Tips 2013 Professional Learning #30 Share your story

21st Century Schools

  • Share your story

 

      Personal stories are powerful, both for the storyteller and for the listener. The learning involved in composing  a story has many aspects, for example focussing the message, thinking of the audience, communicating clearly and creativity. I have found a compelling way for students and teachers to create animated videos which are a great way to share stories. The application Adobe Voice allows you or your students to create a multi-modal presentation with no tricky editing. You can add your own recorded voice, images, animations and a sound track. This a free app

 

    My Research — Adobe Voice   http://voice.adobe.com/videos/UEHBnvidWYr

Tips 2012 Professional Learning #20:Which app is right for you?

When selecting apps my rule is “less is more”…In my experience it is better to have a few carefully selected apps that you can use in multiple ways than an app for every topic.

For many teachers at the start of a semester or the beginning of  a new school year you will be deciding which apps you will be using in your teaching. Selecting the right apps can be a challenge when there are so many applications on the app store. Always keep your educational objective clearly in focus, it is easy to be seduced by bright colours and cute animations. Think carefully about what the student will do… will this app allow the students to create, engage in higher order thinking and connect in new ways? There is some value in apps that allow students to consolidate their skills in an engaging manner. Apps that support the teaching  and can be used across the curriculum are good value per use as opposed to apps that will be used once or twice in a specific area.

A colleague Jan Clarke from AISWA has shared an extensive list of apps that she has complied. Classroom apps  Thanks for sharing all your hard work Jan. I look forward to hearing from you about the apps you find most useful in your teaching.

Tips 2012 Professional Learning #19: Gopro cameras and mobile learning

The simulation surfboard with wheels

I have been exploring different ways of making learning more mobiIe. We want to take learning to exciting authentic places in the real world. The gopro video cameras capture high resultion video footage of high speed activities. I recently presented at the fabulous Createworld Conference in Brisbane. At this conference the focus is on sharing how you are using  technology to stimulate creativity. A interesting use of mobile technologies was an inspirational performance by Beau entitled “Sliver surfer”. Beau set up a simulation with a silver tarp and a surfboard on wheels. The surfboard was fitted with a “Gopro”
and a small projector connected to an iPhone. On the iPhone were video Images of waves which were projected on to a silver tarp. The tarp was used to form the tube of a wave. The “surfer” then surfed through the tube on the surf board with wheels.

The Gopro captured the experience  of the surfing simulation. The video could be uploaded to an iPad for on the spot editing in iMovie and shared on Vimeo. This raises the possibility of capturing high quality video of simulation and authentic experiences an exciting combination of science, technology and visual arts.

Tips 2012 Professional Learning #16:Creating and sharing learning online

One of the ways to create interactive online experiences is to use a learning management system (LMS). This is much easier than you think and is a great way to use mobile learning devices in daily classroom practice. These systems now incorporate social networking so students can create and share their learning as part of professional learning networks. There are a range of these, today I am discussing two free LMS systems designed for classroom use. Edmodo and Schoology.  I am seeing excellent use of  these systems in classrooms. Teachers can post tasks and assessments online in the password protected space they have created for their students. They can give parents access to sections of the site so parents can view the work. Students can access this work anywhere, anytime on a web enabled device. There are apps for Android and IOS devices like iphones and iPads. Students can post their responses to their teacher and work collaboratively with their peers. The facility to set up groups is very useful. The student work is all safely stored online, no need for complex server configurations.

Schoology

This video link guides you through how to set up a site in Schoology. Schoology has advanced features to set up test and assessments with self marking features.

Edmodo 

The Edmodo help site with very useful tips on everything you need to get this up and running in your classroom.

