they are speaking very softly into the microphone and then by the end of the year they're oh they can't fit their explanation under the 30 seconds that they might need in a certain app. They are so excited to hear their voice. They're so excited to share their voice for the first time. App smashing can also help some of your struggling readers who are working on fluency and expression. The more they are reading the more they are able to hear their voice and focus on their strengths and weaknesses the more improvements that we see. Stories for learning can reinforce one's thinking. When students are required to explain their thinking in new ways a greater understanding is achieved. For example when we smashed with the clocks I could have given my students a paper with clocks and asked my students to label the time however when my students were asked to orally teach each other I was able to see who understood the strategies behind telling time. Who was using the skip counting by five strategy. In addition when my students are retelling stories of their learning it helps my students better internalize their learning so their learning is less of a strict recall of facts. Lastly app smashing reaches different intelligences domains and mediums. For example when my students were creating the expert project on ancient Egypt and China they were given six very different apps. One of the apps was a writing app. One of the apps was a drawing app. Many of the apps were speaking apps therefore my students were having to explain their learning in many different ways. This also helps with students who have different needs who are unable to do the writing or unable to do the speaking. They also have different options. Also regarding the time example that I showed at the beginning of the presentation in that one 45 minute period students were labeling the clock students were writing the time and students were orally explaining their thinking that is three different ways that I was able to access assess them in one class period. How much more powerful could you get? I hope I have shared with you some ideas on how you can incorporate app smashing in your own classroom to enhance your stories for learning. Thank you all so much for joining me today. I would love to hear about your app smashing experiences or answer any questions to help you have a successful app smash. I want to leave you with some final thoughts from some of my second graders on why they think you should app smash in the classroom. Best of luck for a great year. Thank you. App smashing helps people students become better because it helps them understand the subject that they're app smashing about a little bit better than they had before. Because it helps you explain your thinking more than it does on a plain worksheet because on worksheets they're always the worksheets sometimes can be small and you won't have enough room to explain your thinking but with app smashing you have a lot of room to do your thinking and second because it's fun because you get to create your own collages and create your own project. Um I think it's creative because you get to create whatever your mind desires and have fun with it. Well it requires students to think about the apps more instead of just pressing random buttons to do only one app you have to press multiple buttons and actually focus on what you're doing with the app. App smashing rocks done and all.