Tania Behan

Hi, I'm Tania. I am a specialist STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) teacher and I work with students across our lower and upper primary classes. My students are working at a variety of different curriculum levels - from Level A (Towards Foundation) to Level 2 - so it is important for me to create differentiated, hands-on learning experiences that all students can participate in and enjoy. I'm particularly motivated by sharing engaging and thought provoking learning experiences with my students and seeing the 'wow' factor when they discover something new.

At the beginning of this project, I was introduced to the Everyone Can Create Video resources and saw lots of opportunities for my students to use the Camera and Clips apps to record their predictions, observations, explanations and reflections. I also identified lots of different ways that I could use these amazing tools in my teaching.

We started off by exploring the Slo Mo function of the Camera app to record some experiments.

The students took turns to film each other and I used the Keynote and Clips apps to compile the videos. The class video was then shared on Seesaw.

The students were so excited and loved rewatching their videos over and over again!

We also began experimenting with the Clips app to record and reflect on learning. We explored different features of the app, such as stickers, emojis, text labels, live titles (voice to text) and soundtracks. For some students, the Clips videos were co-constructed with an adult and others were able to work more independently.

The students have LOVED creating their own videos and seeing themselves on the class TV. I have noticed that it also gives them more opportunities to use their voice and encourages them to talk more about what they are learning. Live titles in Clips have been a great way to capture these moments.

As a teacher, I am getting better at capturing the learning experiences in short bursts and quickly compiling these in Clips. These videos provide a great opportunity for students to reflect at the end of a lesson and to recap on prior learning at the beginning of the following lesson.

I have also been experimenting with the use of Memojis to enhance student engagement and to support reflection tasks.

Over the course of the semester, I have worked with several of my colleagues to support them to use Clips in their own classrooms. Their feedback has been really positive and they have reported seeing students who would otherwise be very quiet and reserved become excited to talk about and share their learning.

In a Science Specialist Newsflash video, which was shared with all of our staff, my colleague Joan and I highlighted some Augmented Reality (AR) apps that teachers might utilise as part of their units of inquiry.

Clips has been a game changer in enabling me to impart knowledge in a dynamic, fun way, and for the students I work with, it provides multiple exposures to review their learning, comment and share with peers. I can't wait to explore other ways that I can use this great tool!

Brian Smith

Hi, my name's Brian and I'm a DigiTech Specialist Teacher. I'm also the Specialist Team Leader, overseeing Visual Arts, Music, Performing Arts, STEAM and PE. Throughout this project, I have been focusing on how the iPad can be used as a tool for all of our students to develop and demonstrate their creative and critical thinking skills.

At the early stages of this project, I introduced the Specialist Team and our PLC Leaders to Apple's Everyone Can Create resources. We explored the Everyone Can Create Photo project guide and my colleagues created their own personified pictures, using the Mark Up tools in Photos.

Most of the teachers had not previously been aware of the Mark Up tools and we had some great discussions around how these could be used in a range of different ways.

When students were introduced to using the Mark Up tools, they responded amazingly, creating a range of interesting characters from objects around the classroom.

Our Art teachers have access to a class set of Apple Pencils and have been exploring some of the projects in the Everyone Can Create Drawing guide.

Students have enjoyed using Pencil and the Sketches School app to create their own artwork. One student has shown a particular interest in creating her own anime style illustrations. She has learned to use a range of features on the Sketches School app, including the zoom feature, to create some incredible artwork.

In Music classes, we have been exploring GarageBand with support from the Everyone Can Create Music guide.

Students have been experimenting with the different instruments and really enjoyed using the fun effects when recording their voices. They have also been using silent disco headsets to record vocals for the National Anthem which is played at assemblies.

One of our students who is blind is enjoying using GarageBand to create her own music. The instrument interface, particularly when combined with the Guided Access accessibility feature of the iPad, has been great for her to explore and create.

In my DigiTech classes, we have been focusing on developing problem solving and critical thinking skills using the Thinkrolls: Kids Logic Puzzles app.

It has been fantastic to see how students are tackling these puzzles and using them to create visual algorithms, developing their coding skills.

One particular stand out for me has been a student working at Level B (Towards Foundation), who has shown great resilience and perseverance in solving the puzzles as she learns to interact with the touch interface.

Students have also been learning to control Sphero robots to navigate through mazes. They started off using the joystick and tilt controls, with some moving on to controlling their robots by creating algorithms with blocks.

The students started out using the Sphero Play app, which gives an accessible entry point into controlling robotic devices and virtual objects before moving on to more comprehensive interfaces, such as Sphero EDU.

