Use the app Pic Collage to design an ugly Christmas Sweater on the iPad using the in-app image search and stickers or clips. Learn how to integrate technology during the holidays with this engaging ugly Christmas sweater activity for the classroom.
First make sure you have either the app Pic Collage or Pic Collage Kids for the iPad. You will need to have the Web Search option turned on for this project (it is ON by default). Pic Collage is also available on a variety of other devices – Kindle Fire, Android and computers/laptops with Windows 10.
I recommend Pic Collage Kids if you do have iPads since the sticker packs are all free. However, if you use a shared classroom email account, you can use that to access the free packs that are available on the regular Pic Collage too. That is what I did for the images shown in this post.
Design an Ugly Christmas Sweater on the iPad: Find a sweater.
Students should open the Pic Collage app and select to create a freestyle template. Next, have students web search “sweater png” or put a color in front of sweater to narrow down the choices. I searched “red sweater,” “green sweater” and “white sweater” for the examples in this post.
The .png term will show mostly transparent images, which will look great layered over a background. However, I kept my background white to help the sweater design really pop. Have students choose a sweater that is facing forward and preferably does not have a person wearing it!
Students can opt to use the in-app camera to take a selfie then trim it (similar to the steps for creating a reindeer selfie) to make it look like they are wearing the sweater or you could have them pinch and stretch the sweater to fit the canvas.
Since we were creating our sweaters as companions to Digital Divide and Conquer’s excellent project based learning ugly sweater activity, we left the selfie off this time.
Design an Ugly Christmas Sweater on the iPad: Add Stickers
Next students touch the plus sign and select stickers. If using Pic Collage Kids, sticker packs are free. There are at least 8 packs that can be used to design an ugly Christmas sweater. These packs are free in Pic Collage as well but you might need an account to download them.
Students can touch on up to 20 stickers then the check to add them to the sweater. Just like clips, stickers can be pinched to resize and dragged around the canvas. Having the sweater image “set as background” helps lock it down.
If students are not using the image as the background, they will occasionally need to double touch the sweater and choose “Send to Back” to move it.
Part of the project based learning activity has students plan specific sweater ideas and motifs. I had students plan on the graphic organizers in the packet then use Pic Collage to make each design come to life.
Design an Ugly Christmas Sweater on the iPad: Quick Tips
If students want to reuse the same sticker over and over again they can either double touch it and pick “duplicate” or go back into the sticker menu and add it again. This works well if you are tying your project into a study of patterns.
If for whatever reason, the stickers are not available to you, you can accomplish the same effects by using the web image tool and searching for “png” images or using the clip tool. I would brainstorm with students ahead of time a list of search terms and write them on the board or on an anchor chart to reference. I usually use the set up to quickly search the terms myself when we use the web image search just in case.
Design an Ugly Christmas Sweater on the iPad: Make a Grid
After designing several ugly Christmas sweaters, students used the grid option on Pic Collage to combine them together into one image.
They saved their grid image to camera roll, turned it into me via Air Drop and I made a slideshow to share with parents.
Design an Ugly Christmas Sweater on the iPad: Extensions
- Pic Collage images look amazing printed out. Hang them on a bulletin board or on your classroom door like this fantastic ugly Christmas Sweater display.
- Middle and Secondary teachers can have students use Pic Collage to design ugly Christmas sweaters that an author or character would wear. B’s Book Love has a resource with graphic organizers to get started. Scroll down to #5 on this list to see some examples.
- Students that are finished early can relax with these printable ugly Christmas sweater coloring pages.
- No iPads available? Have students design then write about their sweaters on Google Slides.
Have you have noticed how if you look at enough ugly Christmas sweaters, they start to look super stylish? I hope you and your students enjoyed learning how to design an ugly Christmas sweater on the iPad – I would love to see the finished results; Tag me on social media if you share any images of finished work!