Monday 2 December 2013

So can iPads make a difference with achievement?

Yes they can! I had a teacher who was very excited to talk to me the other day. She has 6 iPads in her junior classroom and I have been working individually with her and the teachers in her school this year. Over this time, the teachers have been taken through the basics of how to use an iPad, troubleshooting, apps to use in the classroom and then how to use iPads in teaching and learning. This teacher was a little skeptical about the iPads. She knew that they were a great way to engage children but was it making any difference to their learning and achievement? I encouraged her last term to use the iPads in her teaching sessions with the students rather than just only letting them use the iPads as a followup activity.
She had been using the traditional cardboard Tens Frame chart to teach students how to count on.
Most of her students got the strategies but there were a few who didn't including one special needs boy.
Previously I had shown her Matthew Thomas's app 'Tens Frame' and so she used it in her teaching session. The special needs boy picked up the strategy first time using the iPad and the rest of the group got it very quickly as well. She was astounded by this and has continued to use the app with all her students with fantastic results. When I asked her what she thought made the difference, she was not sure but she said that the monsters on the counters appealed to the children.




She also uses Matthew's 100s board extensively with the same success. Have a look at some of the other apps Matthew has on his website.




Another app that she uses a lot in her teaching is the Number Pieces Basics. Again she has found all students were able to be very successful in their learning when using this app in the teaching session.







Since then she is looking at apps in a new light and thinking about how she can use them as a teaching tool.


Monday 18 November 2013

Boys, reading and iPads

I read this article 'Boys take to reading-when it's on an iPad' and I was inclined to agree with the author. In my own experiences teaching recently at Clevedon school in a Year 5/6 class, my previous teaching experiences with iPads, the demonstrations I have shown and the observations I have made in classes this is what I have seen. Boys like reading on iPads, of course you have to choose the books that are likely to interest them but there are some very useful features on the Kindle app that I particularly like and bring reading to life.



Using the example of 'Stormbreaker' $5.34 (US) a great book to entice boys to read (girls like it too). The main character 'Alex Rider' is a like a 'junior' James Bond. When students came across a word that they didn't understand I asked them to highlight it in a particular colour, the dictionary definition would come up as well. They then have to enter that meaning (in their own words) into their vocab log (a Google Spreadsheet). They would then use the word in a sentence. I limited this to 10 words a chapter. When the students met with me they would share which words they had difficulty with.








Another great feature of Kindle is the search for a word in the whole book. All the students would search for the word by tapping on the Search icon (magnifying glass), the incidence of the word might show up on more than one page so we would look at the different snippets to see if we could work it out. If not then they would tap on the snippet to go to the page and then read the paragraph before and the paragraph after and try to work out the word from that context. If they still couldn't work it out, then we would look at the dictionary meaning.












Some dictionary meanings would have more than one meaning so we would have to look at all the meanings and work out which one worked in the context of the story.





A very useful visual feature is found when you tap on a word in the text, the dictionary meaning appears down the bottom of the page but there is a link to Google and Wikipedia as well. Tap on Google and links will appear, in the example below we tapped on Waterloo (for Waterloo Station), there was no link for Waterloo Station so we added the word Station in the search field...now we have images,  links and maps all about Waterloo Station. This is a great way of bringing a book to life where students can see where and what these things look like. Tapping on Wikipedia provides more information and images.

Using these features bring a book alive and help with understanding vocab. If you can't work out what a word means by the dictionary meaning then have a look at Google. If the text talks about an object or a place that you know nothing about then tap on Google or Wikipedia to find out more. An extra activity with the map above was for students to take a screen capture (press the 'Home and Power' buttons together once) and insert that into an app that allows you to draw over the top like
  • Showme
  • Educreations
  • Notability
and draw lines to the places the Character visited on this map. This would be a wonderful activity if the book was set in your own country or town.

Apples iBooks that comes with the iPad does a similar thing. You can highlight words, tap on a word to get a dictionary meaning, and tap on Search Web to go to Google. The difference between this app and Kindle is that iBooks 'Search the Web' feature takes you out of the iBook app where Kindle keeps the Google search within the app and you tap the blue Done button when you want to return back to the story.

