Technology Changes How We Teach

I wrote my Master's thesis in 2002.  The topic was professional development for technology integration.  Think about how technology has changed since 2002. It's mind-boggling!

The main aspect of my research revolved around ACOT -- Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow.  Around the turn of the millennium Apple selected a handful of classrooms around the USA to be ACOT classrooms.  Each teacher and student in these classes were given two desktop computers: one for school and one for home.  The teachers were not told what to do or how to teach, but of course were encouraged to use the computers as much as possible however they wanted.  They were to record their thoughts and feelings and frustrations and happy moments.  They also provided support and allowed the ACOT teachers to converse on a regular basis.  The Apple researchers just sat back and watched.

An odd thing happened that most people didn't anticipate.  Every teacher wound up changing teaching styles. Even the most traditional among their ranks became more and more progressive.  Instead of rote learning and teacher-led lessons, more and more project-based real-life learning was happening.  Students were collaborating together more than ever before.  

These iPad initiatives are really a lot like ACOT 10-12 years later.  Teachers are finding themselves with portable easy to carry computers in their hands.  Collaboration is easier than ever before with all sorts of social networking available.  

How will your classroom look different this year than it did 10 years ago?  Here's an interesting article to chew on... http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/03/students-and-ipads-acu-study-shows-positive-results/

Training Day 2

It's the last half hour of training and my mind is turning mush-like. I have downloaded so many apps these last few days, but I need time to look at each one and decide what I will really use. Not only is there an app for that, but there are multiple apps for that. So part of my learning curve is to decide the apps I really like and ditch the ones I don't.

I'm supposed to be lesson planning right now, but that's hard without actual iPads in the classroom, but I have ideas. Let me explain...

1. This weekend my kids will finish Hatchet which is a great book about a boy surviving a plane crash in the north Canadian woods.  As an end of the book project, I'm going to have them do a PowerPoint presentation.  (I know what you're thinking right now. PowerPoint isn't a Mac program; shouldn't it be Key Note?  Yes and now.  Since my kids do not have access to their iPads yet, I need to make this project PC user-friendly but make it easily transferred to iPad for next year.  May I proceed now?)  Step One is going to be including a picture of the woods in Northern Canada.  I'm going to give them the name Kesagami Provincial Park as a starting spot, but really I want them to see how remote the setting of the story was.  (For future years, I may start the book by having them create a Zapd site with this picture and a short description of the setting.)  Step Two will be picking one chapter from the book (I'll most likely give them a handful of chapters to choose from) and have them include 5 slides telling the story of that chapter using pictures and text.  The objective?  Sequencing, of course.  In future years, I'd like for this to be more interactive with audio and video included, but we need to start small.  Any ideas how I can take it a tiny step beyond this one?

 2.  A number of years ago, my wife and I devised Station Day to use in our classes.  Everyone raves about using centers, but how do you feasibly do that when changing classes?  It seems like a lot of work when very few kids can take advantage of it.  The answer?  Station Day!  Create 6 stations and give the kids time to rotate through all of them in the course of a class period.  Kids LOVE it!  This link will take you to an iPad version of Station Day.  I couldn't find two of the three apps named in the lesson plan, but that doesn't matter. Find three (or four or five) apps that allow them to do some drill and practice or create books or play a spelling game and they get all giddy with excitement.

3.  Picture Book!  What language arts teacher doesn't have their kids create books?!?  The Picture Book app enables kids to create their own book which they can later share with others.  The app is free and comes with a small variety of covers and characters.  Of course, you can purchase a boatload of other pictures and covers if you want.  Another fun alternative is PuppetPals where you can create a puppet show and tell a story.  Again, with the free version you're quite limited with what you can use and are more than welcome to buy more options.  In this case, you're only allowed to play in the Wild West. :)

Wanna see my first Zapd site?  Click here and be amazed!

As I stated in the intro to this post, I started writing this Friday afternoon toward the end of our training.  I finished it about 24 hours later during my daughter's nap time.  I can't seem to break out technology anywhere near her without her wanting to play with Elmo or watch a turtle video.

Last night, my friend Jon -- a former colleague and current tech director at a school in Massachusetts -- tweeted me a ton of apps.  I'll list them all here for you to peruse.  I have some on my iPad already.  Others are foreign to me.  My next step is to download them all, then I have to decide what to keep.  (Thanks, Jon, for the help!)

