At TeachMeet Nottingham, Friday 30th March, I spoke about my work with Apps Based Learning on iPad and how Puppet Pals and Morpho Booth has been effective in bringing story language to life in my Reception class.
Earlier in the Spring Term 2012, I wrote about the iPad Workshop which I organised at my school with the support of European Electronique (@euroele) and Neil Emery (@neilemerydotcom). Since then I have been busy planning and resourcing opportunities for my Reception class to make the best use of apps in the classroom.
Using an iPad VGA adapter, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, I was able to connect the school’s iPad to my projector in order to model the use of Puppet Pals and Morfo Booth to my class. As a whole class we used these apps to retell parts of The Gruffalo story, using language patterns from the story.
Afterwards, the children worked in groups of 4 to create their own Puppet Pals and Morpho Booth faces on the iPad. This was achieved using only 2 iPads, proving that classrooms can achieve apps based learning with only 1 or 2 tablets! Afterwards, children were eager to write on Gruffalo themed speech bubbles available in the writing table. I also want to reinforce that very little support from adults was needed. The only time I felt I needed to intervene was when children needed to ‘speak up’ because of background noise.
Puppet Pals example:
https://vimeo.com/75233518
Morfo Booth example:
At TeachMeet I was asked what the next steps would be for other year groups using iPads for story telling. I suggested that children could use iMovie to import all of the saved media they have created in Morpho Booth or Puppet Pals, and also images saved from Google Images in Safari. This would create a movie version of the story, and they can edit transitions between clips along with titles and subtitles. I also suggested the use of Creative Book Builder App to import the same media but to create an eBook.
Visitors at TeachMeet also commented that Puppet Pals can use children’s own images. Children can draw characters and backgrounds on the iPad or using traditional paper and pencil and insert these in to the App (the iPad 2 camera can be used to photograph children’s drawings which can be inserted into the Puppet Pals App).
Enabling Environments 
It’s very interesting the way children are learning using this technology. I totally support the use of I Pads in the class room and also for the use in nursery settings. Young children are enjoying their learning and developing many skills to support their knowledge and understanding of the world in which they live.
Here is a comment I received from Alec Duncan of child’s play musicThanks Alec! …Hi Marc – great blog, and I’ve updated the details for your listing on my blog post about blokes who blog about early childhood to add this new blog. I realise your old class blog is no longer being updated, but I’ve kept the listing since it’s still available and it’s well worth reading.So you aren’t on Facebook? That’s a shame – I’ve been amazed by the vibrant community of ECE Pages and the level of networking is truly wondrous. It’s also a great way to publicise your blogs to a wider audience – we would love to have you with us! Your knowledge of technology for early childhood education would really add something. Most of us are anything but convinced about its merits, but some of the stuff you’ve been showcasing here and on your enabling environments blog has me wondering if it’s just that I don’t know how it can be used creatively in play-based settings. I’ve seen too many bad "whiteboard being used as a very expensive chalkboard" things, but your use of the iPad and your Gruffalo stuff makes me think that used properly and creatively it can add something quite special to ECE. Come and convince the rest of us!Now, persuade me why I ought to be on Twitter LOL.Regards. Alec
[…] There are many amazing ways that stories can be created, I particularly liked the ‘Morfo Booth’ app as the example shown was a character of a fox reading the story which really bought it to life, I would use this app in my practice as I think children in early years would really enjoy using it. The Morfo app allows you to take any picture of yourself and automatically turn it into an interactive animation! I came across this interesting article by a reception class teacher titled ‘Using Apps to Bring Story Language to Life’. In the article they talk about their work with ‘apps based learning’ on iPad and how effective Puppet Pals and Morpho Booth are in bringing stories to life. For an example of Morfo Booth based on the Gruffalo click on the link https://enabling-environments.co.uk/2012/03/31/using-apps-to-bring-story-language-to-life/ […]
[…] Learn how to use Puppet Pals so that children can retell stories with simple animations. […]