I have the privilege to be asked to share some of my thinking around Modern Learning Environments in Auckland this week. The day was hosted by TTS and held at Sorento. Here is my presentation so participants can click on the links and easily find the resources that I am sharing. As always I think of other things I need to add after I have published something but as my mate, Kevin Honeycutt says, ‘Don’t wait to be good at something before you do it’. Here is my something!
All of my favourite apps that I use in my classroom or see the potential of are on my initial iPad set up site for people new to iPads who want to know where to start.
I add to it all the time as I come across new things and occasionally ditch things as something better comes along. My most used apps are those where we get to create things, to make things and learn things.
All of the links in the presentation below should work too to take you straight to the app link in iTunes.
One of the regular highlights of #Ulearn12 is the Apple Smacdown where Apple Distinguished Educators and Apple fan people share their favourite Apple apps or learning in a fast paced sharing session.
Everyone only gets two minutes to share their stuff and all their links must be on line and readily clickable.
Dorothy Burt and Fiona Grant kick things off and everyone takes turns to share their stuff. It is a great session with last year’s smacdown and participants contributions listed.
I am really looking forward to the Google Summit and ULearn this year. One of my presentations is ‘Transforming Learning with an iPad’. A little presumptuous maybe but I do believe that putting an iPad in children and teachers’ hands can really transform the way we do things in school.
I have stripped the embedded media from my Keynote presentation, converted it to Powerpoint and uploaded it to Slideshare in the hope that more people than the 30 in my workshop will get the benefit of seeing what I am sharing. Some of the formatting is a bit off but you can get the idea!!
This is a third revision from earlier in the year.
The hyperlinks work so if you click on them it will take you to the apps directly.
Audioboo is a native iPhone app that you can use on your iPad. You can easily record audio and upload it to your blog. You can record up to five minutes of audio.
Audioboo
Either log in or sign up to have an Audioboo account. Click record.
There is a 3, 2, 1 countdown before you start recording.
You can pause the recording as you go to take a breath or gather your thoughts.
Click publish when you’re done recording. Name your recording and add a photo. It will queue to upload. Then you’ll see a little red 1 added to My Boos.
Click on the arrow to the right of your Audioboo.
Click on MORE and OPEN IN SAFARI.
Look for where is says EMBED. Press and hold to select all of it when you see the embed code.
Blogger
Now you are ready to share your AudioBoo. Go to your Blogger app and log in.
Blogger will ask you permission to access your photos. It will need to do that to access your Camera Roll.
Click on the pencil to write a new blog post. Write in the title and paste the code you got from Safari into the body of the blog post.
If you have labels on your blog remember to add them.
Then click Publish.
Go to Safari to see how the blog post looks and listen on line!
You can make simple video trim edits from within the iPad camera roll itself. With Vimeo you can upload your videos to Vimeo and embed them on your blog.
For this tutorial I used the iPad video camera to take a movie. This workflow works with any video in the Camera Roll. In this project we are only going to trim the ends of the video. To do more complex editing I would recommend iMovie.
To take a movie open the camera app slide the camera icon to the right.
Once you have made the movie it will be in your Photos Camera Roll. You can trim the beginning and end by touching the timeline at the top until it turns yellow & drag the ends toward the middle and then click TRIM.
Vimeo
Open the Vimeo app and log in or join. Click on upload.
Choose the video that you want to upload. Give it a Title and select its quality. It will upload. This might take a while.
The video will render for a while and then you will be able to see it in the timeline.
Click on the video to play it and scroll down the screen to see a menu bar.
Click on the CC to select the appropriate Creative Commons licence.
Click on the Up/Down arrows to pretend to email the link to the video so you can get the URL for the video.
Press and hold the URL address, select and copy it. Post the the URL into the Safari address bar. Look for the SHARE icon.
Look for the embed code. Press and hold the embed code. Select all of it and copy it.
Blogger
Now you are ready to share your video. Go to your Blogger app and log in.
Blogger will ask you permission to access your photos. It will need to do that to access your Camera Roll.
Click on the pencil to write a new blog post.
Paste the copied embed code into the body of the blog post.
