Over the last few weeks I have been playing multiple games of Draw Something with people in Hamilton, Sydney, London and Norway. I think the free app has some possibilities for classroom use as well.
The idea is that you get a choice of three words to draw for your playing buddy. You pick one to draw and your buddy has to guess what it is that you were trying to draw. They will have twelve letter tiles to construct the word from.
You can then make a comment to encourage your playing buddy.
Then they get to draw something and you have to guess what it was. In a classroom I can see it as a language, collaborative opportunity to come up with ideas for how to represent words and then draw them.
I wanted to show you how it works so I used the ten minute free trial of Reflection.app to mirror my iPad onto my MacBook Air running Lion. I then used Quicktime to do a screen recording of it in full screen. I trimmed the ends of the screen-recording and added a track from Freeplay Music.
I then uploaded it to Vimeo to share and embed on my blog. Play it full screen to see how clever we are. Thank you Barbara Reid for being my unwitting guinea pig.
You have probably all watch a TED video or two over the years and they make excellent watching. TED have recently add TED-Ed to their arsenal. The idea is that you can any use TED or YouTube video via a hyperlink and add some questions around it, link some further readings or resources and add a big question to construct a personalised lesson.
I thought I would give it a whirl to see if it was easy enough and worth recommending. I decided to use a video I had made in 2006 outlining how my class operated at that time. The video had been on Teacher Tube and has had over 70 downloads so some people obviously liked it but no one seems to use Teacher Tube any more.
TED-Ed is in beta but still worth a look. You can either look at the TED-ED lessons that others have made or, better still, make your own lessons and link them to your learning space.
I would like to share my school day with teachers from Barbara Reid‘s ICTPD Cluster in Hamilton in the holidays.
I nade a couple of Keynote presentations and uploaded them to Slideshare so I could share them more widely and all the hyperlinks would work when viewed. I had to cull them a bit to fit them in under the 10MB upload file size.
The first is focussing on the junior school, the second on seniors. For the Junior presentation I also used the blogs of Sherryn Lines and Cherryl Eden to help illustrate. Thanks team.
I received an email this morning which lead me to write a blog post to illicite some responses from people as to how they promote their class blog and get some interactions and conversations happening through it.
“My kids are very eager to share their learning with others and link up with other schools. In your experience with class blogs, how were you able to promote your blogs with other schools and countries?”
My response…
Firstly I would post regular updates on our own blog so that people have something new to read, or look or listen to at on their next visit.
To promote our class blog firstly I made connections with others teachers who blog.
Find like a ‘gym buddy’ – another teacher or class who is keen to link up and learn with you.
To do that I would read their blogs and leave comments for them on their blog. I would maybe do this first as just a teacher and see if they post regularly and are keen for some kind of dialogue. You don’t want to waste your time leaving feedback on a blog that isn’t being updated and monitored.
Then I would model with your class how to leave constructive comments on their blog so they know what to do when it comes to leaving comments- how they should look and how they can encourage interaction. This article on how to encourage blog commenting may help. http://primarytech.global2.vic.edu.au/2011/09/23/attracting-blog-comments/
I would definitely join Twitter and make connections and learn that way. Once on Twitter you can link to your blog and add the hashtag #comments4kids and other teachers/classes may make connections for you.
And I would put links on the side bar of the class blog to the other blogs that you regularly converse with. Not too many because you could loose track but your favourite ones that post and comment often.
Quadblogging is another cool concept- David Mitchell on Twitter has initiated a project where four classes get together and take turn about being the centre of attention and leaving of comments. The web site links classes together globally but we have just done it informally with a couple of nearby schools with good success and enthusiasm in the participating classes.
The idea of sending out a travel toy like Kirsten McGhie does in her class is also a great idea to spread news of your blog around. Here is Kirsten’s EdTalk video about here travel toy.
Generally just think of fun ways to engage children with your blog- make it interactive and interesting. Write posts that incite interest and conversation- leave things open ended.
Lastly I would make sure that every piece of paper that goes out from your class has the blog address on it so the parent / whanau community know where on the web you are. I would also make sure that your blog is linked from the school web site so that visitors cruising the web can easily find you.
What suggestions do you have for promoting your class blog that you can add to help Katie?
