education

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #19: The Elements

The Elements: A Visual Exploration, by Theodore Gray, is a simply stunning iPad app with mesmerising high-definition graphics, videos, and detailed information for every element in the Periodic Table. While users can’t copy information out of the app, it is possible to save screenshots.

This app is available in American and British English versions, and is translated into French, German, and Japanese (check the description).

For: Secondary Science Teachers and Students, invaluable in Chemistry

Cost: $16 (Worth every cent, but be warned – it’s a 1.7GB download)  (Download Link)

Requires WiFi?: Yes , but only to access online features)

Further Reading

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #18: GoodReader

GoodReader is a good file management app. You can use it to save, organise, and read PDF files, MS Office & Apple iWork documents, Pages, Keynote, Numbers), images, webpages, audio, and video → all in one application on your iPad. You can then project these files on your IWB using the VGA connect kit (approx $30).

GoodReader can handle files in excess of 1GB, and allows users to easily transfer files via USB (here’s how), internal school WiFi networks, Internet, or email. It seamlessly integrates with Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, and WebDAV servers, and comes with built-in security options.

While setting up WiFi and school server connections can be a little technical, this app is highly recommended for iPad classrooms! It is a fantastic app for reducing paper-use in schools and classrooms – just make sure you read the User Manual first!

For: Students, Teachers

Cost: Around $5 (Download)

Requires WiFi?: Yes (for syncing)

Educational Applications

  • Annotate running records
  • complete observation surveys and  assessment checklists
  • Store important documents e.g. professional learning resources
  • Store and manage eBooks, textbooks, and worksheets
  • Annotate PDF files (note-taking)
  • Reduce paper use!

Further Reading

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #17: Numbers

Numbers for iPad is the Apple mobile version of Excel spreadsheet, enabling users to create and edit spreadsheets and data-entry forms (similar to Google Forms) on the iPad. This app will be useful for teachers and students, particularly in business and economics; but is probably best used for editing existing spreadsheets.

Files can be exported (via email) to Numbers for Mac, Microsoft Excel, or PDF; but can only be removed from the iPad via iTunes or WebDAV. SendToDropbox is useful too (via @samgliksman).

For: Teachers, Secondary Students, Administrators

Cost: $10.49AUD (Download Link)

Requires WiFi?: No

Educational Applications

  • Business, Economics class
  • Financial Records
  • Data Entry Forms (eg. Attendence, surveys)

 Tutorials

Numbers for iPad (Alternative Tutorial)
Creating Forms in Numbers on the iPad – Video

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #16: Popplet

Popplet is a hugely popular mind-mapping tool which enables teachers and students to visually represent and organise information using text, hyperlinks, images, and sticky notes (popples). Available as a web application (beta, via subscription) and iPad app, Popplet is remarkably simple to use, and is suitable for all ages.

Popplet requires a free account (we’d suggest creating class / group accounts for students), and completed ‘popplets’ can be saved as JPG or PDF files, embedded into web pages, or shared via Twitter, Facebook, and Email. Printed popplets make great classroom displays.

If using as a web app, teachers may be interested in the Popplet Education Licensing scheme.

For: Teachers, Students (Early Childhood through to Secondary)

Cost:  Popplet Lite is free, but we highly recommend the full featured Popplet app, which is available for $5.49AUD (Download Link). The full app allows users to sync Popplets across devices and the web. 

Requires WiFi: No, but required to obtain images from online sources.

Educational Applications

  • Create curriculum plans, mind maps, shared bulletin boards, scrapbooks, photo galleries,
  • Remember, organise and comprehend new information
  • Map concepts and create timelines
  • Use to assist note-taking and planning for writing
  • Enable real-time student collaboration via shared ‘popples’ – on iPads / iPad and web.
  • Use Popplet as a presentation tool (Click here for details)
  • Click here for more creative ideas 

Recommended Reading

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #15: Penultimate

Penultimate is a powerful note-taking app for the iPad, enabling users to create an infinite number of beautiful electronic notebooks using different paper formats.

You can hand-write notes with your finger or stylus (recommended), use different coloured pens, and import photos (from your camera / camera roll). Coming with advanced editing options, this app is ideal for sketching pictures & brainstorming ideas.

Better yet, you can back-up or share your Penultimate notebooks via Dropbox, Evernote, or Email; and project your work on an IWB using an iPad VGA connection cable.

