Shared iPads? No Problem!

How lucky are we? We recently added 6 iPads to each G3-5 class, augmenting their existing 1:1 Macbook Air laptops.

Planning for valuable use of shared devices requires some creative thinking, particularly when you are used to 1:1 devices. That said, the small number of devices provides a great opportunity to differentiate for powerful learning, maximise small-group rotations and engage in collaborative activities.

Together with some of our wonderful Digital Literacy Mentors (Mike & Jocelyn), Dave and I developed some ideas about how to best manage shared devices and use them effectively to support learning.

We hope you find these tips for shared devices useful.

[Cross-posted at GreaTechxpectations]

Triptico – A Great IWB Resource

(Cross-posted at Greatechxpectations)

Noah Katz, one of the Digital Literacy Coaches at Dover came across this fantastic resource which he shared with me.

Triptico (designed by David Riley) is a FREE download which works very nicely in conjunction with IWBs. The free download gives you a number of desktop resources which are fully customizable.

What I love about them most of all is that they are so aesthetically pleasing! I have seen other countdown timers, but none that look as good as this one!

Below are a few examples of the tools in the Triptico IWB toolkit.

Hourglass – countdown timer

 Class Timer – another countdown timer

Question Quiz – provide the answer and have students guess the question. Award points to teams if they guess correctly

Class Magnets – create a set of magnets for your class. You could get them to drag their names up to the board when they arrive to record attendance. There are lots of other different ways to use this tool, particularly if you select a different background from the ones on offer.

Find Ten – create a quiz of sorts, and get students to guess which 10 things match the category you choose.

Order Resource – This would work extremely well with Kath Murdoch’s ‘More True than False, More False than True’ activity. Essentially, just order the statements.

What’s in the Box – this is similar to the TV Show ‘It’s in the Bag’. You choose a box, then decide whether to keep it, or risk playing on.

5 Fab Ideas for Effective Online Research

Over the past few days, UWCSEA has been lucky enough to have Apple Guru Kathleen Ferenz visit our school. She has been a fabulous resource for me personallyas a Digital Literacy Coach, but also for the groups of teachers she has worked with.

One of Kathleen’s many strengths is in Literacy, and she has given us lots of handy hints to do with helping students make sense of online texts, research techniques and some strategies for developing effective research skills. Many of her ideas come from this great article ‘Making Sense of Online Text‘ which is extremely relevant today, even though it was written in 2004!

Please know that the following Fab Ideas for Effective Online Research are Kathleen’s – I am merely sharing them around.

1. Start with images

The right search words are the keys to unlocking the information you are searching for. Kathleen recommended showing students a photo of the sort of thing they would be searching for online to elicit keywords. By way of example, she showed an image of a volcano, and then asked students to think of the keywords that might describe the image. She then used the words the students gave as a starting point for a search.

2. Narrow search by Reading Level

A neat little addition to the ‘more tools’ section of the Google search results is the ability to search by reading level. I’m not sure how, but I had missed this gem.

3. Scaffold

Our Grade 6 students have been researching about the UWC movement and the other UWC schools around the world. They worked collaboratively on Google Docs to find information under various categories, with the view to making a Keynote presentation later on.

Although the teachers took care to direct students to retain the URL of their sources etc, the Google Docs quickly became a receptacle for work that had been copied and pasted.

Kathleen got the students to set up a table in Pages to help summarize and organise their data. This helped bridge the gap between the ‘research’ and the Keynote. Too often, students are not provided with enough scaffolding, and as a result, the finished product lacks a depth of understanding. This scaffold will help our students be more successful in their presentation.

4. Summarize & Transform

As part of the scaffolding process, students were asked to summarize their findings into bullet points, which was a great start of course. Where I think Kathleen really raised the bar was when she asked the kids to transform their notes into audio form. The process of transforming written text into a different form (in this case, audio) really made them think about what they had learned, and what was important. It helped put the notes into their own words and moved them away from copying.

Throughout her time at UWCSEA, Kathleen used the technique of transforming text. Occasionally it was creating/finding an image that represented a particular word, sometimes it was a movie recording, sometimes audio. I will definitely be adding this technique to my research toolbox.

5. Search Stories

How do you assess a student’s search skills? When Kathleen asked this question to a group of teachers, it certainly made them stop and think. Typically, the skills of searching and synthesizing are seldom assessed, and instead, the quality of a summative task/presentation becomes the assessment.