I am presenting a workshop for teachers in my area on how an iPad can transform learning. I made a good chunk of the presentation on the iPad using Keynote. I decided to activate iCloud for Keynote so I have it on my phone and Mac Book Air as well.
I put it here as I spent a lot of time making it and its good to share
My featured apps are hyperlinked so you can delve more deeply should you wish.
As you may know the Link Learning ICT Cluster has loaned me an iPad to use with my teaching, to download apps that may be useful for learning and to recommend to teachers the apps that prove themselves to be powerful learning tools.
There is only the one iPad in the school and it is only there on the one day a week that I teach so, as you can imagine, it’s a pretty scarce commodity that’s much used when it is at school. I try to have it in children’s hands as much as possible by pairing children up, allowing the children to use my iPhone and iPod Touch and trying to make sure each child gets some iPad time each day when I am teaching.
Yesterday children were finishing off and proof reading a ‘beginning of the school year’ story.
Here’s a little original idea I had – I don’t get many of those so I thought I had better share it pretty quick.
I will call the child in this story Smilie cos he didn’t want to be named! Smilie told me that he written his story and that he had finished proof reading it. I loved the story- it made me laugh out loud and with Smilie’s permission I read it to the class. I took a photo of a Smilie’s draft writing with the iPad 2 camera and put it up on the ordinary whiteboard with the data projector. I called the class together and together we looked at what we might do to edit the text.
Then I switched the data projector off, leaving just the editing. We then looked at patterns with the things we edited and saw that Smilie need to work on identifying spelling errors in words that he really does know, to make sure the full stops are in the right place and put capitals after all the full stops.
I could have probably done this activity without the iPad just using a digital camera and a heap of cords but the joy of using the iPad is that it can happen in the wink of an eye, as the need arises.
As a corollary to this activity I am preparing an after school workshop tomorrow on creative iPad apps so set to work turning Smilie’s story into a book with the Scribblepress app on the iPad.
As Kevin Honeycutt did at Learning at School I decided to buy a hard cover copy of the illustrated test run of the app. The Scribblepress people were very helpful via Twitter when I got stuck at one stage and to clarify things they sent me a pdf of the story. Here it is with the story by Smilie and the drawings and photos by me!
The hardcover book should arrive in 5-7 days- I can’t wait! Click on the book cover to see how it will look as a real book!
This morning via Twitter Kevin Honeycutt shared a video excerpt from his soon to be published eBook. The excerpt is titled Digital Literacy and Employment. I spent some time watching it and it held my interest right to the end which is good cos I often can’t concentrate for that length of time.
I think his audience is young adults, teachers and parents. He talks conversationally to young people about the implications of being digital and addresses issues around developing a network that can enhance your career or sink it!
A must watch for anyone learning with young people. To view the video click on the graphic and wait for it to load- I watched it on my iPhone.
While at Learning at School CORE Education generously gave me a Kindle Fire to play with for a bit and see what I thought of it for school use. I managed to convince them that I needed to take it home with me to give it a decent run.
So here are my thoughts on the Kindle Fire…
Plus
On first look- it feels nice. It has a nice to the touch back on it and it’s a good size to hold in one hand. I am not so sure though that, for me that size is right. It was a stretch for me to get my delicate lady hands around it- I’m not sure.
As soon as you register the device the books you have already bought on Amazon miraculously appear. I don’t have a Kindle but use the Kindle app on the iPad. I like the sepia type background rather than the black/white background of the ordinary Kindle.
When you highlight text in a document it allows you to go straight to Google- I just noticed that the iPad will do the same thing as well as give you a dictionary meaning.
I haven’t needed to recharge it yet so I presume the battery lasts a decent amount of time.
Once I loaded some music the audio was good and strong and there is a headphone jack.
YouTube videos fill the whole screen and play smoothly.
As you bring up different books, music, apps or documents they nestle themselves into the OSX ‘cover flow’ look alike menu which is handy if you want to go back to something quickly.
It multi-tasks- you can listen to music while you read your book.
Once the photos load they look good and will rotate to fill the screen.
Minus
It’s heavy- in comparison to an ordinary Kindle it is much heavier.
Some of the downloaded icons are downright fuzzy- so low resolution that they make my eyes sore.