For: Teachers, (Older) Students, Administrators

Cost: $2.99. Some paper formats require an in-app purchase

Download: iTunes Link

Requires WiFi?: No

Educational applications

  • Notetaking
  • Story writing
  • Working out maths problems
  • Record observations in science
  • Storyboarding / scripting movies (using storyboard template)
  • Write music (paid template)

Further Reading

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #14: TED Talks

The official TED Talk app puts talks from the world’s leading thinkers, education radicals, tech geniuses, business gurus and music legends … at your fingertips.

TED presents ideas to inspire, educate, and inform … in 5-20 minute videos – which you can watch, or save, on your iPad. Click here for a sample of Education themed talks.

For: Teachers, Secondary Students, Administrators

Cost: Free (Download)

Requires WiFi?: Yes

Educational Applications

  • Use as springboards for classroom discussion
  • Teacher Professional Learning
  • Great models of presentation skills.

Further Reading

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Tips2012 iPad research in beautiful Cape Town

 

I am in beautiful Cape Town meeting amazing educators from not-for-profit organizations, schools, and universities discussing my research project TPACK iPads in Schools – “tips” and opportunities for further learning and research in this area.

I had great discussions with Karen aka @ICT_Integrator on the importance of professional learning and support for teachers.

This is the core of the “tips” project to empower teachers to use technology effectively for teaching and learning. I am looking forward to doing some exciting work in schools this week, discussing iPads and learning opportunities for further study for teachers at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia.

I welcome South African educators to participate in my research and share their learning with us on this blog.

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Jenny’s iPad Tip: User Guide #4 iPad = document camera+

A while ago I bought a document camera costing about $700, a really useful device to replace the overhead projector. A document camera can be used to capture an image and project the image onto a large screen.

Then I bought a VGA connector to connect my iPad to a data projector or any other screen or monitor, and for just $30 my iPad became a portable document camera with a heap of extra functions.

How To:

Secure the iPad to a small tripod / retort stand to keep it stable. Then select the camera icon to use the the camera function to project and share any image.

There are fantastic ways to use this in education, for example if you are doing a dissection, you can capture the image and project it for the class to view. You can capture images of objects and plants for science experiments. You can even demonstrate mathematical concepts using concrete manipulative.

I would love to hear how you are using this function in your teaching.

 

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #12: GarageBand

GarageBand turns your iPad (iPhone, iPod) into a full-featured (touch-screen) recording studio, where you can play instruments, record music, and share songs / podcasts via iTunes or email. It includes a music library (including sound effects, instrumental loops); and was recently updated to allow up to four players play or jam together.

With the iPad Camera Connection Kit (around $10 on eBay) you can even connect and play your own instruments (guitar, keyboard) through USB in GarageBand, or record audio using a USB microphone headset. Garageband is suitable for beginning to advanced users, although it takes time to learn its full potential.

GarageBand for iPad is ideal for music, songwriting, podcasting, or simply jamming with your own (virtual) band! It truly is a must-have app!

For: Teachers, Students

Cost: $4.99 (Download Link)

Requires WiFi?: No

 Educational Applications

  • Create alternative movie soundtracks
  • Broadcast radio “news reports”
  • Create educational raps & play music
  • Click here for more great ideas & lessons
BHS iPad Band

Further Reading


Excellent GarageBand Video Tutorial (40 mins)

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Jenny’s Most Useful App Today- A Document-Scanner

Today high in the Japanese Alps, my partner had a skiing injury. The medical insurance wanted copies of airline tickets, passports, receipts and contracts sent through immediately. Fortunately I have a portable document scanner on my iPad. Making it my most useful app of the day!

This is a really useful tool in the classroom, office or when you are traveling. There are a number of scanning applications. Some use OCR optical character recognition, that turn the text or image into digital characters. You can edit these, adjust shades and contrasts to create the text or image that you need. These images can be saved as pdf’s or jpg’s and can be used creatively to create artworks.

My current favorites are Doc Scan HD and Perfect OCR. Doc Scan Hd claims to be able to scan curled or folded documents. You can scan diagrams on the white board,receipts and business cards and pictures from your photo collection. What I like is that you can edit and annotate the scanned images. This is very useful as a teaching tool.

You can save the image as a PDF and email it or place it in ibooks, drop box, evernote or google docs and send the link to share it with a colleague or your students. The free version of Doc Scan Hd allows you to scan a three page document for longer documents upgrade to the paid pro version for $4.49

Perfect OCR works well with high quality script recognition for text in different languages and typefaces.I would like to hear your comments on how you are using these scanning apps in your teaching.

