Off to OETC

I am so excited. I leave tomorrow morning to head to Columbus Ohio for 3 days of everything technology. Of course it doesn't hurt that I'm hanging out with best friend Learning to Lead @mrs_ldavis. Lots of brainstorming to come.

What's on our iPads

Teaching students with special needs I love using the iPad. I love the independence it gives some of my students and allows them to use resources they would never think of. Some of the people that I work with only think that kids play games on them all day long or they don't see the potential since they haven't made changes to their lesson plans in years.

So what do we do with our iPad?
- Textbooks: Some of my students have the newest version of PDF Expert which allows their textbooks to be read to them. Great for my auditory learners.
- Create math review videos using YouTube. Kind of modeled after the Khan academy videos, I have the students create their own video where they show the steps of their work.
-  In our building every classroom has an interactive white board. I tend to send my students the flipcharts for them to take their own notes and examples. I no longer need to send a study guide, just let them know what specific materials they need.
- Google Drive and Google Docs: We take all of our notes on these programs. Students currently are making their own presentations on the similarities and differences of similes and metaphors. They love when I comment as they are working on the page.
- Educreations, Screen Chomp and Doodle Buddy: I can put a problem on the board to be solved, they solve it on their flipchart page of notes and then show us the answer. I can scan the room to see who does not have the correct answer.
- Qrafter: We are just starting to use QR codes to check our answers and get to the exact page or app that I need them to.
- Schoology: Just started to use this for the 2nd semester. Friday was the first time I had kids log into it and get/complete an assignment. Comments from them "This is so easy."

I am pretty sure that as we explore and listen to the kids, what we have on their iPad will evolve. Am I always using the iPad to the best of our ability? Probably not but that it why I continue to try new things with my kids.

Our 5 Favorite Things to Accomplish on an iPad

We are so new to one to one iPad technology that we don't have overall building or grade level goals as to what we want the kids to be able to do. I am in the process of learning with them and trying to provide options on creating and analyzing instead of taking in information passively.

Middle schoolers are an interesting group. I never thought I would land here but I have been in this magical world for the past 13 years. After being home for 3 days last week due to weather and then 2 days worth of delays, I asked my students what their favorite academic things to do on the iPad were. In no special order here they are with their reasoning.

doodlebuddy/skecthes: solve math problems and then share with everyone in the class like an whiteboard.

youtube: both creating and watching movies. I had one student tell me that he watched his own video of how to solve equations before his quiz as a review. He got a 95% on his quiz.

PDF Expert: "we don't have to worry about not bringing our textbooks home." I have a select few students who have the latest version of PDF Expert 5 on their iPads. The love that it will read their history book to them. No more relying on someone to read it to them.

SIRI: "Mrs. S. it spelled the word for me." Again another sense of independence. Hard to be in 8th grade and have trouble spelling words.

Google Drive/Email/Quick Office: Access from any computer. They share folders with me and I can leave comments for them. I have kids that will check for comments during lunch and then come and talk to me during academic assist. I have kids that email me pictures of their new nephew because they wanted to share, drawings that they did while home for snow days and others that just check in.

One of my favorite apps

From an early age I realized I can not have things in file folders or in a file cabinet. That is the black hole of my stuff. So I have binders...lots and lots of binders. Always the same kinds...white with a view sleeve for labeling. But there are too many of them and I am running out of room. Now that all of my students have an iPad, I love being a paperless classroom. I don't remember the last time I collected a stack of papers from my kids. When I had a sub recently, they needed to make videos of them completing the work. I no longer bring home a full book bag or a milk crate full of "stuff". My chiropractor loves this also. It is very freeing to leave school with my purse (with my iPad) and my lunch bag.

Since going one to one seemed to be a thrown together plan, we really never looked at the management standpoint. We are still looking at what works and I can't wait to see what I find at the OETC conference at the end of the month. But for now I am using PDF Expert and Google Drive. Once all of the accounts are linked together they work nicely. Sometimes there is a lag between putting something into your Google drive and it showing up in PDF Expert but I'm not sure if that is an infrastructure issue, a Google issue or a PDF Expert issue.

In each of my classes, the kids have shared folders with me. All of their work goes in the subject folder and then I grade it with PDF Expert and place it in a graded folder. I think I got the best of some of my students one day when they were quietly working on a writing prompt. I was adding comments to their page as they were typing. Now they expect to see me in their writing and it keeps some of them on task without me calling them out. My smallest class has 6 kids in it, so they tend to know when someone is not working. It also forces my largest class of 23 to keep working. In that class I have had students write me a note in their writing knowing that I can answer what they call a "stupid question."

If you give a student an iPad...

they ask their teachers to use them...We are at the point in the year when the students know more about the iPad then some of their teachers. It is sad when we as teachers do not welcome students to teach us. I try in each of my iPad class lessons to show students how they can use an app within the classroom either for a project, help them study, better utilize their time and make it more relevant to their lives. Sometimes the students ask to use them in class but from what I am hearing from the kids, they are just using them without asking. Now to get the teachers using the iPad and to think outside of the box...

This marking period the students have created commercials to go along with their app evaluations. And some of them were amazing. I haven't taught them how to use imovie (still learning it myself) but they have taken the initiative to figure it out themselves and share their knowledge. I even had some kids spend time making a commercial for our iPad class. For everything that went wrong the first marking period....everything is moving along better for the 2nd marking period. We still have some issues with airserve but that is beyond my control.

My next project is starting a student technology task force. Since the students are the ones who are "digital natives" then we need to be learning from them. I would love to create a task force that gives students an opportunity to share their knowledge not only with their peers but also their teachers. I think we might be able to tap into some of our more creative, less main stream students.