Talking Tom

Does this face look familiar? It may as it is one of the most popular apps on the iPhone or iPod. I know it from my nephew who uses it to say silly things and once in a while slap it around or pull his tail. Because of this I never considered using it in the classroom. Too violent. But, scrolling through my tweets, and then downloading and reading a suggested book about using apps to encourage higher level thinking I changed my mind. The ladies at Appy Hours for You made me realize how beneficial it was. I did not realize that the speaking you do could be recorded and then shared with others! How beneficial!

Once the app was downloaded on all of the devices (a future post coming about that) a Guided Discovery followed. Because of the possible cruel nature of the app I knew that it would be important to do. The kiddos noticed a great deal of what the app could do: record, repeat what you say, feed Tom milk, Tom scratching claws and more. A few important things came up during the sharing of our Guided Discovery. One thing we had a quick chat about was advertisements. There are advertisements at the top of the app for similar products. We talked about how this is common in free applications and the goal was for the developers to make money.

An important conversation we had was about the option of slapping Tom and pulling his tail. One of my students said, "You can slap Tom in the face." So I asked, what does he do when you do that? They stated that his head goes back and he makes a face. I replied that it sounded like he didn't like being slapped too much. I then reminded them of our Twittequette and the part that says, 'Be honest, positive, and kind' and asked them if we would be following our Twittequette by slapping Tom. They agreed that it would be unkind and that if we slapped him we would not be following it, but one kiddo said, 'Yeah, but you can do it.' I loved this comment! Here's how I responded, "You are right we can do it. There are a lot of things we can do in life if we choose to. We can also hit the people in our lives, but is that the kind thing to do?". They understood and when we went to use it, they were all kind to Tom. Some pouring milk for him to drink. Once they were using it, they realized that another kind thing you could do was pet Tom and that he showed his appreciation for that by purring.

After the Guided Discovery, which lasted about ten minutes, the kiddos used the application to record one of the multiplication stories they created the day before while playing a game. It may sound redundant to have them record the stories after that, but my intention was that the more they say it, read it, write it, the more the story structure becomes a part of their repertoire. There stories are posted here. Please check them out. As my husband said, "They are really cute."