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.