There's Always Something About a Jacob

            There's always something special about a Jacob. I have had many throughout my career, and each one has been incredibly special to me. Perhaps then, I selected the name purposefully when I was asked to select a "blog pal" for my graduate course. Jacob's blog reflected his minimalist nature- simply and vaguely answering the questions or prompt his teacher asked him to write on any given day. I responded to him in a typical teacher-friendly way, asking probing questions, prompting the use of punctuation because I was "so out of breath" from reading his post. I could imagine the eye rolling from all the way over here in CT.
           Imagine my surprise then, when Jacob responded back to my comments, not just simply thanking me, but fixing his punctuation and enthusiastically asking ME questions back! Did I try the app yet? He wanted to know. I had told him I would try it, and I hadn't yet. I was doing my typical teacher talk. Yep. Yep! Sounds really cool. I'll have to check it out. That's what I always tell the kids when I'm secretly trying to move on to something else. I had to own up to my word. I had to check out this app. Popplet he called it. Something about connecting pictures and being able to add captions and yada, yada, yada. Well, I downloaded it.
           In my real life teaching job, my face-to-face teaching job, I had a PPT today. The student has diagnosed ADHD and no documentation of it, and was really struggling with non structured time, like lunch, recess, specials, etc. As I was talking about him, I began to reflect on the AWFUL experience he had on our first field trip last fall. He was all over the place, talking a hundred miles a minute because he had tuned out the speaker. I was really worried about our up coming field trip this fall, knowing that this trip, which tends to be a little boring, would be difficult for him.
         "What if you give him a job?" My principal suggested.
         "He uses an I-pad," I chimed in, "maybe he can be the photographer for the trip? Like, a journalist, and he can put together a newsletter for parents, all about the trip!" It sounded like a great theory, but I had NO idea how it would be put into practice.
        Enter Jacob and his Popplet app. Was it meant to be? This app was a picture taking app that allows the user to caption and manipulate pictures for a presentation in a format similar to a comic book. It was easy to use and the potential for educational experiences was absolutely there! It was PERFECT for my student's journalism project on our field trip! Who would have thought that a 5th grader from Nebraska could motivate me to download a new app that would impact my instructional practice? Technology rocks!