New Year:
Kids start TODAY!
New Job:
Flexible Timetable, k-5 tech integration & support at UWCSEA East.
New Toys:
14 Creative Vado HD Video cameras
12 iPod Touches
11 Digital Blue Microscopes
22 Acer Aspire One Netbooks
1 Visualizer
Getting Started:
I introduced some of our new toys during a whole staff meeting. I demonstrated (briefly) how to use the iTouch using the visualizer, and whipped through a couple of free Apps to show some possible uses in the classroom. These were the three I showed:
This great little app has 5 major artists, info on their lives, and a photo gallery of their work.
Wendy, our very creative teacher of Chinese, discovered an awesome way to use Notes. She added simplified Chinese as one of the keyboard languages, then wrote characters, which can then be emailed to parents
The Whiteboard app is one of my most exciting finds. It allows two iPod Touches to connect and work together; two people can draw on the same whiteboard. It has great potential for peer-to-peer work (one person could write above a line drawn in the middle, the other below) e.g maths quizzes where students could compare answers, play games like naughts and crosses, and collaborative drawing to name but a few. Can you think of any more?
Next up were the Video Cameras. I showed the basics of how to record, replay etc, then showed a video our technician (Bernie) had taken earlier in the day of me using the iPod Touch. The teachers were blown away with the quality of the video.
Finally, we put teachers into groups of 4 (each having a leader who I knew either had an iPhone/iPod Touch themselves, or was familiar with them), and encouraged them to have a play. Each group was given an iPod Touch, a video camera and two netbooks.
The teachers had a great time investigating the new hardware, and the end result was a huge number of questions about where they can purchase some for themselves! That was encouraging! It was great to hear the discussion between people as they discovered and shared new things.
Today is the first day of school, and already the iTouches and Video Cameras are booked to be used with kids. Can you imagine what these kids will be telling their parents about their first day at UWCSEA East?! How engaging will their classes be?!
I will blog more about how they are being used in the classroom, and hope to have some examples to share with you soon.
Let the learning begin!
Tip of the Iceberg 