App Smashing and Creative Writing

Our classroom was lucky enough to get a set of iPads a few months ago.  I’ve been looking for ways to do content creation with these devices rather then just using them for playing review games.  After reading Miss Yollis’ post about App Smashing, it inspired me to give this a try.  Since we had just recently made some flat friends to exchange with a class in France, I decided to use them for a realistic fiction creative writing piece.  This is what we did.

  1. Each student chose one of the states and researched places to visit in that state.  Then they wrote a creative story on Google Docs telling about how their flat friend went to visit that place.
  2. Next we used the Google Earth app to zoom in on each place and take a screen shot.  We then opened the Pic Collage app and took a photo of the flat friend.  They used the cutting tool in Pic Collage to cut out the friend and then uploaded the Google Earth screen shot as the background to make it look like the flat friend was in that location.
  3. We put all of the pieces together and published the stories on our Kidblogs.  It took a few weeks to complete and our many delays and days off from snow didn’t help, but our finished stories look great!  Here is an example of one that was written by Andrew.

 

Once upon a time there was a boy named Flat Bob. He was always asking questions about states. So one day his parents said he could pick one state and visit it.  It was so difficult  to pick.  He decided to pick Maine. He went to Acadia National Park and learned that it is almost completely surrounded by the sea.  Also he learned that  it occupies a major portion of Mount Desert.

Andrew 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second place he visited was Roosevelt Campobello International Park.  He learned that President Franklin Delano had a summer home there.  He went deep sea fishing and tried to catch lobsters there. He learned that it is famous there.  The final thing he did there is he watched people go snowmobiling.  He still says that was his most favorite trip ever.

Andrew 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you would like to read the rest of the stories written by my students, just visit our Kidblog and search on the Flat Friend Adventures tag.  Thanks again Mrs. Yollis and her class for a fun idea!!