Cherie Herring is my idol

If you know anything about Cherie Herring, then you know how absolutely amazing she is as an elementary music teacher integrating technology.

If you teach music, love technology, have an iPad, have a SMART Board, or are interested in a Flipped Classroom, then be prepared to spend HOURS on Cherie's website.

I am ALL of the above and therefore have spent many many MANY hours on Cherie's website.  Both me and my principal are very thankful for Cherie.

One of my FAVORITE things I learned from Cherie is now to use the Explain Everything App to turn my SMART Board presentations and put them on student iPads so we could all work together!  After I bought an example lesson from Cherie (Turkey Solfege in TPT <--- My kiddos LOVED this!) I figured I could make my own!  The process was a LOT more simple than I expected and my students were much more engaged when everyone gets a chance to participate at the same time rather than taking turns to come up to the board.

So here's what I did.

Step 1: Create SMART Board Activity. 

My 2nd graders were reviewing form so I made an activity where they had to transfer the rhythm patterns onto the form below.  This was meant to be a one class activity (less than 20 min) so I only made 5 or 6 pages.  At the end, I left the form blank and gave the students the opportunity to create their own form and have a friend transfer the rhythm patterns.


Step 2: Export to Image Files.

I want to eventually make an Explain Everything presentation to share with my students so I need to get my SMART Board Activity pictures on my iPad.  The easiest way (in my opinion) is Dropbox.  I exported my pages as .jpegs and saved them in my Dropbox account.




Step 3: Build Explain Everything Presentation
If you have never built an Explain Everything before, stay tuned for another post.  There are a couple tricks and tips I'd love to share!

Step 4: Save EE Presentation in Dropbox
I took my .xpl file and saved it in Dropbox so I could create a QR code!

Step 5: Create QR code 
Copy the link of the .xpl file from Dropbox and make yourself a QR code to add to your SMART Activity.  That's it!

I put instructions for my students on the SMART Board so I don't have to keep repeating myself but they pretty much know what to do.  

Here's a link to my Sunflower Form file!  Let me know what you think!

And a HUGE thank you to Cherie for sharing all her AMAZING ideas!