Building Community with ESL Adult Learners Using Freeform

I teach a foundational technology skills class for adult ESL learners and plan to use the new Freeform app with a beginning iPad lesson next month. The lesson's main goal is to learn the iPad functions, but students will also experience geography and build community through the sharing of their home country.

Teacher Prep: Add a world map (mine was from Pixabay) to a new board at 100% with the iPad horizontal. Then, place a star at the current location of your class. Lock both the map and star to the screen so students cannot accidentally move them. During class, have a world map available for student reference, if needed.

Student Instructions:

1 - Discuss how to open/access Freeform and access the shared "Board"

2 - Using the world map on the shared screen, review basic functions: pinch, swipe, scroll, zoom percentages

3 - Across the menu at the top, students access the image icon and then the camera. Review/Introduce flipping the lens to take a selfie.

4 - Once students take a satisfactory selfie, "Use Photo" and walk through how to crop, resize, and drag to a location on the map (home country of the student). Once the image is in the proper location, show them how to select/press the image and "Lock" it into place.

5 - Students then select/press their image and select "Description" to add specific details about their home country.

6 - Students can then learn about their classmates by taking a tour around the map and reading the descriptions (or listening using the VoiceOver feature).

7 - To Save: Select the arrow down at the board's title and students can "Export as a PDF" and save to Files or students can be taught to take a screenshot and save it to images.

Looking forward to using this activity. Any suggestions on what you might add to this activity? Or, after this guided practice, what might students do next to practice on their own?

*Screenshot is my own. Map and selfies are from Pixabay and Unsplash for use as my classroom example.

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