A few months ago, Mrs. Kelly Hocking, Kindergarten teacher, emailed me with an idea. She wanted to modify an idea that she found online that used KidPix. Since we don’t have KidPix, our first step was to find an alternative. The one that we liked the best was Tux Paint.
I met with Mrs. Hocking to talk about the logistics of installing Tux Paint on all of her netbooks and what that might look like in her center time. She took this and ran with it as usual. In centers, students explored Tux Paint and developed some expertise with the tool. They figured out what worked and what didn’t.
Then, she put the students into work groups. Each group used long rolls of paper to plan out a story and did quick sketches of their illustrations. They used these planning sheets to draw their digital pictures in Tux Paint and type the text. Students practiced their stories in class.
Mrs. Rockholt, the paraprofessional, brought small groups of students to the library to use Screencast-o-matic to record their stories. We saved each screencast on a flash drive and then I uploaed them to Youtube to share with the world. Enjoy!
Two groups of students also took some time to talk about the process of the project. Here are there thoughts.
Next, we plan to share these with our friends at Van Meter Elementary in Van Meter, IA. We are hoping that some of these students can show the students in Iowa how to use Tux Paint.
Expect the Miraculous 
[…] by the work that Mrs. Kelly Hocking’s Kindergarten students did on their Tux Paint stories. You can read more about that adventure here. We wanted to continue their work in some way so that it might inspire and support other classes […]
[…] our connection, Shannon showed her students our Tux Paint videos made in Screencast-o-matic, including the instructional video. She let me know on Twitter that […]
I love this! I have been so inspired by your site and lessons! I am trying to use Tux Paint as well for our stories, but how did you save the stories to a thumb drive? If we have to use multiple sessions to create on Tux paint, with multiple classes, I need a way to save each group’s work. How did you do that? Thanks!!
Shannon Ewing
Elm Street Elementary
Media Specialist
Newnan, GA
When we used Tux Paint, students always used the same computer so we kept the stories saved on the actual computer rather than putting it on a thumb drive. I know that one version of Tux Paint can run from a thumb drive, but that’s not the one we use. We used Screencastomatic to have the students record their stories. If your students would honor one another’s work by not changing or deleting works in progress then maybe shared computers would work between multiple classes and you wouldn’t have to save onto a drive.
Also, the creator of Tux Paint was great on Twitter. You could tweet @billkendrick to ask him questions about thumb drives.
[…] use the program. They even connected with students in Van Meter, Iowa to share their expertise. Post 1 Post […]