This module began with an article about how the iPad can be considered as a transformative device. It talked about the ipad being integrated into learning rather than being an add-on - so something that enhances learning and creates a worthwhile experience at a range of apps for use in the classroom: I likedthing that actually
Maths apps: Wishball helps develop knowledge of place value to reach a target number. A challenging game for upper primary.
Operation Maths requires the player to solve simple equations to complete different stages of a mission. I thought the equations were easier than the instructions for playing the game!
Science apps: mostly too advanced for primary students and probably more suited to high school students.
Looking at using the iPad and its inbuilt camera - I discovered that when you take a screenshot it goes straight into your album. You can edit it in various ways. Skitch is a very versatile app that has lots of possibilities for all levels of primary. With Skitch you can import any photo from your album - or a screenshot - and you can label it - you can add text, arrows, or drawings. Yr 2 chn would be quite capable of labelling a simple picture - say a human body - and label the parts of the body.
Bloggsy costs to download
Tumblr more suitable for sharing photos & images - good if you were travelling
Wordpress
Geography apps including Google Earth - too complex to integrate
All musical instruments on the iPad - don't need an orchestra - you could create a band in your classroom!
Bible apps - Glo Bible takes a long time to load - good for personal enrichment
Dual browser app allows you to split your screen and do two searches at once
Can I create Augmented Reality? Technology is being used to make things as realistic as possible
Monday, September 10, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
Module 5:Multimodal Literacies
I found this module very practical and useful because it involved researching a range of apps and considering how useful they would be in the classroom. It was frustrating at times because a number of the apps it recommended we investigate weren't free.
One ofthe first activities involved using a voice-recording app such as Quick Voice to help develop reading fluency. I have used this function already in my yr 2 classroom with some chn with special needs. They record themselves reading a book, practising their spelling or reading blends & digraphs or sight words. They can then listen to their recording and reflect on how they can improve. It is a very simple task but very engaging and achievable. There are microphones available which attach easily to an iPod or iPad and which would improve recorded voice quality. The recording can be very easily emailed from within the app. This means that you could use Quick Voice as a means of recording an oral response to an assessment task, for example, and email & save the recording as evidence.
Ebooks are a great resource for use on an iPad - although of the apps suggested in this module, only Mee Genius is free and therefore accessible for everyone. I personally like reading on an iPad but it bothers me that chn spend so much time on devices like an iPad or iPod that many literally don't know how to interact with books - I have yr 2 children who actually don't know how to turn the pages on a book properly!
We also looked at apps with embedded activities - for example Miss Spider. My impression of these sorts of apps is that there is no way of tracking what the chn have read or understood & how much of the text they have read before playing the built in games. This means that chn can quite easily be distracted from reading & comprehending a text by playing the games.
There are countless apps with word games - including Scrabble, Dragon Dream, Hangman. Again, I found that I need to spend more time searching for free apps because it's not economical to use apps that cost.
Reference apps - dictionary, thesaurus, wikipanion, to quote Shakespeare
Digital storytelling: narrating photos, narrating & recording a story
Doodlecast, doink, comic strip, strip designer, toontastic, puppet pals, p. 12 website for digital storytelling
Verses poetry, poetry magnets,
Ebook creator, ebook magic, stor
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Module 4: Working with Files
This module was really practical and useful😊 I've had bad experiences synching my phone in the past so it was good to go through the process of synching my iPad step by step with iTunes and not lose anything! Also managed to synch my iPad and iPhone with iCloud so all the apps I've been exploring for this course are on both devices - very convenient.
Up until now if I wanted to transfer files from one device to another I've just emailed them to myself - and that's still a valid option (fairly easy to teach younger students to do) but now with Dropbox and/or Google Drive it's so much easier! I set up a Dropbox account on my iPad and transferred all the photos from my phone to my iPad. For some reason that I haven't figured out, the photos stopped uploading with 11 left - and the message is still stuck in Dropbox on my phone. Must be a simple answer but does lead me to question how efficient it is. Now that I have the photos in Dropbox I'm not sure how to organise them onto my iPad. At the moment they're in a long, cumbersome list and not easy to look at the little thumbnails. What am I doing wrong?
Will check out Google Drive to see how it differs from Dropbox. Like the idea of sharing folders because I can see how that would be extremely useful for me working with a job-share partner and/or grade partner. Now I use an external drive and am constantly transferring files from my computer at home to our school server and vice versa. Would be great to have them update/synch automatically.