In other DigiTech lessons, students have been using Minecraft: Education Edition to create their own virtual worlds. This has been a great way for students to express their creativity and has given them the opportunity to collaborate in safe online environments.

I look forward to continuing the work we have started as an Innovation Team, with an increased focus on supporting teachers to take risks in using technology. This will provide students with more opportunities to extend their own creativity and hopefully have some fun along the way.

Meagan Kelleher

My name is Meagan and I teach a class of upper primary students who are working between Level B (Towards Foundation) and Level 3. Some of my students use Assistive and Augmentative Communication methods, such as Aided Language Displays, ProloQuo2Go and Jelly Bean Switches.

For this project, I decided to focus on supporting my students to develop their photography skills using the Camera app, and to introduce them to the Keynote app to present their photos in the form of a collage. I have taken ideas from the Everyone Can Create Photo guide, in particular Chapter 1 (Everyday Objects) and Chapter 5 (Collage Composition).

Firstly I identified eight key skills that I wanted my students to learn:

I then created a sequence of lessons with supporting resources, that have been differentiated to ensure that they are accessible for every student. My intention is that any teacher could take these plans and apply them to the particular curriculum area they are focusing on.

We started by looking at basic skills, like holding the camera steady, taking photos from different angles and including the whole object in our photos. Initially, the photos that my students took were quite blurry and unclear.

But as we continued to practice and consolidate the skills required to take a good quality photo, there was a noticeable improvement in what the students were able to capture (as you will see below).

In our second lesson, students used a scavenger hunt template that I had created in Keynote to find and take photos of different objects.

The template provided support through the use of visual prompts, which were set up as media placeholders. These allowed the students to insert their own photos simply by tapping on the + symbol on each image. It was great to see during this lesson how the students were grasping the basics of how to take a good quality photo and were becoming familiar with some of the features of the Keynote app.

The third lesson used a similar template to the previous, with students inserting photos using placeholders as they did before. However, this time students also needed to demonstrate that they could resize and reposition photos. The students were all provided with a template, where the placeholder images were deliberately created with a high variance in size, with some being almost half a page and others being so small as to be barely discernible. This forced the students to change the photo sizes to make their work visible. For some students, this required some explicit modelling as students were more used to the pinch motion instead of the drag motion required in Keynote.

The next sequence in the lesson series was based on using the Instant Alpha tool. It was really interesting to compare the students' understanding from Lesson 1 to Lesson 5 from this point, as many students found functions like inserting and moving pictures to be quite simple when it had been something that needed explicit teaching in a previous lesson.

Within this lesson, some students were quickly able to identify which photos suited using Instant Alpha and which ones did not. Some students needed to discover this the hard way, by trying to remove colourful and vibrant backgrounds while others, after a single model, started to quickly realise which photos would work and which ones would not. For some more independent students, the process had become so familiar that the task could now become more or less independent while for others, like those still working at Level B, improvements were evident in the students' ability to use the camera tool and their overall engagement with the iPad.

The rest of the project will now be a consolidation of all these skills to support students in creating a fully designed project based on their likes. It has been really amazing to see student growth in this area and to have them become so adept at using a new tool so quickly. I am really excited to continue the project and see how the students can push themselves and the technology they have been learning to use.

Stacey Hilder

Hi, I'm Stacey and I'm the Upper Primary Leading Teacher and Learning Area Leader. I also lead a PLC in the Upper Primary area. The students in my PLC are working from Level B to Level 2 in the Victorian Curriculum.

When we were introduced to the Everyone Can Create resources at the beginning of this project, I decided to focus on Video, particularly using the Clips app to capture and present learning.

I had two main goals... firstly, to introduce Clips to the teachers in my PLC and secondly, to work with small groups of students to help develop their video creation skills so that they can become leaders in this area.

I started by sharing the Everyone Can Create Video guide with my team and we worked through some of the skills in Chapter 1 (Your First Movie), such as adding posters, stickers, emojis and text to convey an idea and using filters and soundtracks to enhance the mood of the video.

We had lots of fun exploring the features of Clips and making our first movies together. It was particularly great to see some of my colleagues who haven't been confident in using iPad for teaching and learning really engaging with this task and getting excited to explore the possibilities of this tool.

After their initial exploration and skill development, the teachers in the PLC began consolidating their knowledge of Clips by using it in the classroom. They practiced using it for small Seesaw uploads during remote learning, and then showcased the students' Inquiry Based Learning by creating an end of term video.

In pursuit of my second goal, I began to work with some of the students to create a video for our end of term assembly, which demonstrated ways in which we can show our school values. This was a great project and gave the students their first taste of the Clips app. Most of the video was co-constructed with students and involved modelling and supporting them to include some of the different features, such as stickers and emojis.

