Salmon Text For iPad Wins East More iPads

Brianna Gibbs/KMXT

A Kodiak teacher earned some serious bragging rights in the technology community this summer when he won an eBook lesson plan contest. John Malloy is a 3^rd and 4^th grade teacher at East Elementary and on the technology committee for the school district.

"Basically I submitted an eBook that dealt with the lifecycle of a salmon," he said. "It had some great songs from the internet, some great content from the Discovery Channel and from a lot of other places as well, and a lot of footage that I took just from a lot of the rivers around here, just using an underwater camera that I had. So spawning pink salmon, spawning red salmon. It was a lot of fun and it was neat because I got to go out with my kids and add a lot of content to it, so it was fun."

The contest, 2012 Digital Lessons for Digital Learners, was sponsored by the Association of Alaska School Boards Consortium for Digital Learning. The intent of the contest was to encourage teachers to use new media publishing technologies, like eBooks, to create engaging classroom lessons.

Brianna Gibbs/KMXT

A Kodiak teacher earned some serious bragging rights in the technology community this summer when he won an eBook lesson plan contest. John Malloy is a 3^rd and 4^th grade teacher at East Elementary and on the technology committee for the school district.

"Basically I submitted an eBook that dealt with the lifecycle of a salmon," he said. "It had some great songs from the internet, some great content from the Discovery Channel and from a lot of other places as well, and a lot of footage that I took just from a lot of the rivers around here, just using an underwater camera that I had. So spawning pink salmon, spawning red salmon. It was a lot of fun and it was neat because I got to go out with my kids and add a lot of content to it, so it was fun."

The contest, 2012 Digital Lessons for Digital Learners, was sponsored by the Association of Alaska School Boards Consortium for Digital Learning. The intent of the contest was to encourage teachers to use new media publishing technologies, like eBooks, to create engaging classroom lessons.

Malloy said he will be teaching 4^th grade this fall and decided to use a crucial part of that curriculum for his eBook pilot project.

"I teach 3^rd grade this year, and this upcoming year I’m going to be teaching 4^th grade. A major part of 4^th grade curriculum here in Kodiak is Salmon, so I thought if I could create something with salmon that would elevate the level of the curriculum that we’ve already got in place, I thought that would be a lot of fun for the kids. And it’s always nice to try some new things out, being a teacher, you always want to make your lessons more fun and hip to the kids."

He said the project was far from a solo effort on his part.

"I had some great help from Don Zindale and Tina Genoff in the technology department in our district, that helped me get the program on my laptop that would help me create eBook, or enhanced book. And I also got help from Judy Philips and Clifford Gertz and Jennifer Warner with some of the pictures and images I used. And there’s a lot of online stuff that’s fantastic that really adds to the eBook."

Malloy said he also sought out Fish and Game, in addition to the knowledgeable 4^th graders at East Elementary. He said the 4^th graders saw the book before he submitted it to the contest, and they actually caught a few errors that may have cost him first place.

In general, Malloy said the contest is a total win for the school, but added that his eBook is just the beginning.

"I’m in the process of actually finishing up the one I created on salmon species, and then the different kinds of fisheries we have here in Kodiak, commercial and sport. And then also try to make an eBook on the management side of it as well. So you know it’s definitely not a finished whole project, but what I submitted was good enough to win the first prize in the contest, which was ten iPad2s, and a charging station for my classroom. So the students in my class will be able to use those and it’s going to really add to the 75 iPads we’ve got at East and we’re really going to try to work them in and raise the bar for the next year here or so ."

Malloy said he hopes he will become fluent enough in eBook publishing so that his students can start creating eBooks of their own.

Second place in the contest went to a teacher in the Northwest Arctic Borough School District, and third went to a teacher in Haines.