Interesting weekend reading

Had a chance to review this blog post from Ed Tech Teacher, and I think it presents an interesting...and potentially provocative...point of view.  Love to talk with folks about it in the near future!

http://edtechteacher.org/blog/?p=2150

Kaizena - add audio feedback to Google Docs

I stumbled across this article describing Kaizena, an app that allows you to add audio feedback and comments to Google Docs.  From the looks of the video in the article, this can be accessed from any web browser.  I haven't tried it yet on the iPad but will let you know some feedback once I do!
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/10/a-great-tool-to-add-audio-feedback-to.html

Daring Fireball article

All

If you are interested in Apple products in general, daring fireball.net is a good blog to subscribe to. There was recently an article there that I found really interesting regarding the tablet/laptop dichotomy and I think it is worth reading!

http://daringfireball.net/2013/10/the_ipad_air

Love to hear what you think!

Pages, Numbers, Keynote

All- I was looking through the Apple announcement from yesterday, and they are offering free copies of GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote with purchase of the iPad Air. I'm thinking we should purchase these for the faculty iPads and try them out, then maybe ask the students to purchase one or more. If we were to roll this out in any form next year those free programs would certainly be a nice part of the package to utilize and help us by keeping folks on the same platform. If you want to purchase one of those for your use, please do and then forward me the receipt. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pages/id361309726

Bloom's Taxonomy for iPads

While doing some iPad investigating this past weekend, I came across this image which falls right in line with some of our methodology at CH-CH.  Enjoy!

Screen sharing app may be worth a try

Looks like it might be worth a try. Could even work as a homework assignment where students could collaborate in real time at home, in the dorm, the library, etc..  They could then share their page with the teacher. Imagine collaborating on annotating a photo or other visual primary document?

http://www.tuaw.com/2013/10/14/share-anytime-is-a-clever-collaborative-whiteboard-app-for-ipad/

What we can learn from primary school

All- You should really take a look at this article from Slate about a private pk-8 in Switzerland. Great approach to thinking about the potential for creation with the iPad. Love to hear from any of you who have had kids use Explain Everything or a video or audio app for students to show understanding of a concept! http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/04/ipads_in_the_classroom_the_right_way_to_use_them_demonstrated_by_a_swiss.html

Spaceteam

So as you all probably know, I'm all about the games.  In this case, I think there may be more to this than just recreation.  I'd like to introduce you to a game called "Spaceteam"

...And yes, It's free.

Spaceteam is a 2-4 person cooperative yelling game.  The premise is everyone involved is on a spaceship, and on their iPad they have various knobs and buttons, levers and dials, symbols and sliders that are all named.  Everyone has a different set of "panels" they interact with.  During a round, all participants get separate instructions read out to them at the top of the display.  They need to tell the other people in the group what the instruction is (set mass spectrometer to 5, for example) and listen for other people saying instructions to them.  You do not know what panels the other players have, and once a task is completed you receive another one.  You continue finishing tasks and then move onto the next area, which is more difficult.  Sometimes there may be goo that drips over your panels forcing you to wipe it off to see what your instructions are, or your panels break off and you need to drag them back into place before using them again.  Occasionally the game changes it up and gives your panels symbols instead of names.

Now onto why I think this might be useful outside of just entertainment.

In order to get anywhere in this game you need to work together seamlessly with the (up to 4 total players) other people you are playing with.  You need to be able to communicate your instructions, listen for any tasks that might be yours, and work together in order to advance.  You need good teamwork in order to succeed.  Sometimes you need to bring out your creative side to get simple instructions across (Set snowflake to 4...I think) which engages more than just a simple giving and receiving orders task list.

Check it out, let me know what you think.  Maybe drop by and we'll go a round to see how you like it.

-=Will

P.S.  No really, it's free on the appstore.  Try it out!

Getting "outside" the four walls

One of the major elements of our MI Statement is the committment to getting out of the classroom as part of the learning process.  Found this today on the App Store & thought you al might want to see it; there are some clear connections to MGI and Adv. French, but I'm sure that there are connections to Diff EQ and A&P to be found as well.

Go to the App Store>Education>Virtual Field Trips to see what's here!

Love to try this out

I don't know if anyone else has been trolling the App Store, but I saw Talkboard the other day and I think it might be interesting.  It comes from the folks who do the "Go To Meeting" software which is pretty powerful and useful for on-line collaboration.  I'm trying to figure out how it might be useful for our meetings...though I wonder if virtual meetings, like I could use today, would make this useful, but I can imagine it working in a classroom with multiple students signing in to contrbute notes that could go the board about a poem, a picture, or some other piece of work which they were analyzing.

iPad Pilot Turbulent in These Ways...

-cost

(SAS)-if kids are overwhelmed by work, they don't always feel like delving into new iPad territory, even if they know it will help in the long run

iPad Pilot Soars in These Ways...

Launch:

Josh’s letters to parents and students set the tone and gave parents & kids detailed description

Josh’s presentation to kids: clear goals, good idea of what it’s all about, empowering message

Will’s expertise is invaluable. He’s good with the kids, clear, organized, pleasant, helpful.

Classroom:

Kids can face me and be closer together.

Kids don't have to look up at the board-they tend to just pull item up right in front of them. More active engagement.

Portability:

So portable! Kids always have them, they are light and fit in backpack easily.

2 of my kids can’t carry laptops or books because of physical issues. Another said he doesn’t bring his laptop to school because it’s too heavy.

Digital textbooks would make backpacks more reasonable to carry

Learners:

A few of my kids have a very difficult time with text and having all their books in audio format or with audio capabilities would help.

Teachers:
Easier to bring to team and parent meetings.

Technology, Teaching, and Digital Imposterism

Here's a piece I wrote on my own blog the other day when Josh created this blog.

Check it out!

Technology, Teaching, and Digital Imposterism

ios 7

Has everyone upgraded to iOS7? Do you like it, or is it pretty much the same for your purposes? 

SAMR thinking

Another quickie so we think about the SAMR model (substitution/augmentation/modification/redefinition) and where you are all working on that continuum. Here's a link to a math teacher's blog post about this which has a nice overview: http://journeyto1-1math.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-samr-model.html And an image for humanities folks to use:

Starting out

I thought I'd start this blog as a way to get us all sharing our experiences. You can set this to ping your email every time there's a new post...do so, and you'll get the latest and greatest from all of us pretty much in real time!

I'm going to share an app I'm playing with called Textilus.  It's a rich text format creation and editing app that claims to be able to move seamlessly between the app and Word/Pages/etc because all those programs translate RTF easily.  It seems, well, rich...there are ways to add bullets, bold, underline,  and all the other features you would like to have in a word processing program as well as multiple fonts, etc.  It also seems to have the ability to add pictures if you have the premium version ($4.99)...maybe worth it.  I even wrote this in Textilus, transferred it to a Word document and then put it up here!