PicCollage App

What a fun, easy app to use with all age groups!  PicCollage allows users to choose a background and layout, add pictures, photos, stickers, frames and text. You can easily save the PicCollage to your photos, airdrop the photo, email, or even text the photo.

Ideas of how to use PicCollage in teaching world:

1. History/Social Studies: Before you teach a lesson, find a picture of a well-known historian and have students add  a speech bubble of what that person would have said while in that photo.  (Example: George Washington crossing the Delaware.) After you teach the lesson, have students go back to their picture and adjust their quote to meet facts that were taught.

2. All About Me: In the first few weeks of school have the students each create a PicCollage with their favorite things.

3. Spelling: Choose a word and add in a picture that represents that word, the definition of that word, the part of speech and a sentence with the word in the sentence.

4. Math Pre-lesson: (I used this with my class today and it was fantastic!) Old school teaching: Normally, I would introduce my lesson for the day with a 10-minute direct instruction lesson and then have the students explore problems on their own.

21^st Century Teaching: Today, I flipped the idea and actually had students explore the topic by creating a PicCollage. After they shared their photos with the class, I would clear up anything that was inaccurate.

What I did in class today: I told them they had 10 minutes to create a PicCollage that included the word perimeter, its definition, how to find the perimeter of a shape and an example. I loved seeing how each student’s PicCollage was very different and many were waiting for me to tell them exactly what to do, but I never did. I said they could use their imagination and own brain to decide the layout and information that was necessary. After the 10 minutes were up, I allowed a few students to share their PicCollage with the rest of the class via Apple TV. Many realized they had a few mistakes and fixed their PicCollages.
Step 2: Each student made a keynote titled “Math Unit 8” and on the second slide they added the Perimeter PicCollage. My plan is to have them create a PicCollage throughout the unit for each new vocabulary term and then add the photo to the Keynote. (To add the PicCollage to Keynote, you have them save the PicCollage to Photos and then add the picture to the Keynote slide.) This is an ongoing study guide that can be used at home. Their homework tonight is perimeter practice so this Pic Collage will be very helpful if they need extra assistance.

5. Reading Character Analysis: (See example below.) Old school teaching: Have students write a paragraph describing the characters in the novel you are reading.

21^st Century Teaching Idea: Have students create a PicCollage divided into sections. Each section they add a picture of that character and a sentence or two describing the character.