So do try this with your students, especially using the integrated 'Google' and 'Wikipedia' to find images, maps and more information about the word. You will see their vocab knowledge grow and they will become more independent about finding meanings for themselves.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

Tools we have used before and forgot about #2

Wallwisher (now known as Padlet) was another old familiar tool I came across recently. I stopped using it as it was not always reliable, but it has had a revamp and seems to be working quite well. What I especially like about it is that it also works on iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. It is not an app but you can access it through the Safari app by going to http://padlet.com/ if you are starting a new one, the URL that designates the Padlet you have created or as a QR code (try out the one to the right) which is generated for you within Padlet. You do need to set up an account to create a Padlet but your students do not need logins or accounts to access it.
You can add text, graphics, movies, maps, slideshows, documents and photos from webcams.
You can embed the Padlet in a wiki or or a blog.

Below is a Padlet wall that I have had for a few years with some ideas of how to use Padlets in the classroom. Please feel free to add to it.


Tuesday 27 August 2013

Writing and iPads

In Term Two 2013 I demonstrated teaching in an e-Learning class for 2 weeks in a Year 5/6 room at Clevedon School. This post is about how the students used iPads (and other tools) in Writing.
As I plan the work students will be doing, I am always thinking of

  • How could I introduce this to students in a visual way?
  • What choices of tools, ideas, activities could I make available for them?
  • Am I covering different student learning styles?
When I am in the classroom, I like to ask the students how they like to learn and what are their favourite activities. From that information I add other options to the choices they have.
I personally think that students should have options of how they want to do their work and some of those options are explained further down the post.


On the first day I worked with a couple of groups showing them how to download their Inspiration mindmap 'Narrative Writing Framework' ready for tomorrow and they then went on and taught others in the class.




I made the framework in Inspiration 9 on my computer and then exported it to Inspiration Maps on the iPad. (If you don't have Inspiration 9 on your computer you can still make your frameworks in Inspiration Maps) I provided a link to the download on the class wiki. I had showed the students how to make a website link on their iPads so that they could access the wiki quickly by loading the website in Safari, tapping on the Share button and tapping on Add to Home Screen. It will appear as an app on your iPad.





We talked about introductions and setting the scene for writing and I demonstrated using the Narrative framework and the Myths and Legends Narrative Walkthrough I had uploaded to Slideshare and embedded on the Wiki Writing Page.


 Students used the Inspiration Map as their drafting template and when they had finished they  shared and opened in Pages for crafting and editing.
Day Two
On the second day I managed to see all of the writing groups at different times to
show them their Proof Reading/Assessment which was created in Google Docs.
Before they are ready to conference with me they have to have looked at the 'Have I...' table and check off that they have attempted or achieved all of the goals.
Because this document was in a table, students had to go to Safari, Chrome or Puffin to edit Google Docs as a Desktop version. They could view the table in the Google Drive App.
On further reflection, I would not use tables in Docs until Google Docs have updated them to be used seamlessly on an iPad.

Day Three
Students are gradually understanding the Writing Charts of Drafting, Conferencing and Publishing. They know not to put themselves on Conferencing if they haven't checked off their 'Have I...' chart. And they are learning very quickly that if I see any missing punctuation they have to leave the Conferencing group immediately and work on it.
Below are some of the choices they can make for Drafting, Conferencing and Publishing.


This was the first time I worked with a conferencing group using the Apple TV and TV set. It was perfect for the job. Students were able to mirror their work to the TV, and the other children were able to peer edit it for them with a little input from me. I had their group learning intentions and success criteria on my iPad in front of me and was able to keep referring students to what they had to concentrate on.

Day Four
 One of the students finished her writing today so she was able to
publish it to our Myths and Legends blog.
In this photo she has her edited draft open on her iPad and she has transferred it over to the laptop to paste into Blogger and add some pictures.
Later I made the Blogger App available to students so that they could add to the blog from their iPads.