Using screen capture tools (e.g. Quicktime player) or a specially created video tool to help with the process, students can record their screen and show the process they use to search for relevant information. Google calls these ‘Search Stories‘ (see amusing example here).

[Although this post is primarily about researching, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Search Stories could be used as a basis for literacy – developing storylines, uncovering the plot with each new search category, character development…]

I would like to thank Kathleen for all her support, ideas and above all, her warmth! I hope you find these ideas as useful as we have.

Image credits:

Volcano Erupting ( BY NC SD ) by kahunapulej
UWCSEA by Keri-Lee Beasley
Singapore map via Google Maps

 

 

 

5 Fab Ideas for Effective Online Research

Over the past few days, UWCSEA has been lucky enough to have Apple Guru Kathleen Ferenz visit our school. She has been a fabulous resource for me personallyas a Digital Literacy Coach, but also for the groups of teachers she has worked with.

One of Kathleen’s many strengths is in Literacy, and she has given us lots of handy hints to do with helping students make sense of online texts, research techniques and some strategies for developing effective research skills. Many of her ideas come from this great article ‘Making Sense of Online Text‘ which is extremely relevant today, even though it was written in 2004!

Please know that the following Fab Ideas for Effective Online Research are Kathleen’s – I am merely sharing them around.

1. Start with images

The right search words are the keys to unlocking the information you are searching for. Kathleen recommended showing students a photo of the sort of thing they would be searching for online to elicit keywords. By way of example, she showed an image of a volcano, and then asked students to think of the keywords that might describe the image. She then used the words the students gave as a starting point for a search.

2. Narrow search by Reading Level

A neat little addition to the ‘more tools’ section of the Google search results is the ability to search by reading level. I’m not sure how, but I had missed this gem.

3. Scaffold

Our Grade 6 students have been researching about the UWC movement and the other UWC schools around the world. They worked collaboratively on Google Docs to find information under various categories, with the view to making a Keynote presentation later on.

Although the teachers took care to direct students to retain the URL of their sources etc, the Google Docs quickly became a receptacle for work that had been copied and pasted.

Kathleen got the students to set up a table in Pages to help summarize and organise their data. This helped bridge the gap between the ‘research’ and the Keynote. Too often, students are not provided with enough scaffolding, and as a result, the finished product lacks a depth of understanding. This scaffold will help our students be more successful in their presentation.

4. Summarize & Transform

As part of the scaffolding process, students were asked to summarize their findings into bullet points, which was a great start of course. Where I think Kathleen really raised the bar was when she asked the kids to transform their notes into audio form. The process of transforming written text into a different form (in this case, audio) really made them think about what they had learned, and what was important. It helped put the notes into their own words and moved them away from copying.

Throughout her time at UWCSEA, Kathleen used the technique of transforming text. Occasionally it was creating/finding an image that represented a particular word, sometimes it was a movie recording, sometimes audio. I will definitely be adding this technique to my research toolbox.

5. Search Stories

How do you assess a student’s search skills? When Kathleen asked this question to a group of teachers, it certainly made them stop and think. Typically, the skills of searching and synthesizing are seldom assessed, and instead, the quality of a summative task/presentation becomes the assessment.

Using screen capture tools (e.g. Quicktime player) or a specially created video tool to help with the process, students can record their screen and show the process they use to search for relevant information. Google calls these ‘Search Stories‘ (see amusing example here).

[Although this post is primarily about researching, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Search Stories could be used as a basis for literacy – developing storylines, uncovering the plot with each new search category, character development…]

I would like to thank Kathleen for all her support, ideas and above all, her warmth! I hope you find these ideas as useful as we have.

Image credits:

Volcano Erupting ( BY NC SD ) by kahunapulej
UWCSEA by Keri-Lee Beasley
Singapore map via Google Maps

 

 

 

Kindergarten: Have passport, will travel

I have been back in the Kindergarten with Ms Louise (and the other wonderful teachers on our K2 team), using Google Earth with the K2 students.

What is great about using Google Earth is that it gives the students practice with logging onto the computers, keyboard familiarisation and mouse-control skills in a thoroughly engaging context.

I  did an initial lesson with Ms Louise’s class, showing how to navigate and input places into the search bar, and we also checked out some places using Street View. The students really enjoyed experimenting with zooming, going to locations they had been on holiday, and finding our school.