Played around with annotating a PDF file with neu.annotate. I found it fairly intuitive and easy to use but since I very rarely if ever, work with PDF files I'm not sure what use it would be to me. Tried inserting a pic of the PDF I annotated but can't figure out how to manipulate the picture so it's not gigantic. Oh boy - so many more questions!!!
Here is my annotated PDF: when would I use those cute little stamps in a PDF except for when I want to show that I know how to??? Not sure....
I
Up until now if I wanted to transfer files from one device to another I've just emailed them to myself - and that's still a valid option (fairly easy to teach younger students to do) but now with Dropbox and/or Google Drive it's so much easier! I set up a Dropbox account on my iPad and transferred all the photos from my phone to my iPad. For some reason that I haven't figured out, the photos stopped uploading with 11 left - and the message is still stuck in Dropbox on my phone. Must be a simple answer but does lead me to question how efficient it is. Now that I have the photos in Dropbox I'm not sure how to organise them onto my iPad. At the moment they're in a long, cumbersome list and not easy to look at the little thumbnails. What am I doing wrong?
Will check out Google Drive to see how it differs from Dropbox. Like the idea of sharing folders because I can see how that would be extremely useful for me working with a job-share partner and/or grade partner. Now I use an external drive and am constantly transferring files from my computer at home to our school server and vice versa. Would be great to have them update/synch automatically.
Played around with annotating a PDF file with neu.annotate. I found it fairly intuitive and easy to use but since I very rarely if ever, work with PDF files I'm not sure what use it would be to me. Tried inserting a pic of the PDF I annotated but can't figure out how to manipulate the picture so it's not gigantic. Oh boy - so many more questions!!!
Here is my annotated PDF: when would I use those cute little stamps in a PDF except for when I want to show that I know how to??? Not sure....
Monday, August 6, 2012
Module 3: Learning with Apps
I liked playing with iTunes even though I've used it many times before. Now I've found out what all those cute little icons down the bottom were for! I especially liked iTunes U - and when I clicked on K-12 it opened a world of possibilities! Who knew there were all those things in Catholic Network Australia - or even that you could do a whole lots of professional learning through apps.
Aaaagh! Just blogged a whole lot and lost it all. Grrrr! Well what I had been saying was how there are so many apps out there and so little time to check them all out. So it's very good to find links to sites set up by people who have lists of apps suitable for educational purposes. It's also good to talk to colleagues and swap ideas about suitable apps.
Great to have a framework for evaluating apps for classroom use but a couple of the frameworks were so complex I could have explored a whole lot more apps in the time it would take to read & decipher the form!! I think the 5 finger tool was the most user friendly one.
Looking at apps to fit into the ILe@RN Framework was very useful although I continued to find it difficult to find apps suitable for lower primary use. So many apps I found are good for very small children or upper primary onwards. Looking at the Framework: Questioning Skills - had lots of fun with Skitch and could see it being able to be used by my Yr 2 students fairly easily. Communication & Collaboration Skills:
Sock Puppets would be lots of fun and ideal for so many talking & listening skills. Creative Thinking Skills: Toontastic is really user friendly & has good help tools. Reflective Skills: I'm using Blogger right now for this reflection although I need to spend more time on it to figure out how to navigate through it more efficiently. Not something for lower primary students I don't think! Critical Thinking & Problem Solving Skills: need to look further to find suitable apps for younger students. Multimodal Literacy Skills: Love the Miss Spider apps! Very appealing for lower primary - user friendly, engaging. They tick quite a few boxes.
All in all I've enjoyed this module the most so far. I have a list of apps to investigate further and learnt a lot about how to narrow my search for appropriate apps & how to evaluate them. I think that the most effective tool for evaluating apps is going to be the students themselves - how easily they can navigate them, how interested they are in them & whether or not they find them challenging. Wish I had more time to play!
Aaaagh! Just blogged a whole lot and lost it all. Grrrr! Well what I had been saying was how there are so many apps out there and so little time to check them all out. So it's very good to find links to sites set up by people who have lists of apps suitable for educational purposes. It's also good to talk to colleagues and swap ideas about suitable apps.