  The clipart she has used comes from the fantastic mrdonn.org website which is full of wonderful resources
and free clipart for children. Eventually students will start creating their own clipart. They have learned how to create clipart using Keynote on the iPad and at the end of each day I give them quick 5 minutes lesson on how to draw cartoons. I use 'How to Draw Cartoons' by Brian Platt ($2.99
Kindle on amazon.com)
The apps the students used for practising their cartoon drawings were Paper 53 or
Crayola Paint & Create




This photo shows the students peer editing using the TV and AppleTV. They have mirrored their iPads to screen.
They also discovered to their amazement that they could mirror their mac laptops and iMac as well!

After talking about Vivid Verbs in writing, the children set to their work. A few students have started on their second story and lots are ready to conference and publish. Several have posted to the 'Myths and Legends blog' and some are working on Book Creator. Here is one example of a finished book.



Students are using the Writing task boards well. Some of the students are on their second round of writing stories. When it comes to publishing, they are loving the choices they have.
Several more children were publishing today. They really like using Book Creator. I reminded them that they could create their own graphics while they were waiting to conference with me which means they can use Sketchup, Minecraft, Pages shapes or any app they have on their iPads.

Students are now starting to get into the habit of checking their Writing Assessment Doc when they are proofreading their writing.

What I have particularly enjoyed in my time at Clevedon,  is having the opportunities to look at how children learn, identify what are some of the difficulties they have and thinking about the 'what' and 'how' I can assist them. An example is using the Telescopic Text last Friday which has helped the students to think about expanding their sentences using more adjectives and verbs. Some students are having difficulties sequencing their myths and legends so tomorrow I am going to get them to screen shot or copy the text from an original myth, insert into Notability and let them use the highlighting and pen tools to identify all the different parts of the structure of the story, then they will use the Narrative Framework to plan their writing.


It's not all about iPads!
This student is reading her next Myth and 'writing' down the facts/information on a piece of paper!












Day Seven
I tried out a couple of new ideas today with the students. I noticed that some of the students were having problems sequencing in order and identifying the main points in a story. I ran a workshop session where they copied the story Dionysus and Ariadne from the website and pasted into Notability.







I then showed the Narrative Framework on the Projector which has been made in Inspiration.
I asked the students to highlight 'Who' were the main characters in Green.


They then had to highlight the 'Where', 'When' and 'What' in different colours. After that we identified what the main problem/conflict was by highlighting in red. We then went on to highlight in blue the main points in the story and finally the conclusion in a different colour. At first students wanted to highlight whole paragraphs, but after discussion we were able to identify just the main points. They can use this information to fill in their Narrative Framework. From there they can add more detail and eventually share it to Pages for final editing. A target group of children will be expected to do this every time they start writing a narrative on a new myth or legend. 

 Most of the students like to publish their work in Book Creator, but from tomorrow I am going to introduce them to more ways. I am going to take one student's piece of writing and present it in several different ways. As they decide what they want to use, I will only show those students how to get started and they will become my teachers for the rest of the other children when they are ready to learn how to do it.
Below is a Slideshare I have created that shows different ways students can publish the same piece of writing using one of the student's own writing as an example.



Sometimes an iPad alone is not enough (4 devices, 2 students!)
The parents came in today and were able to see the children at work. They were able to see students
  • writing in Graphic Organisers
  • editing by developing their ideas in Pages
  • proofreading by checking their learning intentions and success criteria
  • publishing in a variety of ways
  • observing the teacher as she held conferencing sessions with the students as they talked about their writing




So over a two week period a variety of apps were used and the students became very proficient at using them to create their writing. Laptops were used quite extensively as well which indicates that iPads alone are not enough. In this post I have mainly concentrated on iPads but if I was full time in the class there would be a balance of non digital writing and creation as well because it is a choice that is available to students.

