Just have to promote this.

Roadmap or Round Robin Hood's Barn

Roadmap or Round Robin Hood's Barn

So, do you think you want an ipad roadmap or do you want to go round Robin Hood's barn?

 

We know ipads are important to education, but right now we don’t know how important. There are many educators, parents and students who will agree and as many who will dispute this. The fact remains the ipad allows for instant differentiation in a classroom. This one tool allows for incredible differentiation without too much of a learning curve for student and educator alike.

When I bring the ipad into a class, all the students take notice. First they begin thinking, next they ask questions, “Is that yours?” “Does it belong to our school?” “Why do you have this?” “Do you have Angry Birds?” “Can I use it?” Each student and adult will have their own agenda of questions and their own ideas for use. That is the point! The ipad allows for purposeful differentiation.

However, at my school, I think we have skipped a step with our students. Without defining the specific use for the ipad, and leaving it open ended, we left a doorway open. Of course the students had their own uses for the ipad figured out long  before the adults. We never discussed the purposeful use of the ipad in school. It is not too late, but the time has come.

How did I come to this realization? When I went to upload some audio books for our students, I noticed that I had run out of room on the ipad. A yellow caution triangle appeared as an indicator that the space on the ipad was filled! How was this possible? Well, our students are savvy, and they have logged into the ipad and downloaded games using their itunes accounts. Yes, we left the ipads “open”, we chose not to lock things down. It is easy enough to restore an ipad to the original software, and then re-install the chosen classroom applications.

So, now we will implement the roadmap of acceptable use with our ipads. This is similar to the roadmap of acceptable use we have modeled for computer and laptop use. But to our students the ipad is ‘different’ enough that they did not internalize the same kinds of explicit parameters for acceptable use that we expect with our school computers and devices. We  will now be purposeful and explicit about the ipad use.

So, do you need a roadmap or can you travel round Robin Hood’s barn to get to a happy medium of ipad acceptable use in your classroom? A little bit of both! Since the ipad is so new and the availability of apps changes every day we need a little bit of traveling the circuitous route in determining  uses of the ipads in our classes. However, the roadmap that we can put in place should be purposeful and explicit so all adults and students know the classroom rules and expectations for the ipad.

Here are some apps of purposeful and explicit expectations for a high school special education resource room:
Easybib- a tool for collecting bibliographic information when researching
Evernote- a tool for storing the information you collect when doing research
Dragon Dictate- a speech to text tool where one can speak about 30-40 words and then email the written text to themselves
Audio Notes- a tool for recording information which can then be emailed
Animoto- a tool for making short photo movies about a topic
Kindle- the Kindle app for collecting your books
Dictionary- Oh yeah!
Quizlet- compatible with Flashcards apps
Whiteboard- a tool for drawing and recording
SAT prep
Google Earth


Watch for other ipad posts coming soon. Let me know your favorite apps for the ipad!

hAPPy nEw yEAr! It is a SN-app!

One thing about working with  young adults is that you run the risk of alienating them at the same time you are trying to share good ideas and ways for them to improve their learning and independence.As a special education teacher in a rural high school in Maine, I work at unlocking the doors to the future by using online digital tools with my students.

Teaching our students to use online tools under our direction, soon allows them more independence and the ability to use their skills no matter where they are. Our students are beginning their large research projects when we return to school and these  apps will help our students keep things organized and at their finger tips.

Here are my top apps.  

Easy-Bib app is an app for the computer where a  student is able to copy a URL, clip the text from the URL and get help with a MLA bibliography. Now with the mobile app Easy Bib, http://easybib.com  the student has the ability to take a photo of the ISBN number and all the MLA information about the book is logged into the mobile device. How sweet is that?

Evernote app provides a way for our students to collect information for a research project into one place in the cloud. No matter if they use their mobile device, including smart phones or ipad/androids, or desktop computers our students are able to save everything to one space and access that information when needed. Check out evernote peek as a way to make your own flash cards or quizzes! http://www.evernote.com


Animoto app- Have you ever said to someone , “Oh, you should have seen the fun we had!,” Now you can make good on that statement by using the animoto app on your smart phone or mobile device. Create an animoto http://animoto.com  account and take about 16 photos, then open the animoto app, gather the pictures, choose some music and create a mini video of your event. Again, there is a feature for sharing with social media like Twitter and Facebook. Our students use this as a way to share a limited number of images, with short captions when they are working on projects in school. Whenever we can use an online tool to capture the content from a course, we take advantage of the “cool factor” and the “medium is the message” theory promoted by Marshall McLuhan .  Our students, especially the ones for whom writing is something to be feared and avoided at all costs can tell a very succinct and poignant story using images. After all, look at how much money is spent on 15 seconds during Super Bowl Sunday.