In Term 2, I created a plan to work with three small groups of students on a weekly basis to explore Clips in more detail and create their own individual 'All About Me' videos. The first session was a general exploration of the app, before we moved on to specific focuses like favourite foods, animals and games/sports.

The students were so excited to create their own videos and it was great to see how creative they could be with the use of stickers, emojis and soundtracks.

One student even used emojis, images and drawing tools to create his own food character, which he then used in his Clips video. When creating the drawing of his character, the student used the Tayasui Sketches School app and cropped images from the internet to add to his drawing. He worked extremely hard and would consistently draw, erase and refine his drawings to get his character perfect.

Students have since used Clips for a variety of purposes, many of them displaying skills for being creative with narratives, which would never have been possible if it wasn’t for Clips. One student, used his passion for action and adventure, to create his own short movie about someone being held captive.

Another student created a factual report on an animal from his favourite TV show, where he drew different pictures and then spoke to them.

Joan Ocampo

My name is Joan and I am a classroom teacher at our Bethany Road Campus, for students in Years 7-9. I am also a Science Specialist and support the development of our Science curriculum across the school. I am motivated by a love of learning and the ability to make a difference to our students' lives.

I started my Everyone Can Create project by having a look at some of Apple's Creative Activities for Kids and incorporated a few of these into my lesson plans. It was really useful to be able to utilise some of the free templates provided to create my own resources.

With our inquiry focus on personal strengths and character traits, I also used an idea from the Apple Teacher Learning Centre, where students used the Keynote app to create their own personalised silhouette.

It was exciting that students were able to express their own creativity by approaching this task in different ways: some students chose to create their collage using shapes, while others chose to use images or emojis.

All of these activities were a great introduction to the Keynote app, which I wanted my students to gain skills in using to document their learning.

In my role as Science Specialist, I started to develop learning journals in Keynote that could be used by students across different topics. I found Keynote to be a great platform for this as I could incorporate visual supports, such as icons, shapes and images, as well as audio supports (voice recordings). I could also include media placeholders to help students to add their content more easily. Students can respond in a range of different ways, including text, voice recordings, images, videos and drawings.

Throughout the course of the project, I also wanted to support students to develop their photography skills so I drew some inspiration from the Everyone Can Create Photo project guide.

In one of the Science journals, I created multiple opportunities for students to capture their own photographs and present them in Keynote. Again, I used shapes, images, media placeholders and voice recordings as supports.

We covered some basic photography skills, such as exploring different lighting and angles and the students were able to capture some beautiful shots.

I have seen a massive growth in students’ skills in using the iPad Camera to capture their learning journey and create their Keynote learning diaries that their parents access from Seesaw. During remote learning, students further explored the use of the Keynote app in recording their observations when they conducted their own science experiments at home.

It has been invaluable to have the ability to create and share journal templates which provide structure around a task while still allowing for student creativity. In Term 4, some of our students will be facilitating a workshop at the Kids Teaching Kids Conference in Melbourne and it is our plan to create a learning journal that they will share with other participants to take back to their own schools.

I have really enjoyed exploring the Keynote app with my colleagues and students and look forward to continuing to develop our skills in this area. My next goal is to learn more about how to use linked presentations to create interactive projects and app prototypes, allowing students to demonstrate their learning in a fun and interactive way. It is awesome to see how students’ innovative and creative skills continue to grow day by day and I can’t help but wonder how fascinating their end projects will be.

Danielle Heckmann

Hi, I’m Danielle, one of the Assistant Principals at Warringa Park School. One of my roles this year has been to oversee and support our teachers to implement innovative practices into their teaching pedagogy. Through the work of the Innovation Team, we have seen an improvement in the way that iPads are used to support our students' engagement, reduce their cognitive load and unlock their creativity.

The vision for our work is to empower our learners with the essential skills to communicate, create and collaborate through unique and authentic learning experiences. We aim for our students to become digital citizens who can navigate a rapidly changing world, by recording, investigating, experimenting and risk taking.

Members of the Innovation Team have had the capacity to influence and guide their colleagues to further develop skills, knowledge and capacity to elevate creativity across the school with 85% of our teachers becoming Apple Teachers. To help foster this there have been opportunities to share and lead discussions at Professional Learning Community meetings and staff meetings. In Term 4, we will have a whole school 'Everyone Can Create' inquiry focus, which will further assist us to achieve school priorities.

I look forward to sharing more from the Innovation Team via social media, YouTube and our school website to showcase work undertaken through inquiry projects, one on one coaching sessions, Professional Learning Community meetings and workshops for staff.