What didn't work so well?:

  • Tables in Google Docs. If you want students to edit easily then do not put tables into your docs

What worked really well?: 

  • students having access to their Writing Assessment so that they could check off that they were following their success criteria
  • mirroring iPads through Apple TV onto the TV screen and a group of students peer editing
  • showing a small group of students (in less than 5 minutes) how to do something with an app and then they teach the other students
  • having the links to the Graphic Organisers on the class wiki page
  • students having a quick access link to their Assessment and to the wiki on their home screens of their iPads
  • students having a choice about the tools (digital or non digital) they are going to use for their learning

Wednesday 21 August 2013

Dropbox and Evernote...What is the difference?

I get asked these questions a lot
  1. What is the difference between Dropbox and Evernote?
  2. Do I need both or could I just use one?
  3. I hear they are good but I don't see how they could be useful to me. What can I do with them?

Dropbox (Free for iPad; Free for iPhone/iPod Touch)
2 Gig is free
Stores all types of files
Downloads an application to your computer that will appear as a main folder in your hardrive. You can save files from your computer directly to Dropbox.
Many apps will save to Dropbox. Use Dropbox to share photos from your computer to your iPad. If you have the latest version of Inspiration you can create maps and save to Dropbox which will allow you to open them in Inspiration Maps on the iPad.




Evernote (Free for iPad; Free for iPhone/iPod Touch)
Upload up to 60mb per month
Stores most files.
Downloads an application to your computer and to your devices. Save/Share/Send most files on your iPad. Download website links and pages.







What is the difference between Dropbox and Evernote?
They are both places that you can store files but each app does something special. Dropbox is like another 'Documents' folder that you can see on your hardrive but it is actually saved online. If you have all your files saved in Dropbox and you lose your computer tomorrow,  you wouldn't have a problem as you can get them back by logging on to https://www.dropbox.com/ 

Ways that I use Dropbox:
  • all my documents are stored there
  • when I want to add photos from my laptop to the iPad, I can add them to Dropbox
  • create Inspiration activities on my computer and then upload to Dropbox to access from iPad
  • download a file on somebody else's computer, log into https://www.dropbox.com/ 
Ways that I use Evernote:
Evernote is more visual, you can see what the content is of most files. You can add notes or voice comments. You can add tags to files so that they can grouped together.
  • download Webpages to look at later
  • download weblinks and make notes
  • take photos of examples of student work and make notes and/or voice comments
  • collect resources for topics
  • share folders with other people
I also see Evernote as a great tool for students to share their learning. They can share their examples of work and then make a voice comment about how they feel about their work. Teachers can write comments or make voice comments as well. Students can take photos of non digital work they have done and make comments as well.

Tuesday 20 August 2013

It's all about finding the right tool #1

I have had a lot of teachers asking me recently how can they use their iPads more creatively with the children. This will be the first of many posts, as teachers ask I will post the ideas I have had. My first question is what topic are you doing?

Topic?
Aboriginal Art
What apps are on your iPad?

How can you use these apps?

Use Drawing Pad to create your own Aboriginal Art. Choose the black paper and the Felt tip to create patterns.

Share back to your photo album and insert into
Keynote, Comic Life, Pages or Book Creator - make a presentation of your own art, some examples of Aboriginal art you have found, information about the art,
Safari - Find images via Google, tap and hold on an image to either copy or save to Camera Roll. Don't forget to reference where the images came from.





Comic Life: choose the blank template then choose Collection under the Layout tab and tap on Maps layout, choose Australia and tap the photo icon in the centre of the map to insert your your own art work. Use Text boxes and picture boxes to cover up the parts of the map that shows other countries.

Sunday 11 August 2013

Turning tradtional into the e-Learning opportunity

In a traditional classroom teachers tend to talk a lot. In an e-Learning classroom there should be less 'teacher talk' and more 'student talk'. Here is an example

Scenario One: Science Investigation (Traditional approach)
Children are sitting on the mat in front of the teacher. Teacher has a sheet of newsprint pegged to the white board with the 'Purpose' of their science investigation written on it. Teacher asks students 'What are the keywords?' A couple of kids will raise their hands and answer. As they find a keyword, teacher asks them what it means and adds that in brackets above the keyword in question. Teacher repeats last step many times.
Then teacher has students turn to TV set and they watch the first part of a youtube video, teacher asks the question 'What is the independent variable?' A couple of students try to answer and more discussion goes on, toing and froing between those students. The rest are by now quite restless and squirming. This last step is repeated twice more. 40 minutes has gone by and only 50% of the class has truly been involved.