It doesn’t have a camera- even a not so great one like an iPad.
It’s not very intuitive- maybe I have been so well trained to the ways of Apple but I found navigating it annoying.
As you register the device it gives you a month’s free Premium membership which is useless cos you can’t stream the movies in New Zealand any way. You can watch the trailers which looked to be a good.
I wanted to see how it would cope with emailing a pdf to it that I had made. I thought I could just email it to the Kindle that had assigned me an email address but I had to go to the web and authorise the sender (myself) first. I suppose this is good in that you would only get emails from address you pre-approve but in a school setting that could be downright annoying as you would have to individually allow all senders on by one.
Once I had the pdf on the Kindle Fire I was disappointed with the reading of it- an ordinary A4 font was too small to read and I had to keep sliding back and forwards across the page to be able to read the text.
I tried to play Adobe Flash type games from my class blog and it wouldn’t. It didn’t offer to download a flash player so came to a bit of a dead end on that score.
The keyboard is slow to the the touch- I kept waiting for it to catch up.
I thought that it might have a USB hole for a camera but as far as I can work out you have to transfer the photos from the camera to your computer with one USB cord and then transfer them to the Kindle with another USB cord. I could soon get sick of that. To get the photos on to the Kindle you drag them into the pictures folder, like you would do onto a USB flash drive.
I like to view my photos but to find them you have to work out which of the icons in the cover flow is the Gallery as the Home Menu Bar only has – Newstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps and Web.
I could see there was already a movie in the video folder in a .mov format so I added another- I couldn’t find either of them again- I wonder if the video folder only holds downloaded movies which we can’t get in New Zealand.
Interesting/Wonderings
You can’t buy it in the shops yet but you can buy one on Trade Me for $380NZ.
I couldn’t find an airplane mode for reading in flight but I assume there must be one- somewhere. I couldn’t find a way to switch the internet off.
I couldn’t see any way to lock the screen – it kept on changing aspect on me which I found irritating.
From the look of it you can, with one click, deauthorise everything on it which would be handy when passing it on to someone else.
Can you download some kind of Flash player so you can play Flash games?
I wonder if you can record audio onto it in some way?
I wondering about the Terms of Service for books bought from Amazon for educational use. With Apple you are supposed to buy one copy of an app per device. Is it legal to buy one book and have it readable on multiple devices should a school buy a pod of Kindles?
Thanks CORE for the opportunity to test drive the Kindle but I am happy enough to hand it back.
I wonder what other people think of it but in my opinion I would save up and buy something that did more or stick with an ordinary lightweight Kindle that you can read books on and leave it at that.
BTW I made the movie below with Action Movie on the iPad.
I just made a Google presentation under my own account- then I made a slide for each student.
I made sure it was open for everyone to edit without a log in.
Then put a link to that presentation on the blog so the children would know where to find it.
Children then went to the blog, clicked on the link, found their slide and filled it in. I believe that twenty people can edit a Google presentation at one time so as many children as there are computers can work on editing.
When everyone has done editing I then close it off by making it so no one can edit it so no cherub could wreck it and write stuff in the holidays that I didn’t know of.
I then put the html embed code on the blog so it would play there.
If all that seems a bit tricky then I have made a three minute tutorial on how to do it.
At Learning at School Kevin Honeycutt suggested that we make learning rewindable- here I have done just that.
If you get stuck you can rewind, pause or stop the video while you practice.
Make it full screen by clicking on the bottom right hand corner of the video if you want a better view.
Have a flick through- the kids wrote some fun stuff.
All well and good. I was reading the class blog of new Twitter follower Hineata Blair from Hamilton East School this morning and was thrilled to see that she is intending to use that sort of idea with her class this year. She asked us what were the five things that you would like your teacher to know about you. I wanted to support what she has done for her children by leaving a comment so I wrote my answers as an adult learner to the people who might teach me in a classroom or lecture theatre.
This is what I wrote…
I want my teachers to know that….
I want to be inspired to want to learn what they want to teach me.
I want them to understand that I might not learn in the same way that they did when they went to school.
I want them to know that I want to be connected to other learners, not just the ones in my classroom.
I want them to know that I can show my learning in ways that aren’t writing and drawing a poster.