I want this blog to be a place where ideas can be shared.  If you know a teacher working with iPads, please send them here so we can all help each other figure out the best way to use them effectively.

Kinetik, Mobile Mouse, Dropbox, Inspiro, Zite, Editions, Good reader, Instapaper, Timer+, Appstart, Pages, iMovie, Garageband, TED, Doodle Buddy, ComicLife, WordWit, Motion Math HD, Qwiki, Skype, Evernote, Noteshelf, Popplet.

Finally!

Today is the day I've been waiting for since I was hired back in June.  When I went through the interview process I was told that the school was instituting a 1:1 iPad initiative in the middle school and high school and that the 5th and 6th grades would share a cart of 20 iPads to share.  In fact, it was because of my technology integration background that I was hired.  Initially my role at the school was partly to be a technology integration specialist, but that title got downgraded due to my course load.

Of course, there's one little problem.  Until July I had never touched an iPad and had no idea how to integrate it into the classroom.  Like most people who are remotely connected to the outside world, it wasn't too hard to read the writing on the wall.  The iPad was going to revolutionize the classroom like desktop computers did a dozen years ago.  I was excited to be hired by a school that saw this potential and wanted to get on board quickly.  However, I knew I had a lot to learn.

The school gave me an iPad midsummer to play with and I picked up a few apps.  However, until you see kids using the technology, it's all just theory. I was nervous to start a new year at a new school with new technology with expectations high that I would lead the way.  Then I discovered an odd twist... no wifi in the elementary building.  When I asked about it I was told that everything was in the works, but they had to hold off on the elementary angle of the iPads till October at the earliest.

What I thought was a negative turned into a positive in the end.  It took all of August and September to become comfortable at the new school.  Had I had to worry about iPads too, I might have had some serious health issues due to the stress.  Now that things have calmed down on other fronts I'm finally ready to tackle iPads in the classroom. (Though, they still aren't in the room, at least I'm ready.)

Today was Day 1 of iPad training.  The school brought in a rep from Apple to teach us how to use our iPads.  Tomorrow is the last day of the training.

The morning was, I admit, a bit boring. It was basically geared toward someone who just picked up an iPad for the first time.  I did learn a few new tips (like how to turn off an app), most of the morning was review of things I already knew to get everyone up to snuff.  I played a lot of Angry Birds and got caught up on some blogs and such.  Too bad Facebook, Twitter, and Words With Friends are blocked at the school.

The afternoon was a bit more informative and I walked away excited about a few things.  Here are some of the apps that we looked at and how I might be using them in the classroom.

• Scan: This is to scan a QR code, something that I had never done before.  For some reason this is something that is taking America by storm in the consumer world.  It's cool to scan the code and have a site pop up, but in the end it's just a fancy way to call up a web site.  It was suggested to use QR codes in centers, and that is a cool idea.  This would help re-engage minds into an activity.  However, I think my students will be using an iPad 1, so without a camera... Moving on.
• Alice in New York:  The link is for the Lite (free) version, and I'm excited about it!  It's an interactive novel based on Alice in Wonderland.  As our instructor said, the way books are being published is changing, and this app is an excellent display of what all books could look like down the road.  I would love to have the kids download this free version (for the whole story you need to buy the full version) and read it.  Then, I could have them create their own interactive novel.  Of course, they don't have the tools or skills to reproduce something this cool, but it could still be interactive.  Awesome!
• Zapd:  This app claims to help you build a web site in 60 seconds from your iPhone. I have a Google site which I like and is rather easy to work with.  Once you have been using Blogger for a while, Google Sites are easy to build.  However, I may give Zapd a chance.  Maybe I can coerce the kids to build sites with this.  Then, I have to consider their security.  Thoughts? 
• Maps:  This app comes with the iPad.  It is very much like Google Maps, which I've been using for years as a geocacher.  However, I guess I didn't realize that you could zoom in on the Sphinx and take a picture of it for a report.  That transforms what reports would look like.  I think of the Country Reports I used to do in my previous school and think of what kids could have put in there.  Why not do something similar with the Biography Reports my fifth graders will do this winter? A picture of the person's birthplace?  A famous landmark in his/her life?  It doesn't just have to be from the maps.  The possibilities are endless.  Oh, behold my Sphinx picture: 

• There are a ton of note taking apps out there, but one we played with a lot was AudioNote Lite, which allows you to type notes and speak into a microphone to record your notes.  This would be another great tool to create the interactive books I spoke of earlier.
• You know what I would love to do?  I would love to do an entire class novel unit on iPads... no paper at all.  Wouldn't that be cool?  We learned how to take notes on iBooks, and we were pointed to free books too.  Hmm...  