Scenario Two: Science Investigation (e-Learning approach)
Children are organised into groups (3-4 in a group). One member of the group will open the shared presentation.
They work through the following presentation with the teacher moving around working with individual groups. After 45 minutes, the groups all meet together and share their findings.

The activity provides a similar result to the traditional method but it is a lot more interesting for the children and allows more students to have a voice in answering the questions. The Youtube movie can be wound back and forward when needed and the teacher has time to spend with those students who need the extra help.

Sunday 26 May 2013

Walk the Talk Day Ten

Final day today! I have really enjoyed working with the children and Rebecca the teacher. It has been a great opportunity to observe the development of their learning with 1-1 iPads.

Writing
The parents came in today and were able to see the children at work. They were able to see students
  • writing in Graphic Organisers
  • editing by developing their ideas in Pages
  • proofreading by checking their learning intentions and success criteria
  • publishing in a variety of ways
  • observing the teacher as she held conferencing sessions with the students as they talked about their writing
During Reading they were able see students reading on their Kindles and interacting with the text by finding definitions and making notes. They saw students working on their iPads and computers and sometimes both at the same time. Students were working on their long term activities of 'Prediction and Adjustment, Vocab logs and then their comprehension questions and activities that were on their Reading Google Docs.

At Maths times they saw students using a variety of tools for different activities. Students were making
'nets' out of paper, deciphering tangram puzzles, designing buildings in Sketchup on computers, creating tessellations in Pages and iOrnamate, Geometry worksheets, 2D patterns in Keynote, Maths text book work and Geometry Transformation workshops through the projector.


The next steps are for the teachers to carry on with the work I have planned for the students and start to use ways to provide evidence of student learning in one place. Students can share their work with teachers and parents within the individual apps but now we are able to store the physical evidence of children's manual work. We have started looking at Evernote as a place to store student work and so far it seems to be working well. We have had some students taking photos of their 'paper nets' in Evernote and leaving a verbal comment about what they have learned and how they felt about the activity. Students who are working on Sketchup are taking close up photos of their screens and doing the same thing. One child photographed her two 3-D Worksheets and made comments about what she did wrong and what she did to fix it. Some others have sent PDF copies of their published books made in Book Creator to their Writing folder in Evernote, which means that you don't have to go through several steps to find the student's work. Teachers might decide to let students send through to Evernote some of students' final edited writing in Pages. All of that writing can still be seen in the Pages 'library' but maybe best pieces of writing could go there. The next issue of course is how do teachers keep up with the marking of this work. This could be done when teachers are working with the groups i.e. when they have conferenced in writing, the edited piece could be sent to Evernote there and then and the teacher adds their comments straight away. When students come to Maths group, they can then share the work that has been done and sent to Evernote with the group and the teacher for feedback. With reading, some of the work is completed in Google Docs and does not need to be shared back to Evernote as it is able to be easily viewed in Google Docs itself. Likewise if there has been any maths or Writing work completed in Google Docs the same would apply.

I have come away with a lot more ideas that I am going to write about and create activities for on my other wikis and blogs
In conclusion I have also been reminded of how hard teachers work 
  • catering for each individual student in their rooms 
  • the amount of preparation they do
  • the time they spend at meetings before school, lunchtimes and after school
  • doing playground duties
  • running 'extra' activities like sports and music during their lunchtimes 
  • the marking of work until late at night
  • and ultimately the teaching of children during the day
Thank you Clevedon School for allowing me to work with great teachers and fantastic students!

