coLAR App on Dot Day

Confession:  I had never read The Dot by Peter Reynolds.

But then I went ahead and participated in Dot Day because of this pin:



I do love technology- so trying out this coLAR app seemed like a fabulous idea.

We read the book first, and it is, indeed a GREAT read.  I think it is empowering about making a mark on the word, and inspiring others, and seeing beyond the "I can't" that stops us from ever achieving greatness.  I had borrowed the book from the library, but now I know that I will purchase my own copy for my regular read alouds collection.

The coLAR site has free printables for coloring to make 3D art.  And the app is free too!  We colored up our dots and then took turns manipulating the art and taking some screen shots.  If you are a one iPad classroom- this is an app that they could easily use and you could still do a whole group activity but not need everyone on the iPad at once.

Here's some shots of the coloring action:

 

 



 And here's some shots taken with the iPad using the collar app.  It can actually do about four or five different 3D designs, but these two are my favorite:

 

The large spinning globe. I think this would be pretty useful for kids making a flat world map and then seeing it fold into a globe, I'll have to give that a try.  It's nice that you can push pause on the app to stop the spinning at a particular place to take a picture. Also you can put your hands in the picture and the picture shows over top.

I call this one "bouncy balls".  The kids also found it outrageously exciting for them to all be bouncing at once.

My only complaint is that once it was over, well, it was, over.  I haven't figured out how to stretch out the experience past the picture phase.  I know there are lots of coloring pages available on the site for printing out and using with the app.  I'll have to investigate them.  Perhaps I could combine the still photo of the 3D art with a voice thread, or a kid's blog post, or even writing description. Not sure yet.

Has anyone else tried out this app?