Did you just get a new iPad for yourself or receive on to use for work orhave one sent home from school for your child to use to complete distance learning school work? Not quite sure how to get started with the iPad, navigate between screens, or use key apps?
My preconference workshop will be about digitally enhanced literacy classrooms.
I'm hoping that some of you will join me for this professional development opportunity to explore a variety of iPad apps that can make your literacy instruction and students' experiences more engaging and impactful.
Creating instructional videos is fun especially when you share your knowledge with your students. Students will develop their own video by working independently or collaboratively! Also, see how to use TouchCast annotation tools. BYOD to create your own video!
This morning I get to collaborate and co-present with my colleague Marc Patton (@pattonmarc66), who is also a fellow TouchCast user. Come join us for this 90 minute session Easy and Amazing Video Creation on iPads and learn how easy it is to create videos with TouchCast on your iPad!
Tap into the award-winning power of TouchCast's easy-to-use free iPad app to create an engaging, interactive mobile recording studio featuring multi-cam control of extra iPads, green screen, onscreen pop-up documents, and screencasting whiteboard. With the help of a simple green screen, empower your students to share their learning live from within the structures of a cell to the surface of the moon or the depths of the ocean and other amazing locations that will get your students excited to share their learning. Ditch classroom newsletters and replace them with simple-to-create student-produced videos that build students' speaking and presentation skills and make learning fun.
Come experience quick online and app-based formative assessment
and quizzing options on your iPad, Chromebook, or other mobile
devices and learn how to engage your students and gauge their
understanding of your lesson or class material. Session participants
will learn about specific apps and online tools and how to repurpose
other apps and online interactive tools to create collaborative
learning opportunities that will allow you to gauge student learning
on the spur of the moment or designed in advance and incorporated
in a learning management system.
Traditional Quizzes Kahoot
Create a game or copy one shared on the Kahoot site to check your students' knowledge and understanding in a fast-paced competitive manner.
Google Forms
Build a quiz from scratch or tap into the new Google Forms templates available on Google Apps For Education accounts to quickly design a quiz that can be sent to students, linked from a website, or embedded.
Socrative
Use Socrative to build a quiz from scratch or import quizzes from colleagues.
Plickers Plickers is a simple but powerful tool for collecting real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices. Free card sets
Poll Everywhere Poll Everywhere allows you to turn any internet-enabled devices into a student response system.
Other Ways To Check For Understanding Voxer Voxer combines voice, text, photo and video sharing for real-time or asynchronous conversations.
Padlet Padlet makes collaboration and idea sharing easy by allowing you to post text, links, images, and video.
Flipgrid Flipgrid allows you to easily promote discussion and collaboration in and outside of the classroom walls.
DocentEDU
DocentEDU helps you to turn the internet into your lesson by helping you to add vocabulary support, questions, open-ended response, videos, and much more to webpages that complement and supplement the content of the courses you teach - all with just a few clicks!
VoiceThread VoiceThread allows your students to join the conversation from anywhere and add their voice, thoughts, reflections, and doodles to the discussion.
EdPuzzle EdPuzzle can be used to tap into the wealth of video content available on YouTube or created by you with the addition of questions and stops for reflection to ensure that students are tuned in and not missing out due to distractions.
Camera App - video
Don't forget that the camera app on mobile devices is a great way for students to capture a spur-of-the-moment or well-planned video reflection that can be easily submitted and give you insight into their understanding of your course content.
I will be doing two presentations at iPadpaloozaMN on August 4 on App Smashing Superhero Buddy Books and also on Reporting Live From Here, There, and Everywhere With TouchCast. Come join me to learn about how these powerful apps can propel your students' creativity and communication skills while having fun, fun, fun! I will be highlighting how Reflector 2 is a great tool in combination with both of these apps for your 1:1 device classroom management tool belt - allowing you to be mobile and projecting to the whole class at the same time!
The video of my Ignite talk was released by ISTE today. Being one of the ISTE Ignite speakers at this year's ISTE Conference was an amazing experience and allowed me to share a sampling of the innovative, engaging ways that teachers in my district are using technology to engage students. Examples of all of the great projects that teachers developed as they worked hard to integrate iPads and technology integration into their classrooms was too extensive to include a true representation given the brevity of the Ignite presentations. Kudos to everyone in my district exploring ways to use iPads as an academic tool to better engage students in the classroom and to make transform learning for students!
Being one of the ISTE Ignite speakers at this year's ISTE Conference was an amazing experience and allowed me to share many of the innovative, engaging ways that teachers in my district are using technology to engage students. Kudos to all of the teachers in my district who are working to integrate iPads and technology integration into their classrooms to make learning more engaging for students!
Have you ever wanted to add arrows and text to a photo to help explain something to someone or to point out something in the photo? If you answered yes, then Skitch may be the perfect app to help you annotate photos both on the iPad and on your computer.
What is Skitch?
Skitch is an app available for iPads and Apple computers that allows you to take a screenshot on Mac computers or select an image from Photos on the iPad or use the camera app on the iPad to take a photo. You can then use the built-in mark-up tools to annotate your photos or images with arrows, text, shapes, and stamps. There is also a helpful pixelation tool to pixelate faces, names, or text that you do not want to be recognizable in your photos.
Photos can be exported to Photos on the iPad or saved anywhere on your Mac computer and then can be shared via email or by Air Drop.
This is a great app to use with students to label items in the photos to demonstrate their learning or for teachers to give specific directions on how to use something or what to pay attention to in a photo.
Are you thinking about purchasing a document camera for your classroom? If you have an iPad, then this session may change your mind completely and save you hundreds of dollars!