VoiceThread app-Is a great online tool for collaborating and telling a story at the same time. The features on VoiceThread http://voicethread.com have grown exponentially from use on computers to now on the iPad and other mobile devices,  including text messages, video messages, audio messages and even a way to phone in a message with your phone.

Remember to share a little fun and humor with your students. I am sharing this Alpine Replay, http://www.alpinereplay.com where the app, logs and registers the snowboaders’ and skiers’  actions on the slopes. Not only is the app fun to use, but it also teaches at the same time. Skiers and snowboarders will learn about, calories burned and energy used, speed, slope and the app even allows one to see where the ski area is on the earth. An added feature is that the social aspect of the app allows you to challenge  your friends to any one of the features that the app tracks, like most days on the slope, most kilometers traveled, most vertical, most calories etc. So far I have two medals for being on the hill before 9 AM. Probably the only one I will continue to consistently earn.

hAPPy nEw yEAr! It is a SN-app!

LED Tree Kennebunk, Maine coakes

During the season of darkness, in the northern hemisphere, we rely on daily brightness “of sorts” to lighten up our days.

Here are some “gifts” for you and your students to brighten your days.

• Check out the 2nd round of google search stories
• ghotit.com  - a gift of spell check and grammar check as your student is finishing that essay, watch your student’s faces light up!
• 365 photos, take a photo a day and post somewhere,there is even a facebook app,  it is a great way to keep a diary/journal
• todo.ly a great way to keep a list of tasks with an automatic countdown
• ipad apps- check out  http://a4cwsn.com/
• Kiva a great way of giving http://www.kiva.org/
• Electronic Village Online- the 12 year of free online classes designed by TESOL teachers and friends,

That’s all folks, stay busy, yet relax and keep your days bright, or brighten someone else’s day.

What do you need most? TIME

What do you need-most?

Many of us  say,  “If I only had more time I could .......” you can finish the statement .

What would you change about how you get your professional development?
Do you need to be in a group in order to best learn? Do you need a sandbox in order to play around with the new tools?  How about feedback from your students, or their parents? Do you need to take a day off from school or work to attend a workshop?

Each time I think about learning a new tool or new professional learning,  I have a new strategy. Sometimes I call a friend and we learn about a tool together. Other times I search Twitter and find people I follow and see what they are recommending.  Lately,  I've  been using Diigo for my professional development. Diigo is a tool for filing  bookmarks, articles, collecting research, highlighting information and saving all of this in the Cloud.  However, there are so many of my good friends using Diigo and saving and sharing information, that I am using Diigo as my professional development.

Each morning I read through my email, then I make a 10 min. window to check out my Diigo recommendations. I have not had a day where I was disappointed. Each day I learn about some new app for my ipad or I learn about a new website that I can share with my students.
For me, Diigo is the best professional development for my time investment.
I choose Diigo for my PD because:
*I have incremental learning in 10 minute blasts of time.
*I can always share one thing I learned from Diigo with my students or staff.
*I am gaining from the wisdom of others.
*I can share back to Diigo when I find items of interest.
Best of all, Diigo is FREE. Check out their informational movies, then make Diigo your PD.

http://www.diigo.com/

Think of One Thing that you Googled in the Past Three Months or the Past Three Days?