This post gives more details on how to use Edmodo in education

This post on edmodo gives lots of links to schools and blog sites with practical examples of edmodo in action
This video shows how a 5th grade student uses Edmodo

Please post a comment and share how you are using these tools in your teaching and learning

Edmodo touch app also available for android devices

Tips2012: Teachers’ Voices #5:A learning challenge exploring tastes and flavours

Peachy flavoursA learning challenge “Taste my world”

The yr 1 students at Rossmoyne Primary are very busy working on their learning challenge “Taste my world.” This class has students from thirteen different cultural backgrounds and they are exploring tastes and flavours from around the world. I am looking forward to working with them and their teachers next week. Watch this space for exciting updates.Gelato -a taste of Italy

Tips2013: Teachers’ Voices #4:Miss D & the Superstars

Add your own images to create personalised puppets

Add your own images to create personalised puppets

Miss D and her class the Superstars have been taking a journey back in time this term to celebrate the 75th anniversary of their school.

 

“The students worked in small groups using the Puppet Pals app on the iPads kindly lent to us by Dr Jenny Lane from Edith Cowan University. Our class has been lucky enough to take part in the TPACK Project, which is researching the integration of iPads into classrooms to help teachers successfully integrate this technology in the future.

Our class has loved using the iPads,  movies made with the Puppet Pals app show how our class has been reflecting on their learning in History this term and having lots of fun at the same time.”

Tamara Doig

 

 

 

Create your own animated puppet show

Create your own animated puppet show

Puppet Pals can be used for digital storytelling. Students develop a storyboard, create scripts with dialogue, design their puppets and select backdrops for the story.

This is a great tool for learning a second language because students have to narrate their story. The stories shared recorded and shared

Tips 2012 Professional Learning #10: Explore ECU with iPads

Welcome to the Clontarf Girls

For the Explore ECU Program today we welcomed the year 10 & 11 Clontarf Girls to spend a day experiencing University life with us on campus. We are going to be using technology in a fun way in to support learning.

Clontarf was one of the schools in Perth that the Queen visited when she was in Australia see the pictures on their website. Clontarf is a unique sporting academy with a specialist curriculum to develop the leadership skills of Aboriginal girls.

We had lots of fun – watch this space …

Clontarf girls become movie producers at ECU

I was very fortunate to work with this delightful group of enthusiastic fun loving students. For many of the group it was the first time they experienced using an iPad. There was much laughter and excitement as they became movie directors for the day. We discussed creative ways of using mobile learning tools like phones and tablet computers for learning.

“Focus, action, shoot, let the camera roll”

For some more details on this event, click here.

We are celebrating NAIDOC Week at our university. NAIDOC Week celebrations are held in Australia in July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

NAIDOC is celebrated not only in Indigenous communities, but by all Australians. At Edith Cowan University we participated in a range of activities and to support our local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.

NAIDOC originally stood for ‘National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee’. This committee was once responsible for organising national activities during NAIDOC Week and its acronym has since become the name of the week itself.

Tips 2012 iPad App Guide: #60: Google Earth

The Google Earth app lets you hold the world in the palm of your hand – on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It enables you to explore global satellite imagery, tours, and photo overlays on your iOS device.

There is a large education community built around the Google Earth application, and it has many classroom applications. It is so much more than a mapping application – as revealed in the links at the bottom of this post.

For: Teachers, Students (Grades 4-12)

Cost: Free (Download)

Requires WiFi?: Yes, this is a very WiFi intensive app.

Educational Applications

  • Support student inquiry in geography, social studies, history
  • Enhance student presentations – creating audio-visual Google Earth tours for projects
  • Virtually visit sites of historic / geographic significance
  • Add photos / videos / voicethreads about your local community to share with other Google Earth users worldwide
  • Use in conjunction with Google Sketchup to design and build your own virtual city (as a Google Earth overlay)
  • Take your students on a virtual “Lit Trip”, exploring places mentioned in a story
  • Solve maths problems using the Google Earth measuring tools

Further Reading & Exploration

Tips 2012 iPad App Guide #57: Prezi Viewer for iPad

Are you sick of boring PowerPoint presentations? Why not try Prezi, the zooming multi-modal presentation tool?