If you have labels on your blog remember to add it. Then click Publish.
Over the weekend I had the privilege of attending the Apple Distinguished Educators first ever New Zealand official get together in Auckland. Apart from getting to know one another better the main thrust for the event was to make a video potentially for iTunes U. We were put in to three groups of five with a Final Cut Pro expert on hand for when we got stuck and got on with it. It was a little like Masterchef with a final countdown for 4pm on Saturday afternoon. Almost two solid days of work for a 90 second video! The end result was pretty good though.
I am happy to say I have a couple of things in iTunes U already owing to my involvement in the K12 OnLine Conference over the last couple of years.
While we were there we were privileged to also hear from Rhonda Kite, the CEO of Kiwa Media. I was impressed, very impressed with her vision, passion and skills. We have such talented New Zealanders here.
It is Kiwa Media that have developed the Hairy Maclary and Wonky Donkey apps that I already had. Previously I had just had the apps auto play but now realise there is more to it than that. On my return to school on Monday we had a look at the Hairy Maclary book being signed as it was read. My class were impressed as they could sort of see what was being read at the same time as listening and reading. Then we had a go at adding our own narration. Fortunately the I had a parent willing to help and an empty classroom next door because I left my iRig noise cancelling microphone at home.
When I got home I used Reflectionapp to mirror my iPad onto my laptop and used Quicktime to record the screen and Vimeo to post to the web.
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.
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.
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.
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.
People have been asking me recently, “What can’t an iPad do?” Today I found out. Or at least I found out how I would try it next time to make it work.
I decided I wanted to make this whole project on the iPad and not touch the laptop.
On Thursday I recorded the class I was working with choral speaking a poem. I didn’t have my iRig mike with me so quickly grabbed the audio with the free app QuickVoice Recoder cos there wasn’t a lot of time before PMP.
I wanted to basically create an enhanced podcast like I do on my laptop with Garageband. Easy I thought. No great timing or editing involved. Piece of cake.
Not so much!
The big hiccup was that Quickvoice only has email out of the .caf file. For all the apps that my Twitter network suggested might work, like Keynote, iMovie and Reel Director, all needed the audio to already be in iTunes.
I tried emailing the .caf file to myself on the iPad from Quickvoice hoping that it would give me options like when you email and ePub- it asks, “Would you like to open this in iBooks.” I was hoping I would get a, “Would you like to open this in iTunes.” No such luck.
The iRig mike app has an iTunes File Sharing export function but I set myself to try and do the project without the laptop. I tried recording the Quickvoice recording with the iRig mike but of course as soon as I put the mike in the iPad jack it muted the sound out so it wouldn’t go through the speakers.
I had taken the photos of the kids’ monsters with my iPhone and used the Photo Transfer App to get the photos on to the laptop so at least I didn’t have to use any cords.
I would hope that there would be a great app for doing this but I couldn’t work it out. Not at least with a pre-recorded audio track. So I gave up and went back to the laptop and had the job done in five minutes. I uploaded it to Vimeo at least which gave me easy playback on the iPad without having to use Puffin that plays Blogger flash based videos.
Over the Christmas holidays I made an application to be attend the Google Teacher Academy in Sydney. I wasn’t successful but I quite liked the theme of my video so thought I would share it with you. I’m so looking forward to the Apple Event next weekend.
Did I tell you I love my job? At the end of last year at a cluster governance meeting Charles Newton asked me, “Did I have an iPad yet?” I have an iPhone, iBook, iPod Touch, iPhone and some iPods but no iPad.
What was a girl to do but get herself an iPad. Or better still have work get me an iPad. Over the holidays I set about getting one and booking it up! I bought a robust cover for it from Trade Me cos it’s going to get a goodly amount of handing about over the year.
Over the holidays I put a decent amount of down time getting to know it and scouring my Personal Learning Network for excellent apps for teachers and children. Then we product tested it with family visitors over January.
