This week, we completed our 10th Annual Summer Teaching with Technology Workshop Series. During that time, we taught five iPad workshops ranging from Leveraging iPads, Laptops, and other Digital Tools to Create Differentiated Learning Environments to The iPad Classroom to iPads, ePubs, & iBooks Author. We often say that we learn as much from our participants as they learn from us. To prove it, we’ve compiled a Top 10 List of what we learned this summer.
10 New Things We Learned About iPads
- Turn your iPad into a mobile document camera using the free Board Cam app and Reflection. This is great for a 1 iPad classroom where the teacher could use the mobility to project and annotate student work.
- Flipping your class with iPads? To make sure that students have access to the videos at home, create screencasts in Explain Everything, and email them to the student iPads that don’t have Internet at home. When students open their email, they can download the video to their camera roll for offline viewing.
- iMovie and GarageBand communicate with one another. Turn that dry podcast interview into a film by creating and editing the podcast in GarageBand and then export the project to iMovie. Drop in images and video that are muted to create a video based interview project.
- Create ePub files from within the Pages app by integrating with Otixo and Wappwolf. For schools that are still using Widows computers, creating dynamic course content for students to consume on iPads can be a challenge without iBooks Author. This is a quick way to get formatted content all from the iPad. This SnapGuide explains the process in detail.
- The Book Creator app can import images and video from the camera roll. This means that students and teachers can create videos in iMovie as well as screencasts in Explain Everything, export them to the camera roll, and then import them into Book Creator to add more multimedia content.
- Creative Book Builder can import files from Google Drive. Students could collaborate on a document in Google Docs from either an iPad or a computer and then import the text into Creative Book Builder to add media. Additionally, Google Presentations can be linked into Creative Book Builder ePubs for reading via iBooks when not online.
- Looking to add still images into an iMovie trailer? Create a project with all of the desired still images and apply the Ken Burns effect to give them motion effects. Send the project to the camera roll so that it can be accessed and imported when using the trailer feature.
- To create an ePortfolio for assessment purposes, consider having students submit work by emailing to a specified Evernote folder. The students do not need Evernote accounts, only the teacher’s Evernote email address. In addition to work created on the iPads, teachers can use the picture and audio recording notes to keep a record of what their students have completed. The individual notebooks could then be shared with students, parents, or team teachers.
- What’s the future look like? With Aurasma, Layar, and even Thinglink, it’s now possible to easily merge the physical and virtual worlds. For more ideas, read Paper + Layar + iPads = Augmented Reality on Greg’s blog.
- To quote guest instructor, Dan Callahan (@dancallahan), “The most innovative teachers are the ones who aren’t afraid to play….”
Enjoy the weekend, and have fun playing with the rest of this week’s resources.
Weekly Resources
Shakespeare In Bits: Romeo & Juliet
Shakespeare in bits provides animations as well as the text with reading tools to understand Shakespeare. This one works for Romeo & Juliet, but there are also editions for Macbeth, A Mid Summer’s Night Dream, and Hamlet. While it’s $14.99, it does come under the VPP so it comes as the same cost as the book.
Tags: ipad, english, shakespeare
Great app for elementary science students to teach about making observations in the natural world.
Tags: ipad, notes, biology, Elementary, app, science
This is just like stickies on a Mac, but it’s for the iPad
Cool note taking note app with great pen tools.
Tags: ipad
Wappwolf – Automate your Dropbox
For those looking to create ePubs for students to use on mobile devices, Wappwolf is a great solution. Connect Wappwolf to your Dropbox account, upload a file, and run an action to convert it.
Tags: dropbox, automation, wappwolf, iPads, ePub, iBooks
Learning and Teaching with iPads: iPads for Literacy & Learning resource for teachers
You can download this iBook for free from Dropbox. The focus is on using “iPads for Literacy & Learning”.
Tags: learning, literacy, iPads, Elementary, iBooks
The desktop software program now comes to iPad as a concept mapping tool.
Tags: ipad, inspiration, app, english