Prezi Viewer for iPad enables users to view and present your prezis anywhere, anytime … You can touch navigate, revise, and download your presentations for offline viewing.

Note: To use Prezi, teachers and students will need to create an account – the EDU Enjoy license is free, providing you sign up with an .edu email address (video).

For: Teachers, Students, Administrators

Cost: Free (Download)

Requires WiFi?: Yes, to download presentations for offline viewing.

 

 

Educational Applications

  • Enhance presentation delivery – in class, at staff meetings, for student presentations
  • Provide a fun, creative way to explore visual content & written material, and demonstrate learning
  • For more great ideas, check out the collaborative brainstorming documents below!

Further Reading

Tips2012: Teachers’ Voices #3: Phil`s i-Story

Using iPads to teach English as a second language

Phil Rice is a teacher of adult ESL learners in the state of Delaware, USA. He has taught English Composition and multiple levels of ESL classes. He enjoys using technology to teach and help students to teach themselves. Phil is an avid user of iPads in his ESL classes, and he has shared some of the activities he uses in his teaching
Show me

Show Me

 Phil sent in this i-Story in response to a posting we did on using the Show Me screen casting app to read that post Tips2012 App Guide: Show Me. The Show Me app was also used for ESL teaching  in Schools in India as mentioned in Jude`s i-Story.
With ShowMe, teachers can…

1) Create an online lesson for an in-class topic. Record the main ideas of your lesson and give students a link or post your creation to an online social media site.

2) Have students create a narrated visual presentation on a topic using your/their iPad and show it in class as opposed to a “stand in front of the class” type presentation.

3) Create a Vocab Map using Skitch / DoodleBuddy and ShowMe together. Pick a picture that is related to a topic you are teaching and annotate it with Skitch showing the vocabulary for the picture. Then, upload the photo and use it on ShowMe to narrate and pronounce the vocab.

4) Download the presentation and upload it to YouTube so students have instant access to your ShowMes!

These are just a few uses for ShowMe. I use it all the time, and I’m sure that you will too once you get used to it.

Thanks Phil for sharing your i-Story.

You can visit Phil`s blog, ESL Commando, to find more ideas for using ICT in ESL classes.

Tips 2012 iPad App Guide #48: Brushes

The Brushes app is a beautiful professional painting app for the iPad. With realistic colours, hues, saturation, and colour-mixing, and advanced editing options, this app is ideal for art teachers and students.

Brushes even records your brush strokes while painting, saving your actions as a file which you can download off the web, and view in Brushes Viewer, a free application for Mac OS X.

For more information, please visit the official site: http://www.brushesapp.com.

For: Teachers, Students (Upper Primary – Secondary)

Cost: $8.49 AUD (Download Link)

Requires Wifi?: No

Further Reading
Apple iPad art: portraits created by David Kassan using the Brushes app – The Telegraph

Tips 2012 iPad App Guide #47: Drawing Pad

The highly-awarded Drawing Pad app is a fun early-childhood art app for the iPad, where you can create drawings using realistic crayons, paint brushes, pencils, pens, and more. You can purchase colouring-in books via in-app purchase, and save drawings to the Photo Roll, or send via email, etc.

For more information, please visit the official site: http://drawingpadapp.com/

For: Early Childhood to Middle Primary Students

Cost: $1.99 AUD (Download Link)

Requires Wifi?: No.

Tips2012 iPad App Guide #40: Book Creator

iPads open up exciting opportunities for teachers and students to self-publish and share their own books with authentic audiences. While iBooks Author (Mac) & Creative Book Builder (iPad) are good options, the most intuitive and professional app we’ve found to date remains Book Creator for iPad.

This app makes it easy for teachers, and students (Grade 1 and older) to create and publish their own storybooks, projects, textbooks, cookbooks, etc using their own photos, text, audio (included recorded speech), and video. The recent update to V 2.4 allows users to include hyperlinks, and combine books / chapters to create collaborative texts. (Requires iOS6).