Early in the new year two schools in my patch did a spot of heavy investing in iPads and I helped them deploy the iPads. I thought our learning may be of interest to others about to do a similar thing so here goes…
There is a discussion as to whether it is worthwhile buying screen protectors. One school is leasing the iPads and chose not to have screen protectors thus saving $400. The other school has bought theirs and put covers on. Only time will tell how the ‘naked’ iPads will fare. I will report back in three years time.
iPads are meant to be single user devices and you have to think carefully of how you might manage that in a classroom situation. We thought about how to individualise the iPads so that students could tell them apart by putting different stickers on them and making each homepage image different. Maybe next time I would suggest if you were going to buy skins or covers for them that you buy as many different colours of them as possible so students can remember which one they were using. They all look the same and a lot of the work or content you have created on them would be stored on each machine separately and different covers would help children tell which is which if they were going to come back to it at a later stage.
We physically had to take the iPads around the school to hook them up to the different wireless networks. A task done once to safe initial frustration of not being able to get on the internet.
Warren Hall wrote an interesting post on the CORE blog about the purchase of apps on multiple devices. It is problematic to buy apps legally for use in schools with multiple iPads. I hope a practical solution is sorted out soon.
At home with my iPad I made a new email address just for the iPad because I didn’t want it synching with my personal emails. That is something we will sort out a bit later. If you want to get a document or screengrab onto another device email is an easy way to do it. I wonder what other people do for this- will one email address cover all of the iPads? A question for Learning at School workshop presenters next week.
To take a screen grab- press the home button first and then the power together takes a screen grab and puts it in the photo library.
To save a photo from the internet press and hold. It saves it to your photo album where it can be accessed by other applications like Photogene and Sonic Pics.
To add a web-page on the home screen. Go to the page, tap arrow out icon and select where to add the bookmark.
So here are some of my all time favourite apps for the iPads… so far at least.
Sonic Pics- $4:19 Buy the paid version. It’s worth it. Digital storytelling at its easiest- exports as email, YouTube or direct transfer via URL
World Maths Day 2011- free- practice before and after the day and go live when the week is on.
Puppet Pals- free but you can buy extra scenes and characters. Last week we used the app to practise our mihi. You manipulate characters and record voiceovers. Kids love it. It doesn’t export unfortunately but its creators are working on that feature. To export I just videoed the scene.
Talking Tom Cat- free but you can buy extra characters. Tom is really cute and he repeats everything you say. Great for encouraging talking. You can save what he says as a movie for export.
Animalia- $5:29 Like the book except the pages don’t get all torn and ripped.
Running Records- $2:59 Save yourself hours of mucking about with a calculator- it does the running record calulations for you in seconds.
Photogene $4:19 iPhoto like photo editing app- my fav editor. I know the iPad hasn’t got a camera but you can get photos on to the iPad when you synch it with your computer or by buying a USB adapter dongle.
Toy Story- free great graphics- comes with a simple game.
iBooks- free You can save pdfs from your computer directly to iBooks. really handy feature as well as view books to read.
Crazy Copy- free. Just like the old game of Simon Says where you copy sound patterns
Draw Board- free Just the thing for it you are missing your old blackboard.
That will do for the time being but there are lots more to share and more to come I am sure.
Over the Christmas school holidays I had put a considerable amount of time into thinking about and applying to be an Apple Distinguished Educator. Tonight that effort paid off with an email of acceptance into the programme. I am humbled by the calibre of those who applied and missed out and of those that applied and were accepted. Kia kaha. Kia manawanui.
I am also humbled by the number of congratulatory tweets I got after I did my happy dance on Twitter. What a hoot. I was top trending topic on Twitter there for a moment. I never knew there was such a thing. You learn something new every single day.
Here is there press release for the programme…
“The Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) Program began in 1994, when Apple identified key educators from around the globe who were emerging as leaders in the field of educational technology. Today, after 15 years, this community now consists of over 1,500 educators worldwide who utilise technology to impact how we educate students in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. Apple is pleased to welcome me as one of the 40 newly selected members for the ADE Class of 2011 in Australia and New Zealand. Learn more about this group of innovative educators online at http://www.apple.com/au/education/apple-distinguished-educator/
Practically it means that we go to Sydney in April for four days of networking and training for the Apple Institute in Newport. What an adventure that will be.
Here is my video that I made as part of the application.
