Module 3

iLe@rn App framework

Each week in reading groups this term I have given the students a new task to do on the iPads.  I have tried to link these tasks to the iLe@rn framework

Questioning Skills

Skitch and Jigzo

Students created their own puzzle for another group.   Students downloaded a picture of a clock into skitch.  They then annotated the clock with 24 hour time.  Next students inserted the picture into jigzo and gave it to another partner to put back together using their knowledge of 24 hour time.

Communication and Collaboration

Popplet

Students had to work together to create a equivalent fraction numberline from 0 to 1 using popplet.  They were able to identify equivalent fractions eg ½ = 2/4= 3/6 etc

Auto Rap

Students collaborated together to create a rap of the 11 times tables.  This was then shown to the class

Creative thinking Skills

Toontastic

Students created a narrative using toontastic.  They enjoyed adding animations and sound effects to the story

Reflective Skills

Photomess

Students thought of an important value and used photomess to create a collage of how they see this value in action.

Critical thinking and problem solving

Corkulous

Students were given the task to find replacement words for the dead/ boring words in our everyday language eg said.  Students had to research other words and use the corkulous board to arrange them.

Multimodal Literacy

Photocard

Students created a photocard of their experiences on our excursion to Bathurst.  They were able to add text, voice and images in this photocard.

Animator                                                            

Students used the animator app to create a flipbook of a verb eg throwing.   They then used this to create descriptive sentences eg The old and creaky boat sank slowly after hitting the large iceberg.

Evaluation of an app

Five Fingers Evaluation of Skitch

Intuitive

a Minimal instruction was required for students.  I gave students a quick overview of the app at the beginning of the week by connecting it to the smartboard and walking through the activity.  Students were also given a basic instruction sheet so they remained on task and new what the goals of the lesson were.

a Minimal user competency required at the outset.  None of the students had used the app before but all were able to use the app

a User feels powerful quickly.  All students were able to feel confident with using the app by the end of their session with it.

Curriculum Connection

a Skill reinforced where connected to the syllabus.  This is all about how the teacher integrates the app into the classroom activity.  We used skitch to annotate a 12 hour clock into a 24 hour clock but we could have used it for a number of different activities all related to the syllabus

Features

a Can you easily export work.  It was very easy for students to export their work as an image and then use that image in jigzo

Appeal

a Are the students appropriately challenged?  The benefit of skitch is that students all students can end up with the basic required output.  The higher their skills are the more effects they can add to the output.  Eg cropping, adding photo effects etc

a Are the students motivated to use the app? Yes, they really enjoyed using the app and showing the work to the class

Value

a Free app

a Can it be used for multiple curriculum areas?  Yes it could be used for just about all KLAs

Module 2

I use many of the built in apps on both my iphone and ipad.  But it was great to review them with my teacher/ classroom brain in, and think about how I could get my year 5’s to use these apps. 

Safari

I am fairly comfortable with safari, but I have now added our class website and my diigo bookmark site to the homescreen.  So easy to do!

Message app

I use the message all the time personally on my iphone and ipad but have not considered using it in the classroom. I have now set up the ipads to be able to message each other so students can send photos and videos from one ipad to the other.  This is convenient if one groups of students is using an ipad that has videos or photos on it that another groups needs, particularly as we cannot set up email on the ipads at school.   

Newsstand

I spent some time exploring newsstand.  The newsstand has some good free magazines.  We have 10 minutes of silent reading each day in class.  Some students would be able to read magazines on the ipads.  They could even read them in guided reading time.

Apple user guide- Camera

My students love using the camera on the ipad.  They love recording themselves and their classmates and taking photos of their work.  The beauty of the ipad is the front camera allows the students to take photos or videos of themselves.   They are great at uploading their photos and videos into drop box- eliminating the need to physically connect the ipad to the computer.

I enjoyed playing with the exposure when taking photographs.  It would be great to have a couple of students in the class become experts in the ipad camera.  They could then be the ‘go to’ people for the rest of the class.

Editing videos is another great skill for my camera experts to learn. I have edited videos on my iphone before but had not thought about doing it with videos on the ipad.  At this stage we are only able to download free apps onto the ipads, and I have not been able to find a great video editing app.  It is good to know that my students can edit parts of their videos without using imovie.  

Module 1

I am a member of gen y and love teaching with technology.  I have just (last week) finished my first year of teaching. I personally have an iphone and an ipad.  In my classroom we share 3 ipads with year 6.  We also share a variety of laptops, netbooks, macbooks and flip cameras.  As realistically a class of 30 students cannot share 3 iPads I need to be creative in how I teach and organise the class. 

ibooks

I love the ibooks app.  I enjoy reading books on my ipad, I also have the kindle and kobo ereading apps on my ipad.  What I most enjoy about the ibooks app is its flexibility.  You can change the font size and type and the background .  It is easy to search make notes and flip through pages.

 

Through this module I learnt how to create collections.  This could be beneficial for creating libraries for different KLAs.

The beauty of the ibooks app is that you can download pdfs.  I can save instructions as pdfs and get my students to follow them on the ipads.  For example if I can list the activities for my students to do on the ipad during reading groups, save it as a pdf and open it in ibooks.

A great (and free) ibook to check out is Hot apps 4 HOTS- a guide to using free apps to support higher order thinking skills.

Camera

The camera is so easy to use.  My students use it all the time for taking photos of their work, recording themselves and others speaking, creating tutorials and taking screen shots of their work.  They then upload their photos and videos to drop box so we can access it anywhere. 

A great (and free) app for creating a photo collage is photomess.  You can import photos from your ipad and rotate, crop and edit them into a collage.  This then saves as a photo which you can use anywhere.  For example I create a photo collage from individual photo of the 30 students in my class to use as a background on our google site.