airstream and me being a techie

Do you know about airstream?  It's changed things for my classroom. If you're a teacher reading this, I'll assume you have the greatest new technology and this is nothing. However.  I don't.  I'm one step away from an overhead projector.   I don't have a smart board.  I have a projector though and a desktop computer and my own ipad.  That's all you need.   Airstream is an app but there is some kind of activation that has to be done on the computer to connect it.  Insert building technology person.  My provided technology may be just a tad dated but they'll pay the 12 dollars or something that it cost a year for me to make it work. 

So it basically turns my ipad into the screen that is projected.   In the above picture, I have overdrive loaded (an app that lets me check out library books from my local library for free and have a digital copy loaned to me) so the kids could all follow along and see the illustrations as I read Mr. Poppers Penguins.

 If I have a picture or text up via educreations (another app that I sing praises for- and free!) then whatever manipulation we do to it shows up for all to see.  I had the kids draw hands on the face of a clock and sometimes mark sentences up for editing. 

They can draw or write or circle things in pictures, whatever.  Here I had them circle and label parts of the picture that showed us what kind of community it was.  This was rural, they found the farm land, houses far apart, few roads, etc.

Below, I've used educreate to write out some sentences that we are finding the plural and singular possessive nouns in.  I just ended my sentence with a preposition, but I can't figure out how to reword it.  I would not have pointed it out except this was a sentence about teaching English. 

I think I fixed it.  "I've used educreate to write out some sentences in which we were finding the plural and singular possessive nouns."  Lets go with that.

It totally motivates the kids!  Everybody wants a turns, everybody pays attention so they know what to do on their turn, especially since everyone will see what they answer.  I had rigged up a way to use the ipad and the document camera but I was stuck at the desk and that's really far away from the other side of the room and my mere presence of walking around can't keep one of my friends from folding a paper football and that other kiddo from reading a book hidden under his desk.   I secretly love when they read under their desk.  They love a book so much that they can't put it down.   You can't teach that.   Pretty sure that's more important than at least 60% of the other stuff I can teach.  I do not secretly love paper footballs.  Those, I strongly dislike.

*I apologize, the app I called educreate is actually named 'educreations'.  Thank you to the commenter who mentioned having trouble finding it.