Can you think of one thing that you googled in the past three months or the past three days?  As I sat with a friend at the Harbor we were talking and  looking at low tide and  discussing what happens to the sand during the tidal pull. She said,  “that can be explained by fractal geometry -those little ripples, as she pointed  to the sculptured sand. The tides pull the water, the ripples in the sand are evidence of the water ripples which are evidence of fractal geometry.”   I thought about that for a bit. I  really didn’t know what fractal geometry was, but I did know it sounded like the Fibonacci in nature  where everything is systematic using the 1,3,5,8,13,21,.....  Now when I look at sand ripples I will think of fractals. “Approximate fractals are easily found in nature. These objects display self-similar structure over an extended, but finite, scale range. Examples include clouds, river networks, fault lines, mountain ranges, craters,[8] snow flakes,[9] crystals,[10] lightning, cauliflower or broccoli, and systems of blood vessels and pulmonary vessels, and ocean waves.[11] DNA and heartbeat[12] can be analyzed as fractals. Even coastlines may be loosely considered fractal in nature.” Wikipedia 


This is an example where STEM really needs to be part of education for all of us.

There are some conversations that naturally lend themselves to what we call reciprocal conversations where I say one thing, you make a comment, it reminds me of something which I say,  and you make a comment about that and then it goes back and forth. The reciprocal manner is where  people have a conversation that you can predict the conversation is full of ebb and flow.  However, with my friend at the Harbor looking at low tide there was absolutely no way I could predict where the conversation was going to end up, nor could I predict  how those subjects were going to be woven into those conversations.  That's really amazing to me because we’re in an exciting time and we're having  conversations where making connections that normally wouldn't have been made BI, before internet.

So, I'll ask again,  when was the last time you looked up something totally unfamiliar to you?  When was the last time you had a conversation with someone that was not scripted? But  rather, it was really reciprocal  with give-and-take and you were sharing in the teaching and learning.  How can we make this happen more often?Let’s  think about that! Let’s think about ways to provide an avenue for that to happen in our classes!  Let your students be  teachers and let your teachers be the learners!

 coakes photo

Resources
http://www.misterteacher.com/radialsymmetry.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal#In_nature

http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_17.htm

http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_17.htm 

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Tags: google , search

iPads Transforming the Field Notebook

Once you are a teacher, you are always thinking of ways to use new technology with purpose. Purpose  to make your job easier, purpose to help students learn new skills, or purpose to make changes in the process of being an effective 21st Century Learner.

Last week while talking to our youngest son,( a Surveying Engineer working on surveying a gas line on the east coast), he was telling me how he purchased an ipad for his personal use, then  when he began “playing around” with it, something changed and finally, he was excited that this was going to end up being a tool he could use at work.

For a week, each morning he would call with an idea or process that he had tried out on his iPad and how  it made his job easier. He explained that he could make his surveying plans into a PDF, mark them up and share with others, through their email, laptops and smartphones. Then the fact that his iPad had a camera, where he could document the joints in the pipes with an image and geotag it with longitude and latitude, added even more value to his productivity. This may not sound exciting to us in the classroom, but when you are out in the field and every second counts in a project, every joint, every cross reference, using the iPad is making his life easier and more accurate.



When I asked him how he knew how to use this softeware/app, he said, “ I just kept reading about the things the software could  do, then I made it work out for this job.” For most of us the HELP button on each software program, just sits at the top of the screen and when we are stuck, we may check it out. For Dan, the Help button has been a mentor, instructor and guide as he navigates his way through his software to do his job. The Manual for this app is an interactive pdf doc.  Dan explained that the PDF manual was a great interactive tool and he used it like an on demand interactive tutorial.

When one of his  co-workers asked him how he knew how to run this program and how he figured it out, Dan said, “My Mom was all about technology, if you knew her you would know how  I followed this problem solving technique.“  So, teachers, be all about technology, encourage all your students, use the HELP button, play and let your students play with the web, play with software, play with the HELP menu, learn it, take charge of it and own it.

 

This is the transformative process implementation that many educators have been waiting for. It is starting to carry over with our students into the business world. Keep pushing in your classroom, this 21st Century Skill is necessary for our next generation. As Dan says, “ Mom, this iPad is transformative!” I asked him where he heard about transformative  use and he wasn’t able to tell me. But, regardless of that, he certainly has the understanding, the process and he sees how his engagement is paying off in his job. He and fellow engineer, Brandon, are beginning to convince those they are working with that the iPad should be their field notebook and he has great reasons.

• One set of gas line plans costs about 300.00.
• When changes are made then the contractor needs to reprint the plans and distribute them to all the clients to ensure accuracy. More printing costs at about 300.00 for each set, again.
• iPad instant pictures with geotag information.
• One ipad about 600.00, and the ability to share documents electronically with others, priceless!