I want them to give me time to play, learn and share things that I want to learn about.
How would YOU answer?
Maybe this could be a meme. I am going to tag some people to write what their five things would be. As you write your answers could you share your thoughts in the comments or write your own post on your blog and link it back to this post. Try tagging five other people to do the same and we can see how big this post can get.
The conference is to be held for the first time in Hamilton at the Claudelands Events Centre and I have nearly 50 participants registered for the breakout. As I am heading to the beach for a couple of days pre-conference and I am not giving out a paper handout the resource I am going to link it here so that everyone who visits the blog can have a look as well and may find it useful.
The abstract for the workshop covers…
• Developing a Personal Learning Network-
• Twitter
• Blogging
• Using RSS
• Google Tools
• Delicious Social Bookmarking
• Virtual Learning Network
• Creative Commons
• QR codes
• Sharing your learning with others
I apologise if your name is not on my list of kiwi tweeters for participants to follow but the list is not meant to be comprehensive and is meant as a starter for people to begin developing a PLN.
We engage with our children through blogging throughout the year and I wondered if, in the spirit of collaboration, we might come together to share some of our favourite posts that we have published during the year. Some teachers just picked the one post that was most memorable for them and some teachers asked their students which posts most resonated with them.
I also thought the resource may then be useful for others as they look forward to 2012 to see what others have been blogging about in other parts of the country.
My next step was to think of a place to put the pages and web links. A year and a half ago my preference would have been to make a wiki but this year I have really appreciated the ease of use and cleaness of using a Google site. I often find Wikispaces tricky and things don’t sometimes turn out how you want them to when I am using a wiki.
At first I promoted the idea of people editing the Google site themselves and adding their own images and links but at the busy report writing time of the year people didn’t seem so keen on that idea so I just asked them to email or tweet me the links and I would do the rest.
I made a two column table on the Google site to keep the formatting even and had to add an extra column as the number of posts grew. Now it doesn’t look so pretty when viewed on my iPad but no matter.
As people sent me the link I took a screen grab of the post ( Shift + Command + 4 on my Mac ) and then hyperlinked the image and the URL web address.
This post is probably over long but I am writing it in Evernote on my iPad on a flight back from Auckland after having been evacuated from the Nelson floods. Contrary to public opinion I cannot hold back flood waters so attended a Sustainability Forum up north for a couple of days instead. Now I look forward to spending a few days slushing away the mud at home.
You are welcome to tweet or email me your links from your own blog before the new year and I can add them to the resource.
Over the last couple of weeks the K12 OnLine Conference has been churning out free, online video and audio workshops. Some time ago I was invited to prepare a presentation in the Sandbox Play chapter of the conference.
All of the presentations are available for download in iTunesU which is a good way to view them.
I feel I have a pretty good handle on QR Codes now and the concept is new to many so I thought sharing with others about what I have learnt along the way would make an interesting presentation. My presentation was a audio-visual recap of the QR Code blog posts of last term.
The video is 9 minutes long. You can download the original from Dropbox if you wish.
I made it as an enhanced podcast in Garageband because I can make Garageband hum way better than iMovie. It played perfectly on my computer but in one of life’s little mysteries it refused to upload properly and the audio and graphics were out of synch. I tried exporting it in a heap of ways and uploading to Zamzar, YouTube, and Vimeo but all I achieved was an email from Telecom telling me I was exceeding my monthly broadband allowance. I whined about it on Twitter and Julia came through with the idea of trying to convert the video using http://www.online-convert.com/. The conversion and re-upload to Vimeo worked so here it is in all its glory.
If you have a clever smartphone, iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad give QR codes a whirl. My class love them and they are really easy to create and share.
I would love to know how you get on. How are you using QR codes?
A while ago NZ Education Review asked me to write an article for them sharing the path I took to change my practice over the last few years using ICT.
They published it in digital form today with Issuu which I quite like because it looks like a book to read and you can zoom in and turn the pages, just like the real thing.
The whole publication makes good reading- my article is on page 21/22. Click on the image to take you to the web book.
They even added a QR code to the article like I asked them too.
It was at last year’s K12 Conference that I first heard Dean Shareski’s Sharing- Moral Imperative which had a profound affect on my thinking about what we do in the classroom.