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #9: Diigo

Diigo is a connected teacher’s best friend!

Diigo provides a simple way to bookmark, annotate, and search the hundreds, if not thousands of websites that we bookmark from our Twitter feeds, web searches, and collegial recommendations. It allows users to tag, highlight, and add sticky notes to ANY webpage, and because they are stored in the cloud, they can be accessed on almost any device. And it’s available as an iPad app!

We highly recommend the Diigo for Educators account (free, but requires a school email address), which provides teachers, and their students, with a powerful research tool at their fingertips. To find out how you can use Diigo in the classroom, please review the links below.

Don’t forget to install the web highlighter / toolbar for your browser!

For: Teachers, Students, Administrators

Cost: Free (Download)

Requires WiFi?: Yes

Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

Educational Applications

  • Research / Inquiry – share useful links
  • Collate favourite classroom games
  • Professional Development (Curate favourite websites)
  • Join Diigo education groups (examples)

Examples of Diigo Libraries

Further Reading

How do you use Diigo? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #7: Dragon Dictation

Dragon Dictation is an speech-recognition app that allows users to instantly dictate text, emails, tweets, etc on their iPad, up to five times faster than typing on a keyboard.

While it takes time to ‘train’ Dragon Dictation to recognise your voice, this app can be very helpful for students with dyslexia, and struggling writers. It’s worth experimenting with.

For: Students, Students with Diverse Needs, Teachers, Administrators

Cost: Free (Download Link)

Requires WiFi?: Yes

Tutorial: Dragon Dictation from Jessica Pack on Vimeo.

Educational Applications

  • Practicing fluency and pronunciation in LOTE, or English as Second Language classes
  • Supporting struggling writers – note-taking, brainstorming
  • Dictate memos, short documents, etc (productivity)

Recommended Viewing

Dragon Education Case Study
Dragon Dictate on iPad – Video Tutorial

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #6: iMovie

iMovie is an easy to use, touch based, video editing app for iPad. It enables students and teachers to create professional looking movies, incorporating video, photos, music, and sound effects. It was recently updated to enable users to create incredibly realistic movie trailers!

To get started, we highly recommend iMovie Basics, which gives teachers a great starting point for learning how to use iMovie in class.

For: Teachers and Students

Price: $4.99    Download Link

Requires WiFi?: No

Educational Applications

  • Digital Storytelling (Scriptwriting, storyboarding)
  • Recording special educational events
  • Greenscreen presentations (advanced users)
  • Create short documentaries / tutorials (e.g. in Science)
  • The possibilities are endless!

Classroom Examples

Further Reading

How do YOU use iMovie in the classroom?

We’d love to hear your thoughts! 

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #5: Edmodo

 

Edmodo is a private social networking site where teachers, students, and parents can connect, engage and learn; taking learning beyond the classroom walls.

Edmodo has advanced privacy settings built in, making it a very safe, secure, (and free) platform for schools. Its’ visual similarity to Facebook makes it extremely user-friendly for teachers and students of all ages; and isn’t blocked in most school systems.

For: Teachers, Students, Parents

Cost: Free, but requires a web account (iTunes Download)

Requires WiFi?: Yes

Using Edmodo in a K-12 School on Prezi

Educational Applications

  • Easily manage grades, projects, surveys, and student discussion topics
  • Share worksamples, videos, pictures of classroom activities with parents (through their child’s profile)
  • Help (absent) students keep up-to-date with what’s happening in school
  • Create collaborative stories, literature circles, book clubs, participate in global projects (example)
  • Provide stimulus for improving writing skills
  • Create virtual exhibitions, museum scavenger hunts
  • Teachers can join professional learning communities in areas of interest (e.g. education technology, school administration)
  • And MUCH more!

Further Reading

Recommended Twitter Follows

How do YOU use Edmodo & the iPad App in the Classroom?

We’d love to hear your thoughts! 

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ACEC2012 Conference in Perth

We are hosting the National Conference for ACEC in Perth Western Australia from the 2nd-5th October 2012. I am convening a strand “It`s time to get mobile”. We have an exciting line up with great keynotes. Come along to see what is new in integrating technology in educational settings. If you are doing interesting things with technology in your classroom or educational setting present a paper and share your journey- abstracts close 3rd March 2012.

ACEC2012 Link