Tomorrow is another day of training, and I'm hoping that we get to learn more cool ideas so I can start prepping for the day when the iPads are unveiled to my 5th and 6th graders.

However, tonight is tonight, and my wife just came home from work.  I'm going to spend the rest of the evening with her because I enjoy her more than an iPad... even an iPad 2.  :)

Slow Start

As you know, I'm starting at a new school this year.  When I was hired I was told that all students from 7th grade and up would have an iPad to use this school year and that my 5th and 6th graders would have a cart of 20 iPads to share.  Cool!  I was excited, and it was one reason why I decided to sign on to the school.

The iPad2s are here.  A very nice and fun tool.  However, I'm missing a few things.  Basically, the infrastructure is not quite there yet for us to start the school year using the shiny new toys.  Instead, I must rely on the new computer lab right across the hall from me for the first couple of months.  As my wife reminded me, it's not such a bad thing.  Right now I'm overwhelmed with everything else being new.  It's nice to not have to worry about the iPads as well.

Since I'm also going to be a couple months behind the first wave of teachers starting with iPads this year, I'll have a glimpse of what works and what doesn't... at least I hope so.

For the time being, here are the apps I have downloaded that I think may help me be a better teacher or make my students better learners. 

Flipboard

Kindle

ShowMe

Dropbox

MathSnacksHD

IEP Checklist

Evernote
iBooks
Kobo
Kapesni

What about you? What do you have on your iPad?  What's working in your classroom?

My New Classroom

Early this summer, I was at school for a few different things, and I happened to get a tour of my new classroom.  I wish I had taken a picture of it.  It literally was the junk room. All unused furniture and other assorted stuff wound up in this classroom.  When I went in it was a mess.  I was told that they had already started clearing it out.  There was a lot of junk.

Over the summer it got cleared out.  They put a fresh coat of paint on the walls, ripped up the old carpet, and waxed the hardwood floor.  On August 1, we went to meet with my principal briefly and started to plan the move in.  Here is the room we saw that day.

In the past two weeks, I’ve done what I could to squeeze classroom work in between my wife's job, the my summer job, family time, meetings, car shopping, sleep, and meals.  Yesterday, when my wife came home from work a little after 2:30, I loaded up the car and headed up to school.  I told her I was going to work till I was finished or I dropped.  I’m glad to say that I left at 8:45 and am just about done setting up the physical room.  There are still a few little things, but here is what it looked like when I left the evening of August 16.

Inservice starts bright and early Friday morning.  Orientation is Monday afternoon, and Tuesday is the first full day of school.  I have a lot of planning to do before I’m ready for the kids to come into the room, but I’m glad that the room looks ready for them, even if I’m not.

Setting Things Up

Inservice is on Friday.  My room is a mess.  Let me back up...

Since I'm new to the school, they had to create a classroom for me.  What they did was clear out the junk room, which was once a rather sizable room.  They painted.  They ripped up the carpet.  They waxed the hardwood floor.  It looks pretty good new... old-fashioned but good.  The room was devoid of any storage or furniture aside from the standard desks, chairs, and file cabinets.  Today, I walked in and found bookshelves in my room, so I could finally start unpacking.  It's a long process moving 17 years of my career into another classroom in another state, but it'll get done. I'm not sure when, but it'll get done.



Since I'm going into a new school, there are all sorts of new things to learn: curriculum, programs, ways of doing things.  With that said, have you ever used Thinking Maps as a writing method?  I went to a short seminar on it earlier in the summer and forgot most of what I learned.  I just cracked open the teacher binder.  Give me your thoughts and ideas.  Thanks for the tips!