Finished books can be saved to Dropbox, iBooks, and Evernote, or sent to your computer as an ePub or high quality PDF file. They can be imported back into the app for further collaborative editing, or submitted to the Apple iBooks Store, where they can be shared with the world.

For: Students (Primary to Secondary), Teachers

Cost:  $5.49 AU (Download Link)

Requires WiFi?: No

Educational Applications

  • Student content creation – storybooks, cookbooks, instruction manuals, etc
  • Literacy – Writing
  • Cross-curricular projects / presentations

Further Reading

Tips2012:iPad App Guide #36: Explain Everything

Explain Everything This is the screen casting app that I am using with the TIPS research project schools. It provides a way for students to create and produce their own resources and share their learning.

Many teachers use this app to deliver instructional content to students. You can capture your lesson with diagrams, demonstrations typed or drawn and annotated pictures. This is easily shared with students to view as many times as they need at home or at school.

Integration with Cloud Services = More Choice

* Note: Google Drive integration is coming in imminent release of EE v2.0 in late Jan 2013)

Suitable for primary to secondary classes, Explain Everything is integrated with EvernoteDropbox, and Google Drive; making it very easy to import materials (e.g. pictures, slides, documents) from your computer or the internet (including your web browser!).

Explain Everything is the only screen-casting app which allows users to choose where they export and share their work. Screencast movies, and EE project files, can be emailed, or saved to the iPad Camera Roll, Evernote, and Dropbox. This allows users to collaboratively edit project files, and choose a service to host their video online (e.g. YouTube).

With advanced editing options, including the abilities to create multiple slides, feature live websites, and use visual aids (eg. arrows, laser pointer), Explain Everything remains the most versatile screen-casting app in the Apple Store, and comes highly recommended by iPad educators around the world.

Video Export Management Solution

In response to common complaints about the length of time required to render EE project files to movie formats, Explain Everything recently released the Explain Everything Compressor for Mac OS X (10.7 / 10.8 only). This paid app ($14.99) enables users to render EE videos on their computer – saving a considerable amount of time. (Click here for an alternative non-Mac solution – via EdTechTeacher).

 

For: Teachers, Students (Primary to Secondary)

Cost: $2.99 AUD (Download Link). (VPP Option)

Requires WiFi?: Yes, but only for access to full functionality and web-sharing.

Educational Applications

  • Create a repository of video tutorials for your class / school wiki / website
  • Explain mathematical thinking, written work
  • Present an argument, or explanation of a topic (literacy)
  • Enable students to demonstrate their learning, comprehension skills, and understanding of topics across a wide range of learning areas.

Recommended Reading

Please help us to build these resources for teachers by supporting the research. Click here to complete a short survey and enter the draw to win an iTunes voucher.

Tips2012:iPad App Guide #35: Educreations

Educreations is an incredible FREE interactive whiteboard tool available as an iPad app and online web tool. Once you create a (free) account, it is easy to add images, draw pictures, and write on the whiteboard slides as you explain your ideas.

When you’re happy with your video, you can watch it on the iPad, or upload to the Educreations website. You can share your videos publicly or privately, via email, Facebook, Twitter, or the Educreations Tutorial Gallery (under development). Public screencasts can be embedded into blogs, websites, etc.

Educreations is a more advanced app than ShowMe, and it was specifically designed with educators in mind (see the video tutorial below). Like ShowMe, teachers recommend the use of  teacher / class accounts to save and share student videos (tip via blog post by @nate_kremer)

For: Teachers, Students (Primary to Secondary)

Cost: Free! (Download Link)

Requires WiFi: Yes, to upload completed work

Educational Applications

  • Create a repository of video tutorials for your class / school wiki / website
  • Explain mathematical thinking, written work
  • Present an argument, or explanation of a topic (literacy)
  • Enable students to demonstrate their learning, comprehension skills, and understanding of topics across a wide range of learning areas.

Recommended Reading

Please contribute to our iPad research by completing a short survey, and entering our draw to win an ITunes voucher!