downtherabbithole

GradePad App

Well, the answer is really both. I have spent a lot of time lately playing games on this fantastic device (purely in the interests of education you understand!) but it is also a brilliant tool for teachers, especially if your school is kind enough to let you use the wifi (please guys).

I am using the QuickOffice app to create, edit and download documents in Word, Excel and PDF format, there is GradePad software which allows me to assess students on the go – I will be trialling this for real tomorrow as my students do their oral presentations, and you can obviously get emails and search the web. There is even a WordPress app to allow you to update your blog on the go if you have  a WordPress blog.

As you can see there is enough there to justify buying one for any teacher interested in technology, but wait, there’s more. I also have a good dictionary on mine and if you were a language teacher the resources are amazing. I have study guides from Schmoop, Cliff notes and LitCharts for texts that I teach. They have great features such as character and theme profiles, summaries of chapters/scenes as well as the ability within the i-pod to copy and paste text into another document so that I can create worksheets etc. They all have author background study and some have the ability to zoom into character maps as well.

I also have mad libs, which every English teacher knows are a great way to cover the basics of parts of speech in a hilarious way. As well as a great grammar quiz and many, many others.

Of course, as the ipod also connects to YouTube, you can view short films on the go too. My next purchase needs to be a small data projector for the ipod!

I am really interested in hearing more about this from other people, so if others have great apps that they have discovered I’d love to hear about them.

I love the idea of using these. Lets face it so many students have them and it would be a great way of storing notes, lectures etc. I am waiting for the 09.09.09 event where rumour has it, apple are announcing that the new i-pod touch will come with a camera and possibly a microphone. This means that we can use them for podcasting as opposed to just listening to podcasts with them, a great improvement to an already very useful gadget. The enormous amount of apps available make it one of the most exciting learning tools ever. If you download Stanza you can then read thousands of e-books online and take a whole library with you. You can also use the Cliff notes app to revise and learn for lots of different topics. If they do come with a camera it will mean that they can be a presentation tool as well as you can already buy a product to turn them into projectors. I would love to know whether or not it’s a video or still camera. Students will be able to take photos of notes, graphs and charts from the board and save them. They can also share these using the wifi already in schools. If it makes students more organised then it is well worth the money. If you are teaching a language this will be an invaluable way of embedding language into everyday life.

So it’s time to start researching ways of using i-pods in the classroom beyond the obvious.

This post from Weblogg-ed is a very pertinent one for some schools. It seems that some districts in the US are afraid of using technology for learning because of their lack of understanding. It is alarming that teachers feel the need to move on if they wish to be innovative. Good for the school that gets them, but not so good for the school that they have just left.

I can see that some schools may be worried about the safety issues, cost issues, forcing staff to update skills, changing focus etc. but what are schools for if they are not to educate young people. How can we teach them about how to use technology safely, innovatively, creatively and for learning if we do not supply them with access? How do we keep the best teachers if we do not allow them to develop as innovative practitioners? This really is an alarming thing to read.

This really is working well, it’s funny how I’ve used this before and yet this time it has really taken off. There are literally hundreds of posts all generated by the students and they decided to add a page where they could upload their own writing to share and get feedback on. Obviously at this point I am pinching myself repeatedly.
As noted earlier the quality of the posts is high and students are being responsible and sensitive to the needs of others in their posts. I can see their learning and can see how they have inspired each other to learn more deeply. The wider reading page is a great success as they share their favourite books with each other and recommend lists of authors.

I have begun a new wiki with my new year 9 class. They have embraced it more quickly than other classes and have posted their responses to the text we are reading. These reponses were quite detailed and I am pleased with their progress. I will be posting homework tasks on this site for them.

I added vokis to each page and this has been recieved well. These vokis give a brief overview of the tasks for each page.

One student has already created his own voki. I am very pleased with the way that this class have embraced the technology. They also have a Smartboard in the classroom and love using it. They often stay back to use the board after class.

This site contains an interesting article with accompanying slideshow, on how to use Wordle to increase literacy skills.

Very useful ideas here.

Listen up

This article contains some timely advice for those of use who have become slightly addicted to these sites. Common sense really, but still worth a reminder. It may be really tempting to let off steam when you have had  a rotten morning with 8F and you have a blank box in front of you asking you how you feel. It is tempting to just go for it and complain about little Johnny’s foul manners and useless attempts at writing/fractions/painting, but does little Johnny’s mother, father or big brother know your name? Could they find you online? Sometimes it is difficult to remember that the demon who is making your life hell on period 6 on Friday is someone’s child, but they did not spring fully formed into your classroom and so there are people somewhere who may not see the humour or pathos in your situation if you complain about them online. Best to keep the rants to the staffroom.

The thing that I have learnt about moving is that not only do you reorganise your files, folders and books, but you also take a fresh look at your online presence because you are now doing things slightly differently. What I have found is that this helps me to redefine the criteria for good online programs. I have decided that I really need something that helps me to simplify how I do things, not make things more difficult. I want a blog where I can post documents and files for students to use. This was not possible so I had to search for a way around it. I decided on Sribd as I mentioned earlier. Then I decided that I wanted a homepage that helped me to stay organised, I decided on Page Flakes as I can have my Facebook, Twitter, post it notes, calendar, news feeds and music updated by the minute.

The process has allowed me to take stock and realise what is important for the current situation I am in. This is useful for our students as they can do the same while they are trying to organise themselves for learning. They could keep their notes on an online storage page  or cloud computing site and share them with their peers if they wished. They can update their resources on Diigo or Delicious and again, share them. Organisation is one of they key skills necessary for students (and teachers) and we can help them to learn this skill by using good online tools.

I have finally solved the problem of not being allowed more than one blog here. Use another blog host! My other blog is at edublogs and is for students only. I will still keep this running as they have different aims. My new one is http://saysomething.edublogs.org/ and I have uploaded the student docs on Scribd.

Now that I am settling in to the new school it’s time to take stock and update all of my online presences. In the process of doing this I thought it was a good idea to see if I could do things any better. After all there are new sites all of the time. I have run a ning ( or several) wikis, blogs, twitter, had a look at a microblogging site, Edmodo and all sorts of other goodies. 

The first step is obviously to sit down and consider what I want to use it for, and then once I have that worked out, I need to think about whether anything that I am currently using is good for that use. Sounds pretty simple huh?

All that has happened so far is that I have got a headache! There really is so much out there. I am now going back to the drawing board. So many people are doing so many great things so I will do more research and for the meantime stick with the wiki, ning and blog. I’d really like a blog that allows me to have several pages on which I can post, say one for each year level I teach and one for me and other teachers. Is that too much to ask?