Technology Supported Field Trips

The following post originates from the Innovative Practices at ACDS blog. It is offered to present a few ideas on how field trips can be enhanced through the use of technology. 

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The Second Graders joined with their Fifth Grade buddies to take part in Ms. Tacktill's series of art and technology field trips. This group went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum contemporary art exhibition. As part of Ms. Tacktill's art literacy and appreciation curriculum, the students went through the exhibit stopping at each piece to share their reactions with each other. The Fifth Graders jotted down the responses into their iPads. 

A second learning opportunity had the student teams revisiting the art to view it a second and third time for further reflection. Along the way the Fifth Graders used their photography skills to take photos of the art and of their buddy. They would go on to import the photo of their buddy into an art app on their iPads. They then drew inspiration from the sculpture and mixed media paintings to digitally paint backgrounds around the photo of their buddy. 

The Second Graders looked for pattern repetition in the art as they recently studied it with Ms. Tacktill. They then used iPads loaded with a photo of a portion of one of the patterned paintings to expand the patterns. You can see examples of their creative work above and below. Nice work Second Graders!

App Smashing

Combining two or more apps to do more than each can do on its own is at the center of app smashing. Read a super blog post which is also where the above infographic comes from.