The Possibilities of PicCollage: Practical Pedagogy in the Classroom

Utilising technology within the classroom is something I feel extremely passionate about. After all, as teachers, our pupils come to our classes digitally literate, ready to explore what’s next. We are incredibly lucky to teach the future, but with that comes the responsibility of ensuring our teaching is current, relevant and open to change. I love being creative with technology and using it to enhance the learning of my pupils. If you follow me on Twitter or have spent around five minutes talking to me about education, you’ll realise that one app is favoured over all others – and that is PicCollage!

PicCollage is essentially a photo, image and text editing tool. It is an engaging platform for pupils to creatively share their learning and can offer a basic introduction to graphic design and photo editing too!
The possibilities of PicCollage span as far as your creativity will allow, but in this blog, I’ll share some examples of how I have used PicCollage with my classes.

Tweet of the Week!

Recently, my pupils have been using PicCollage to reflect on their learning at the end of the week. Although, you may want to change this to reflecting on learning at the end of a specific topic, block of learning or as an assessment tool for different curricular areas.
With my pupils, I usually give them three or four questions that will encourage them to focus on what they have learned, the progress they’ve made and to think of next steps for improvement. Here are some questions that you may want to ask:

What have you enjoyed learning about this week and why?
What have you felt confident with this week?
Is there anything you think you could improve on? What are your next steps?
What are you proud of this week?
Have you been challenged this week? If so how did you overcome it? What progress have you made?

Once the pupils have discussed possible answers to their questions, they then use PicCollage to present them. The finished results are shared on our class Twitter page and are printed for display on our classroom Twitter wall. A simple and engaging way to gain insight into what your pupils really think and really know!

Photography

For this lesson, my pupils took the iPads outside and snapped signs of Autumn. Leaves falling from trees and the warm vibrant colours of plants and leaves – the pupils really enjoyed this photography lesson! Once they were happy with the photographs they had taken, my pupils edited their photos by clicking on them, clicking edit and then selecting an Autumnal filter. Once saved, they opened PicCollage, set their photo as the background and inserted the words ‘Hello October’ to welcome the new month and new season. A great combination of outdoor learning and technology! You could even extend this further by getting your pupils to create Autumnal poems, inspired by their photos!

SolveMe Maths

Use PicCollage to create math puzzles! Pupils saved a few pictures on Safari (usually emoji or Fortnite related!) inserted them in PicCollage and created a math puzzle for a friend to solve. A fun and engaging way to consolidate the order of operations, number patterns and sequences in maths!

Writing

PicCollage is an excellent tool to engage pupils in writing. From reluctant writers to accomplished writers, PicCollage offers an alternative and creative way for pupils to share their thoughts.
Recently, my pupils did a spooktacular (Halloween themed) static electricity experiment in Science. They took photographs at each stage of the experiment, inserted them into PicCollage and then wrote step by step instructions to inform others how to do the experiment too! The children love being able to change their background to something spooky, edit the font and colour of text, easily insert photographs and add stickers and illustrations.

Nicola Orr
Class Teacher at Condorrat Primary School in sunny Scotland
Follow @MrsOrrCPS for all things tech, STEM, art and poetry related. Harry Potter references may occur too…
I absolutely LOVE my job!

[themify_button bgcolor=”green” size=”large” link=”https://www.edtechteam.com/apple/”]Learn more ways to get creative with Apple Professional Learning from EdTechTeam[/themify_button]