Saturday 10 November 2012

Starting younger children reflecting

Kids Journal ($1.29 for iPad)
Diary writing, reflective journal for young students.




This is a great app to start young children reflecting on their day. It can be used for  for individual iPad owners and you can set up class sets of journals on one iPad.


Tap on the empty Journal box to add a new journal.
Add a photo, type in your name and choose a colour for your book.








Choose a Mood Picture
Choose a location picture



Choose a weather picture
Choose the 'Photo of the day'
Type in your reflection/journal/diary entry








These pages can be exported by tapping on the Paper Dart icon. They can be exported to iBooks, Kindle, Notability, Evernote and several more.








So it takes 5 steps to make a Journal entry
  1. Choose a mood
  2. Chose a location
  3. Choose the weather
  4. Choose a photo
  5. Type in your entry
The next step could be Kidblog which is an Internet based student blogging platform and which is now available as an app
Kidblog (Free for iPhone/iPod Touch; Free for iPad)



And then there is Blogger, if your students have a Google account through Google Apps for Education then they have a 'Blogger' account. It is a great way for students to blog as there are no distractions on the app, all they can do is type a title, type a post, insert a photo and post!

5 year old Chloe, doing her favourite thing...blogging on Blogger

    2 comments:

    Allanah King said...

    Before I bought the app I found this video which takes you through the process of making and exporting entries for Kids Journal.

    I think recording the weather each day is a bit naff. It would be nice if you could add another of your own photos instead but the concept is worth exploring.

    Thanks for pointing me to it.

    Allanah

    Jacqui Sharp said...

    Little kids seem to like it, maybe a bigger choice of graphics would be a great addition. I like the idea of recording the weather because sometimes this could contribute to the mood of the child and influence the writing. Observing weather patterns leading to predictions is something I do with students of all ages everyday when I am teaching, so the ability to record the weather on the book was an addition I liked. I can see Early Childhood educators making great use of this app, in fact I am presenting it to them this afternoon at a workshop.