Thursday 23 May 2013

Walk the Talk Day Nine

Writing
I tried out a couple of new ideas today with the students. I noticed that some of the students were having problems sequencing in order and identifying the main points in a story. I ran a workshop session where they copied the story Dionysus and Ariadne from the website and pasted into Notability.







I then showed the Narrative Framework on the Projector which has been made in Inspiration.
I asked the students to highlight 'Who' were the main characters in Green.


They then had to highlight the 'Where', 'When' and 'What' in different colours. After that we identified what the main problem/conflict was by highlighting in red. We then went on to highlight in blue the main points in the story and finally the conclusion in a different colour. At first students wanted to highlight whole paragraphs, but after discussion we were able to identify just the main points. They can use this information to fill in their Narrative Framework. From there they can add more detail and eventually share it to Pages for final editing. A target group of children will be expected to do this every time they start writing a narrative on a new myth or legend. 
Most of the children have managed very well with all of the Google Docs in the different curriculum areas, keeping up with the work that they need to do. There is still a small group that needs a bit more structure and scaffolding. I created a new doc that we printed out and is clipped to the whiteboard. They have to get this doc and tick off the tasks they achieve and then show me at the end of that session what they have done. It will take some training and the teacher needs to be on the ball following up on these students to make sure that they are on task and making good choices about their learning.

I didn't get much of a chance to take photos today as I was busy teaching students and talking to teachers, but I was able to catch this moment...

Sometimes an iPad alone is not enough (4 devices, 2 students!)

Wednesday 22 May 2013

Walk the Talk Day Eight

Writing
What I have particularly enjoyed in my time at Clevedon,  is having the opportunities to look at how children learn, identify what are some of the difficulties they have and thinking about the 'what' and 'how' I can assist them. An example is using the Telescopic Text last Friday which has helped the students to think about expanding their sentences using more adjectives and verbs. Some students are having difficulties sequencing their myths and legends so tomorrow I am going to get them to screen shot or copy the text from an original myth, insert into Notability and let them use the highlighting and pen tools to identify all the different parts of the structure of the story, then they will use the Narrative Framework to plan their writing.



This student is reading her next Myth and 'writing' down the facts/information on a piece of paper!














Most of the students like to publish their work in Book Creator, but from tomorrow I am going to introduce them to more ways. I am going to take one students piece of writing and present it in several different ways. As they decide what they want to use, I will only show those students how to get started and they will become my teachers for the rest of the other children when they are ready to learn how to do it.





Reading
I really think the Kindle App has been a huge success for reading. Gradually students are starting to use the dictionary within the app to help them to decipher meaning and how it fits into the context of the sentence. They are also being exposed to the 'there is more than one meaning for that word'. They read the meaning then look to see if it fits in the context of the story, if it doesn't then read the next definition etc.
I showed one student today how to take notes within the story and then she went on to share with the rest of the group. They are expected to come with some notes on the next chapter when we have our novel study group meeting.

Maths
Rebecca, the teacher of the class, started the Transformation Workshop using the projector with the group of students who had identified as their learning goals 'translation, rotation and reflection. It wasn't long before she was able to leave them to carry on as they were managing their learning well, working together as a collaborative group. She was then able to move around the class working with individuals and small groups, whilst still being able to keep an eye on the Transformation Group.


I ran a voluntary 'Tessellation with Pages' group (instructions in above Workshop) Those students that attended learned how to translate, rotate, flip, duplicate etc in Pages on their iPads. Their task is to see how many shapes they can get to tessellate with each other. They can use the computers as well which will give them more choices. On Friday I will show them how they can draw their own shapes and tessellate them as well using Escher Images as examples.


Topic
Most of the students are able to collect their information, reference it and store it in Notability.



A few are more excited by the prospect of presenting their work in which ever way they would like...mostly Minecraft! I have said to them that they have to collect all information first, and then tell me how they are going to be able to present this in a way, that will inform viewers about 'What were the Systems Ancient Romans invented?' One child has started in Minecraft by creating his drainage system with sign posts that give you the information about how it was done!