Monthly Archives: October 2014

Embedding You Tube Videos from an iPad

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A friend who had got herself into a bit of a loop recently wanted to know how to embed an Explain Everything exported video into a Blogger blog and only use an iPad. I have found that if you just use Safari you can get caught in a loop of using the You Tube App and you can’t get to the embed code as you would be able to do easily on a laptop.

To make the original test video I used Explain Everything.

You will also need to have Chrome installed on your iPad.

To record the tutorial I mirrored my iPad onto my laptop using Reflector App.

To make the finger taps visible  on the iPad I used Mouseposé. Mouseposé is a Mac App so I tapped the Mac screen with one hand while tapping the iPad screen with the other hand at the same time to make it look like I was opening apps etc on the iPad. Any other ways of achieving the same affect would be much appreciated.

I also added this as a resource to Bling for Your Blog to make it easy to find. Hope people find it useful.

After making this tutorial and sharing Deon Scanlon from Australia suggested an even simpler way of embedding a You Tube video into Blogger that didn’t even need an embed code. It’s funny isn’t it. You always do what you’ve always done. I had used Deon’s method for photos but hadn’t noticed it for videos.

Adding Keyboards in iOS 8

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This is cross posted from my Boys Writing Blog

Over the holidays I updated my iPad to iOS8 which allows for users to install new keyboards from app developers. I have had Swype on my 3G Android Camera for some time and liked it. I wondered how it would go with kids. Some liked it and some didn’t. I think if you are very much a struggling writer then tapping each letter as you go would be a better option but for those who have some writing skills under their belt Swping would be worth persisting with to get the hang of it.

Play the video in full screen to see what T is saying and Swyping to see how it is supporting his writing.

T doesn’t know how to spell through and spelt it as thought but when he spells operation as operasion the app leads him to the correct spelling and gives him close choices should his Swping be less than accurate.

I also liked the way that he pauses to think of the word in chunks to better help him break down the writing process- the video helps make the learning visible.

I notice that T is also pushing the space bar for spaces between words. The app knows where the spaces are as he takes his finger off the screen so he doesn’t necessarily need to do that.

The other keyboard that I think that would be good to install as a choice with be Lower Case Keyboard by our very own Matt Thomas.

Matt has made the lower case keyboard with the Open Dyslexic font so as to better support learners who find differentiating letters tricky.

Just a note though that there is a bit of an iOS bug at the moment and you need to turn off guided access before you can install the new keyboards. I am sure it will be ironed out before too long.

ULearn14 Mobile Day: Dice Activity

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This year at ULearn Mobile Day Barbara Reid and I shared our learning around ‘Transforming Learning with an iPad’. We wanted to make the event as engaging and useful as we can, modelling self directed learning and collaboration amongst participants.

One of the ideas we had was to lead participants in combining apps on their iPads to create and share new learning artifacts. I had used the same idea at Newmarket School Teacher Only Day earlier in the year and it worked really well.

I thought I would share the share the process and resources here so that others could take that same idea and run with it themselves.

Firstly we chose six apps that were more about the collection of information: the camera, Safari web browser, taking screen grabs, Drawing Pad, AR Dinopark and Pattern Shapes. These apps also could pretty much be used for a variety of purposes, not limited to one curriculum area or level. We also tried to pick apps that had light versions so people would not feel obliged to buy apps before seeing their potential.

Then we chose six great creative apps: Book Creator, Pic Collage, Popplet, Puppet Pals, Show Me and Write About This NZ.

I took screen grabs of all the app icons and used the app Foldify to make a dice with all the apps on them. If you would like to use the nets yourself to replicate the  activity here are the links to PDFs for Dice Set One and Dice Set Two.

Foldify

 

I photocopied the PDFs from Foldify onto good quality photocopying card. Cutting and gluing the nets took quite some time but it is something you can do while multi-tasking.

All the dice

The idea then was that people rolled the two dice. You use what ever two apps roll together to create and share the artifact.

To support and encourage independence and discovery I had made short tutorial cards to support individuals who may not have been familiar with the app design and use. Copies of these are able to be downloaded here.

Screen Shot 2014-10-16 at 11.15.41 pm

Some of the participants chose to work on the activity outside of the table space we were allocated. I think next time I would encourage more people to move outside and use their environment more.

Dice in action

 People came back with some great creations showing their combinations of apps. We attempted to Flick the artifacts to the iPad on the main screen with less success than I would have liked. I think the wifi was a bit pushed by the size of the movies etc being Flicked around.

Dice Combination

When we do this again we would make a third dice that would extend the activity to include curriculum learning areas, so you might have to combine screen grabs with Popplet and create an artifact that supports learning in Mathematics.