This year I am presenting a session on using QR codes in the classroom. The conference starts with a pre-conference Keynote on November 21 USA time and then there will be a series of presentations that you can view for free at any time from the comfort of your couch. Here are a list of the other presenters.
Tonight I made a teaser Animoto video to whet your appetite for what is to come.
Yesterday I had the privilege to meet a group of people, mainly mothers of young children with neuro-developmental delays who were helping their children communicate with iPads. I was inspired by their interest and by the innovative ways they were using their iPads.
The session was lead by Bianca and her young son, Kaiden, made an appearance via video. This video shows the progress that Kaiden has made in three months since he got his iPad. Awesome.
Kaiden has had his iPad for 3 months. Here is how far he has come! I had been trying for nearly a year to teach him to use his pointing finger and it took about 6 weeks with the iPad – AMAZING! The apps he is using are…. Peekaboo Barn, Peekaboo Ocean, Baby Touch, Sparkabilities 2, Choiceboard Maker (now upgraded and called Choiceboard Creator).
For those new to my blog all of my posts that share my learning with iPads can be found under the iOS tab by clicking here.
Also take a moment to watch this inspirational video of how Bianca, Kaiden and his physiotherapist work together using the iPad as a motivator. Well done Kaiden.
Bianca listed the apps she uses with Kaiden on a piece of paper. To make it easier for people to find those apps I am basically re-creating them here with hyperlinks to make the accessing of them easier.
In most browsers when you click on the link it will ask you if want to open iTunes- you say yes and it takes you directly to iTunes where you can download the app.
There is a great Facebook page called Babies with iPads which has a thriving community of people sharing apps and posting videos of their progress using apps to support learning. And this one Apps for Children with Special Needs has lots of apps demos which are great to look at to see if an app is right for your child before deciding whether to spend money on buying it.
Apps for Communicating between Home and School
Each child has an iPad that is theirs. We can capitalise on the communication between parents, whanau, school, teacher aides, teachers but writing (and emailing) quick Notes from the Notes app telling of progress.
Use the camera for stills or video to capture those wonderful moments when breakthroughs are made- share with parents who aren’t able to be there.
Simple Touch- Cause and Effect Apps
To teach swiping, pointing, anticipating movement, press and hold.
Sonic Pics ($4.19) I have linked to the paid version but there is a free lite version that only lets you record three photos. Record a voiceover over your photos and make a little movie.http://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/sonicpics/id345295488?mt=8
Choosing the right one for your child may be a bit of a mission but looking at previews and demos on the app developer’s website and YouTube maybe useful.
TapSpeak Choice ($199.99) This one is expensive but it’s what Bianca chose that seemed to be the best choice for Kaiden
Thank you Bianca for sharing a snapshot of your journey with Kaiden with us. I hope this post will be useful for others with pre-schoolers and children with special needs using their iPad to play and learn.
At school today I had issues with internet speed so I went to http://speedtest.net/ and did a speed test. I was on my Mac Book Air so the test was wireless….
I then went to a class iMac that was wired with an ethernet cable and got….
Because I know people, I then rang up people who knew people and they did clever Loop internet firewall things. I then tried again. Vast improvement. Cooking with gas- as my father used to say!
When I went home I tried again – I’d be interested for you to do a test and see what you get at school.
When I try to export from some applications on the iPad I have been emailing them to my laptop but it gives me share as WebDav (WEB based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) as an option. I didn’t know what WebDav was and how to get it.
This morning I sorted it.
Firstly I downloaded the app Box.Net which automatically gives me 50GB of on line storage if you sign up before the end of October- plenty of storage to be going on with.
I then logged in the Box.net on my laptop and created a folder to put my iOS files into. I called that folder iPadDocs.
Going back to my Pages document on my iPhone I clicked on the Spanner which took me to Share and Print.
Then I clicked on Copy to WebDav. I had to put in the Server address which was https://www.box.net/dav//iPadDocs . The iPadDocs part of the Server Address is the folder that I had made.
You can also put in the server address https://www.box.net/dav//and it will let you chose which folder to put your files in which would make it easier to file things but maybe make it trickier for little folk to decide where to put their files!!!
