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

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....
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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!