Turn Your iPad Into A Document Camera With The Stage App
iPlay Midway Session Description: Learn how to use the free Stage app to transform your iPad into a document camera. Annotate on top of a live image, add labels to draw attention to things, and snap a photo that can be posted on a website or airdropped to students. Resources: AppsStage: Interactive Whiteboard and Document Camera - free Stage Pro: Interactive Whiteboard and Document Camera - Paid app - $4.99*
Ever wish that you could whisper in your student's ear while they are reading or working a math problem? What if every iBook you created had a personalized instructor or eCoach that could prompt students with metacognitive questions or remind them to use particular strategies? You could provide just-in-time support to your students even when you're not at their elbow or looking over their shoulder. If this sounds like a way to clone yourself and provide extra support to your students, then this session is just what you need.
Meet Your Personalized Instructor
Session Description: Learn how to create talking metacognitive eBook coaches with free and low cost iOS apps. Snap a selfie or use a photo of a pet or even a cartoon, add a movable mouth, and record directions, homework hints, timely tips, and encouragement, and then app smash these recordings into your eBook creation app of choice. Voila ~ you have a personalized metacognitive coach to guide your students through tasks or to create a read aloud eBook. Apps: Download some or all of the apps below to play along today. Book Creator for iPad
Explain Everything Photo Blather - In order to save need to pay $0.99 in app fee for Extras Morfo - In order to save need to pay $0.99 in app fee for Extras
Extra: Book Creator for iPad App Giveaway
Click above if you want to be entered into a random giveaway for the Book Creator for iPad App
courtesy of Book Creator and were present for the session.
Are you looking for free or low cost professional development opportunities? Do you have an iPad? You can use several apps to find the content to create your own personalized professional development.
Session Description:
Use your iPad to build your professional learning network,
engage in self-selected professional development, and transform
your learning.
Resources: I listed the apps below in categories of how the apps can be used for personalized professional development. Most apps are free but there are a few that are not but they do something really well that makes them worth the cost.
Click on the image below and then click on the colored dots on the image to learn more about the apps shown.
Record Yourself and Others (With Permission - Some conferences and presenters do not allow recording)
Camera
iMovie
YouTube Capture
Expand Your Programming Knowledge
Scratch
Hopscotch
Collaboratively Brainstorm
Baiboard
Create Flyers and Infographics
Keynote
Canva
Relax
Metronome
Zen Garden
Reminders and Task Lists
Remember The Milk
2Do
PDF Annotations/Scanning
PDF Scanner
Cam Scanner
iAnnotate PDF
Tiny PDF
Notability
GoodNotes
Paperport Notes
Skitch
Siri
Search internet
Answer questions
Take notes and reminders
Accessibility Settings
Screen zoom
Screen brightness
Font size
Color contrast
Text to speech
Presenting Reflector is a must-have app for your Mac computer if you are presenting on an iPad. Reflector mirrors your iPad screen to your computer, allowing you to move around without any VGA or HDMI cables attached to your iPad.
Other Apps or Resources?
Are there other apps or resources that I did not mention that you use for expanding your PLN (Personal Learning Network) or for curating, consuming, or creating personalized professional development resources? If yes, please share them in a comment below.
As an Ignite Speaker, I am hoping to highlight some of the great work that teachers in my district are doing with instructional technology and how they are engaging students in real world work and activities. I am so proud of our teachers and the work they do to make academic content interesting, engaging, and valuable for our students.
It looks like I will be really busy at ISTE this year as I was just chosen to be an Ignite Speaker at the beginning of the conference on Sunday afternoon.
My topic will be "How the iPad Transports Students Through Time and Space."
The Ignite format allows the speaker only 20 slides and requires that the slides advance every 15 seconds, making for a rapid-fire presentation designed to ignite or excite people about a topic in a short amount of time. I'm looking forward to the challenge as I have not done a presentation that follows this format previously and it seems like it will be fun!
I will be presenting a session on Making Learning Visible with the iPad at the Minnetonka Technology Institute and will focus on how to use a variety of free and low cost screencasting apps on the iPad that can be used to make teacher instruction more visual for learners and student learning more visible for teachers and parents.
I'm looking forward to networking and connecting with colleagues and educators interested in using iPads in the classroom to enhance and support student learning.
I will be presenting a session on Publishing Amazing Interactive Books With iBooks Author and will focus on how to get started using this powerful self-publishing application as well as highlighting some amazing widgets that can be used to make iBooks into a more interactive experience for students.
The Minnesota eLearning Summit is being held at Minneapolis Community and Technical College this year. The theme is Open. Online. Opportunity.
I'm looking forward to networking and connecting with colleagues creating great eLearning resources and opportunities for students and staff.
It's pretty interesting to look back on what was cutting edge technology over the decades. Even more interesting to me how some schools remained behind in terms of not having access to some of these items until years after their introduction.
Even today there are many schools in the United States that do not have reliable access to wireless internet coverage, laptops, or mobile devices.
PreSession Work:
If you will be joining me for my session, please complete the following PreSession Work:
1. Complete the short survey below
2. Read the articles linked below
3. Gather resources for iBook creation
I will be presenting at the Metro ESCU 10th Annual Winning Strategies Conference later this month at Normandale Community College.
"The goal and focus of the Winning Strategies Conference For Paraprofessionals & Future Teachers is to provide directly applicable, quality professional development through awareness sessions that lead to developing the knowledge and skills necessary to maximize student learning and achievement."
I will be presenting a session on Using iPads To Make Learning More Visual and will focus on a variety of free and low-cost iOS apps that can be used for screen casting and creating multimedia.