I entered my Box.net username and password. It then asked me which format I want the upload to be, I clicked COPY and away it went.
Once it uploaded you can download the files on other iOS devices and share folders with other users.
I hope you find this post useful in sorting a simple way to share docs between devices in your class.
I like that you don’t have to rely on aging school servers to share files and continue working on them.
My laptop made it onto the big stage at the Pecha Kucha at ULearn11. Jeannette Murphy stepped up with five minutes notice and did a stunning Pecha Kucha that she pulled down from her Slideshare. account. She needed a device to read her notes from and my laptop did the trick. With Jeaneete’s permission I re-create her Pecha Kucha here.
This pecha kucha presentation is based on student achievement and what I believe to be six positive aspects of e-Learning. The images that I am about to share are in fact visual representations as symbols of one word that I have strongly associated with each aspect. Let’s get started with this chain of paper dolls. My word for positive aspect one of e-Learning is CONNECT. What we want for our young people is that they be connected, become effective users of I.T tools and have the ability to relate well with others. e-Learners at Putauaki have connected with so many people locally, nationally and globally. Being CONNECTed in a sense, also promotes communication and equality for anyone… anytime and anywhere.
Mandala is the sanskrit word for circle and represents the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism. A group of 12 things is called a duodecad so this is a duodecad hand mandala.My word for positive aspect two of e-Learning is COLLABORATE. To collaborate is to work together to achieve a common goal and encourage interaction in a multitude of ways. It is about being active in a range of contexts. Last year e-Learners at Putauaki participated in the global One Day on Earth project that involved sharing planned activities on the 10.10.10 with people all over the world. We are now planning to complete 11 science and technology challenges for the 11.11.11.
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline originating from ancient India. This is the balasana or child pose and represents the foetal position – a relaxation stance.My word for positive aspect three of e-Learning is FLEXIBILITY. This means having the ability to adapt to a new situation or change and being resilient. About a month ago a group of e-Learners took up the challenge as teachers of digital photography and Powerpoint for students at Thornton Primary. The same group who work with PCs, will this week learn 3D and animation using iMacs at the Tech Pa, TeWhareWananga o Awanuiarangi in Whakatane. Two of them have also been selected to present pechakucha style at the Mini GATE symposium for REAP next month.
Pascallis a confectionery company once owned by Cadbury, now owned by Kraft Foods and there is one New Zealand factory in Dunedin. Jet plane lollies made by Pascall are my Kiwi Kid favourite. I am not sure if that ‘desire’ has something to do with the shape or range of colours and/or whether it’s because I have the option to chew off the wings or the cockpit first. My word for positive aspect four of e-Learning is CHOICE. Including choice encourages intrinsic motivation, ownership of work and promotes student-centred learning. e-Learners at Putauaki really like it that choice is about being given the option to present using an array of e-learning mediums that can easily be combined.
The tōtara tree is a native that grows around 30 metres taking 100 years to do so and is noted for its root system and great girth of trunk. The Pouakani tree, near Pureora is over 35 metres tall, nearly 4 metres in trunk diameter and the largest living.There is a saying in Maori “Kuahinga he totaraitewaonui a Tane” meaning ‘a totara has fallen in the forest of Tane’ The totara is like a strong, proud warrior so for one of them to fall is indeed a great tragedy. The saying is similar to the whakatauki or proverb that is etched in my father’s headstone. My word for positive aspect five of e-Learning is INTEGRATE. Integration addresses different learning styles and supports an inquiry approach to thinking and learning. Integration is part and parcel of an e-Learning classroom.
The dandelion is a perennial, herbaceous plant, considered a weed and is used to treat liver problems. The dandelion leaves adds flavour to salads, sandwiches and teas.My word for positive aspect five of e-Learning is CREATE. If creation is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, then we want our young people to be creatively resourceful, innovative,enterprising and entrepreneurial.
Conclusively I believe that…“It is not that we can meet the e-learning outcomes of technology, it is more the thinking and learning behind the technologies as students…
1. Connect
2. Collaborate
3. have Flexibility
4. are given Choice
5. can Integrate and…
6 also Create…
To go beyond what can be done in the classroom environment that is so important.
Thanks Jeanette. Your Pecha Kucha was inspirational.