Ms Louise’s brilliant idea (which tied in with their unit on Journeys) was to create task cards for a number of famous places around the world, which the students would have to ‘travel’ to in order to get a stamp in their passport.

Using Jing, she created the task cards (see below), which were an enormous success, as they helped scaffold the learning for the students. The text they had to type was on each task card, and a picture of the place they had to find was also included. When their screen showed what we could see on the task card, then they got a stamp in their passport.

Some were harder than others, requiring a bit of searching, zooming and clicking-and-dragging to find the locations. This just helped us reinforce the skills we were hoping to cover in this unit.

It also gave us an opportunity to talk about commas and spaces, as both were needed when typing in locations. The students quickly learned that after each comma, you need a space.

I know the K2 teachers were impressed with how much the students could accomplish in a few short lessons. The levels of enthusiasm have been great, and some poor teachers have been hounded by students wanting to complete their passport.

We have had neat feedback from a number of K2 parents saying how their children are making them use Google Earth at home, so it’s lovely to hear of the home-school connections that this type of lesson is creating. It reinforces to me how fabulous it is to use an open-source, cross-platform tool such as Google Earth to make links between home and school.

With Ms Louise’s permission, I have included the Google Earth Task Cards & Passport below. I hope you take the time to try it out!

Google Earth Task Cards

Google Earth Passport

**If you are using the same computers with different children, then I would encourage you to get them to click on Edit then Clear Search History at the beginning of each session, so that the place names don’t start appearing automatically!**

iPod Touches meet Kindergarten 2

Man have I been looking forward to this! My first chance at getting into classes with the iPod Touches. My expectations were certainly exceeded and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.

Full disclosure: I have never taught K2 before. In fact, I’ve never taught kids younger than Grade 2, so thankfully I had an expert to work alongside: Ms Louise is an experienced early years teacher (and fellow PYP workshop leader), so I was in very capable hands.

We worked with groups of 7 or 8 students at a time. The rest of the class was working with the teacher assistant on some shapes work, and another group had play.

We decided on 2 free apps to start with. First up, we introduced ABC PocketPhonics Lite

This app reinforced phonics skills and writing skills. Once various sounds were explored, students played the game, where the programme says a sound, and the kids have to select the letter that matches the sound. They end up making words (e.g. an, it, sit, cap).

What we liked about this app was that we could select lowercase letters (from a menu of uppercase, lowercase and cursive), US or UK English sounds, and even the style of print. Very customizable.

After about 10 minutes on this app, concentration levels were beginning to wane (especially as a menu of other apps was only a click away!). I had planned on doing some more structured letter practice using our next app, Doodle Kids, but Ms Louise wisely suggested we let them draw and play.

What’s neat about this app is that you can change the background with a 2-finger tap, draw with various shapes, and basically be creative. When we were with the second group, Ms Louise said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could save some of the pictures?”

I remembered that with the Whiteboard Collaborative Drawing app, that simultaneously holding down the menu button and the sleep/wake button took a photo which got saved in the photos folder on the iPod Touch. I had a go, and sure enough, it worked!

From there, we were able to email it to Ms Louise (or anyone!).

** We had previously set up the iPod Touches with a generic gmail account I created for the school, and this function would need to be set up prior to use with the kids **

The kids were really excited about the prospect of emailing their pictures to their parents. One wee girl said to me, “This one’s for my Mum, because she’s going to Germany tomorrow.” How sweet!

Remember, this is day 4 of school for these little guys. Wouldn’t you be impressed with an email from your child’s teacher with a drawing they’d done for you? This one’s by Daniel.

I have been asked countless times since purchasing the iPod Touches for the school, “But what are the kids going to be learning on them?” Don’t get me wrong, I totally support this mode of thinking. If we can’t justify to teachers/parents/anyone what kids are learning on the iPod Touches, then they’re just another toy.

So I have been reflecting on what the kids learned during that mini-lesson, and here are some of the skills I saw (using the PYP Transdisciplinary Skills):

Communication skills Listening Reading Writing Viewing Social Skills Accepting Responsibility

Self-Management Skills Fine-Motor Skills Codes of Behaviour Thinking Skills Acquisition of Knowledge Application

Clearly there is a lot of learning taking place.

I know this is just the beginning, but I hope to document the different ways we are using the iPod Touches at UWCSEA East so we can build a bank of knowledge and ideas to share. We are always looking at unique ways we can use them, so please feel free to share ideas with us.