Teachers teaching teachers...

Day 2 of iPad pilot teachers teaching Dale Street teachers about how we are using ipads in our classrooms. The goal was for teachers to walk away with tangible lessons that they could use even with just one iPad. Going forward, we are excited to do this more often next year!

Join Our Tour

Students in Mrs. Lowerre's class worked very hard to create their planet tours using the apps SketchBookX and Explain Everything.  The skills involved in creating a project like this are many.  From researching current information about each planet,  summarizing that research it into a scrip by determining the importance and interest of each fact , adding artistic drawings based on  real NASA photos and then making it somewhat entertaining so everyone will want to watch and learn.  This project is a great example of how we enhanced our learning by using iPads. 

Flipping a classroom~ Mrs. Cowell

I wanted to try something new this week that had a lasting effect with my students by connecting our use on the iPads with the nightly homework assignments. Here is one way we accomplished this... all in a 4 day week!

MATH
Task: create a video/ lesson explaining how to solve a problem using the metric conversion system
Apps: explain everything or Notability
Time: 2 periods of 40 minutes
Results: here is a remarkable example of how one student demonstrated his knowledge in several ways...

Next steps: students had a note taking worksheet that corresponded to the video/ lesson which they completed as they watched all posted lessons and chose one to take notes on. The students brought the notes back to school where we were able to have a conversation not only about converting with metric measurement, but also about what they liked about this assignment/ what could have went better.
In their words:
Positives: "I really liked this homework... I even showed my sister one of the videos!"

Negatives:
"I wish we could have watched everyone's lessons, but then we probably wouldn't have slept."

My reflections/ take away points:
As the assignment took longer than I had planned, I quickly chose 4 lessons to post. It turns out that one of the lessons had an incorrect answer that I didn't catch in time. We turned this into a teachable moment as this morning my students and I were able to talk about this particular problem and how it should have been solved. It was a quick informal assessment for me as well to check in and see who picked up on the error, versus who took it at face value without knowing it was wrong. These were the same students who needed/got extra reinforcement today during our math centers.

I added an optional assignment... to post a positive complimentary comment as a way to explore blogging possibilities. Luckily I get the comment notifications sent to my phone because there was one comment that was not something that I wanted displayed for the world to see (very innocent about one student's not being as detailed as other lessons)... It was truly a perfect constructive critique, which to this students's credit, is something we are working on during peer editing. However, during our homework check in today, without getting specific, it gave me a great spring board for expectations and looking at good models for what is acceptable on a classroom message board.

I loved this lesson. My students are grasping concepts like metric conversion so deeply... I honestly feel like I understand how their brains need to learn concepts as I watch them work through these projects.  My next task is how to manage a similar assignment with a one-iPad classroom so that I can do this more often...

Out of this World

Students in Mrs. Lowerre's science class are beginning an exciting planet project.  Each student will create their own video tour of the solar system. 


The first step was all about research.  One of the exciting things about using the ipads was that the students could easily access research sites and then compare and contrast website information with the information from their science textbook.  The end result was finding the most current facts and pictures of the planets. 




 
After the research step was completed the students quickly moved into the drawing phase.  Using the drawing app Sketchbook Express, students enjoyed
re-creating each planet.  There are many drawing apps for kids but we chose to use Sketchbook Express because it  allows students to create more sophisticated, realistic art.  Students needed some time to learn the app but as they worked with it's many features their drawings became more detailed and true to the pictures we researched from NASA.

 

After all our drawings are done students will use their original scripts to create their final product,  Stay tuned for a planet tour coming to a blog near your!

Pulling a Story out of a Hat

This week we used the iPads in a lot of different ways.  Our skills and knowledge are expanding which is making it easier to layer our learning.  We continue to use Today's Meet in reading and QR codes in math but we added two apps this week and combined them to produce one project.

What is Writer's Hat and Book Creator?  Writer's Hat is a simple app that generates ideas.  It can be used to inspire creative writing, oral fluency or just imaginative thinking.  Book Creator is an app that puts your writing into a book format.  Once the story is typed, students can add illustrations and pictures and even record themselves reading their own story.

The Project:  I was amazed at how much the students loved Writer's Hat.  It is a great app to use when you only have one iPad (it does cost 0.99).   I was able to take my iPad around to each of the six tables in my classroom and the students took turns pressing the who, what, when, or where label to reveal the essence of their story.  Students were then given class time to write and conference with me as the writing process progressed.   The next day when we had a class set of iPads students then took their story and put it into a book format using Book Creator.  They added illustrations either by drawing them or downloading pictures. When all was finished students recorded themselves reading their own stories.

Reflections:  What did you think about Writer's Hat?
~  I liked it because it challenges you to write about a topic you normally wouldn't have. Aiden
~  I liked it because if you couldn't think of anything to write about it would help give you ideas. Charles
~  I thought it was creative but challenging Grace 
~  I though it was really fun because you could make interesting stories.  Madison                        
~  I thought is was really cool.  Tristan

Explain Everything (Pastore)

Explain Everything

Task: Use explain everything to present learned information in a video format with a voice recording. We have used Explain Everything to share learned Geometry terms, practice Math open responses, and begin sharing our Science animal research.

What is Explain Everything? Explain everything is a screencasting app. It is far superior to educreations in that it has the capability to add a variety of different forms of multimedia. Students create different slides to present their information and then record their movement through the slides, voice-over, and additions to slides in the form of a video.

What I like: I just LOVE learning about new apps with my classroom. It is so refreshing to learn something new all together as a team. Having their teacher on the same playing field gives them new opportunities to discover things on their own, assist their classmates, and teach their teachers. They get so much satisfaction out of being able to teach me new things and I absolutely love it! The level of engagement within the classroom is hard to miss.

NEXT STOP: Completing our Animal Adaptations Final Project on this program! Stay tuned for updates! :)

Here is an example video of a light Explain Everything trial we were doing with their geometric terms:

6 iPads~ Mrs. Cowell

On days when our grade level counterpart has a class set of iPads, our cohort came up with a system to allow for another class to get the 6 extra iPads... rather than let them collect dust!

Pros/ how we implemented this:
- I was able to run learning centers and stations using QR codes and Notability... I saw that iPads allowed for self-correcting, collaboration, reinforcement, critical thinking, engagement, and more when I used them in this format
- A review in math was more productive as there were 6 stations with 6 different topics, small group instruction-- versus whole class, and students were able to help one another
- During reader's workshop we used Today's Meet in teams (versus individually)... I found that this made each students really think through what they were going to type rather than typing the first thing that came to mind. Students began asking questions that other groups would help answer using the internet to search for answers... it was amazing to see how resourceful they were with the world at their fingertips!
- My students that have special learning needs were able to use the iPads to take notes/ pictures of text using Notability during my Social Studies instruction
Cons-
- None that came up... it is a bonus to get an additional day with these iPads, so no complaints here!

Check out all of the learning that took place...