Great to have a framework for evaluating apps for classroom use but a couple of the frameworks were so complex I could have explored a whole lot more apps in the time it would take to read & decipher the form!! I think the 5 finger tool was the most user friendly one.
Looking at apps to fit into the ILe@RN Framework was very useful although I continued to find it difficult to find apps suitable for lower primary use. So many apps I found are good for very small children or upper primary onwards. Looking at the Framework: Questioning Skills - had lots of fun with Skitch and could see it being able to be used by my Yr 2 students fairly easily. Communication & Collaboration Skills:
Sock Puppets would be lots of fun and ideal for so many talking & listening skills. Creative Thinking Skills: Toontastic is really user friendly & has good help tools. Reflective Skills: I'm using Blogger right now for this reflection although I need to spend more time on it to figure out how to navigate through it more efficiently. Not something for lower primary students I don't think! Critical Thinking & Problem Solving Skills: need to look further to find suitable apps for younger students. Multimodal Literacy Skills: Love the Miss Spider apps! Very appealing for lower primary - user friendly, engaging. They tick quite a few boxes.
All in all I've enjoyed this module the most so far. I have a list of apps to investigate further and learnt a lot about how to narrow my search for appropriate apps & how to evaluate them. I think that the most effective tool for evaluating apps is going to be the students themselves - how easily they can navigate them, how interested they are in them & whether or not they find them challenging. Wish I had more time to play!
Monday, July 30, 2012
Module 2: Safari
Today we spent time exploring Safari. I learnt things I didn't know about creating folders for my bookmarks - I love organising my folders! Also found out how to add a web page to my homescreen - which is a good timesaver. Then we explored the built-in apps. Not sure if I would use many of those with Year 2 - although maybe at a stretch we could use Calendar when we're doing Time in Maths. Also could use Maps when we talk about our upcoming excursion & have a look at where we're going to for the day. My iPad doesn't have a camera but I'm sure the inbuilt camera would be very cool! Look forward to finding out more.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Module 1: Exploring the IPAD
Oh wow! Just spent literally a few hours trying to download software that will let me view the course modules on my PC. Apple really has this thing sewn up! I don't have an ipad and reading the modules on my iPhone really is a struggle! So straight away I've learnt something about how acessible the ipad is - compared to other devices such as iPods!! Finally managed to download the software - had to download a new browser - Firefox - and then attach an epub reader to it - and at last, I can read the modules more easily. Don't want to think about what's involved in doing the same thing on my laptop. Now I've typed this much, I want to know how to change the font in my blog - hate this font. Oh dear, I think I'm going to get terribly sidetracked doing this course......
As for using these things in the classroom - Year 2 has been using the camera/video function on our iPods (and could therefore easily use iPads) to record mini weather reports each day. They absolutely love pretending to be the TV weather reporter and provide a weather forecast for us all to watch. They are very quick and confident with the iPods - and the functions are almost exactly the same on the iPads. Amazing to see children who are usually quiet and not easily drawn into discussions, come "alive" when they're being recorded - and so proud when we show their video to the rest of the class. A wonderful confidence builder, very practical talking & listening activity as well as a great way of integrating technology with our Science unit.
Have also created a roster for chn to check the weather app to give us the daily temperature and weather forecast each day for our chart. Loving it....
NEXT:
Tried working through the module without an ipad - wasn't that a challenge?! So now I have an iPad to work with - a "hand-me-down" from my 20 yr old daughter. Got to love that. Since the top paragraph was written, I also have an iPhone 4 so I'm really with it! Have had the opportunity to explore the iPhone and that helped me a lot with the iPad. Have also worked through module 1 on a real live iPad - and found out lots of really cool things including how to:- Change the font
- Highlight words
- Use the dictionary
- Write notes
As for using these things in the classroom - Year 2 has been using the camera/video function on our iPods (and could therefore easily use iPads) to record mini weather reports each day. They absolutely love pretending to be the TV weather reporter and provide a weather forecast for us all to watch. They are very quick and confident with the iPods - and the functions are almost exactly the same on the iPads. Amazing to see children who are usually quiet and not easily drawn into discussions, come "alive" when they're being recorded - and so proud when we show their video to the rest of the class. A wonderful confidence builder, very practical talking & listening activity as well as a great way of integrating technology with our Science unit.
Have also created a roster for chn to check the weather app to give us the daily temperature and weather forecast each day for our chart. Loving it....
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