Just One ISTE Tip for the Memory Challenged

With all of the wonderful posts out there about getting ready for ISTE, there's not much that hasn't been covered. That is, except for organizing and accessing all of those pesky little details like flight information, hotel name, sight-seeing info, etc...Who actually remembers all of that off the top of their head? (Okay, if you have a great memory, you may want to stop reading now. This post is for those of us who can't hold lots of little details in our brains at once).

As I was going over all of those details the other day, I thought to myself, "It sure would be great if I had access to all of this on my phone so I don't have to dig through my bag." Hence, this one little ISTE tip: Create shortcuts to the websites on my phone's desktop! Now I have at my fingertips my flight info, links to the restaurants, tours, hotel, and of course, the ISTE 2013 app!

Here's how to do it:
1. Open the website you want to save as an icon in Safari.
2. Tap the button circled in red below:

3. Tap "Add to Home Screen."

4. Give your link a name, and tap "Add."

5. After you have a few on your home screen, press and hold one icon until you see them wiggle and an "X" appear. 

6. Using your finger, drag and drop one of the icons on top of another one. This will create a group that you name whatever you want. 

That's it! Hope this little tip helps you stay organized and on top of those little details during your ISTE trip!

EduCreations

Have you seen this handy screen capturing app? Educreations is a FREE iPad app that allows you to create screen cast videos of your lessons and then share them. Some really great features are that you can take pictures of items to use in your videos within the app or even import pictures from your album. The screen cast allows you to create multiple page before or during your recording. You can even duplicate pages. Once your video is complete, you have the option to share it on the Educreations site, get the link, post to Facebook, or post to Twitter. You can even grab the embed code for posting online! Here's a simple one I made:

I'm using it to record quick demos of each math lesson. My parents are great about helping their children, but this new math program is so different, they're not sure how to help. I'm hoping these videos will clear things up. They'll also be great for students who are absent, or just need a review.

*One downside I noticed is that there doesn't seem to be a way to save a video, then come back and edit it. Maybe I'll find a way when I spend more time in the app. 

Have you used this app? Any advice or ideas?

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You've Gotta Have This App! iMotion

If you make movies in your classroom, you have GOT to try out iMotion for iPod and iPad! I stumbled on this great app the other day while on Twitter. A teacher had requested comments for her students on this blog post which included stop motion animation movies about money. Of course I had to check it out! I was so impressed that I immediately downloaded the FREE app onto my iPhone.

I have to say it is super easy to use. The first time I used it was on Father's Day: My family all met at my Grandmother's house and (of course) started playing with phones and talking about apps. I whipped out my new app and within 3 minutes, my dad and I had made this movie:

Yeah, I know its a little silly, but we were just playing after all. :)

My cousin's little girl downloaded it and made two movies right then and there. And I started thinking..."If we can do that in almost NO time, what could my kiddos do with this app?!?"

I was so excited about it, I knew I had to use it again soon, so I had my 3rd-5th grade Sunday School class make one during our Sunday School lesson:

It's easy to use. Just open the app and click start. It is automatically set to take still shots every second. You can adjust the speed of the snapshots, or choose to take them manually. You can pause and restart.You can even change the speed of the movie once you've finished.  The only downside is that you have to pay $1.99 as an in app purchase if you want to share your movies to Youtube, Facebook, or whatever. I thought it was worth it because I know I'll be using it a lot!

How about you? Have you ever made stop motion animation movies? What do you use? I'd love to hear from you and steal borrow your ideas! 

Give Your Anecdotal Records a Face Lift with Google Forms

Okay, I know it's not Monday, but I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics: Monday Made It! linky party to share this awesome tool I just made. I couldn't wait until Monday to share!

Do you take anecdotal notes when conferencing with kiddos? Looking for a way to organize them and really be able to use your notes to drive your instruction? Google Forms is the answer for you. I love to conference with my kiddos during Self-Selected Reading time. What I DON"T love are the records and notes that I scribble down in my horrendous  messy chicken scratch. In the past, I've kept this giant notebook with a tab for each student. Behind each tab was a set of conference sheets that I used to write notes during our reading conferences. Sounds great, right? It was, until I tried to start pulling data for skill-based groups. Plus, all of that paper...!

Enter this fabulous idea for tracking data---Google Forms! 

I created a Google Form, emailed it to myself, then opened it on my iPad. I then saved the link to the form on my iPad home screen so that I can access the form at a touch. Here's what the actual form looks like:

So, now instead of calling the kiddo to the table where my giant notebook resides or lugging my notebook all over the classroom, I can easily go to the student with my iPad and jot notes into my form. I can also easily access the data through the spreadsheet on my computer. Here's a sample I made:

Another great feature about using the Google Form is that you can click on Form, then choose Show Summary of Responses, and there are great graphs which summarize your data!


I found this amazing idea on Karyn's Doing the Daily Five blog. (Click here for her original post). Thanks, Karyn! I can't wait to try it out next year!

If you'd like to see the actual form, you can click HERE. 

For a better look at my spreadsheet, click HERE.

Songify-Way Too Cool!

If you haven't gotten the free Songify app yet (iPod, iPad, iPhone), you should go right now and download it! A friend of mine, Julie D. Ramsay, shared it at EdCamp Birmingham this past weekend and I could hardly wait to try it with my 4th graders. Basically, you record yourself talking and Songify takes your words and mixes them with music and turns it into a song. It even auto tunes the voice, so it sounds really interesting. My kids were hooked! We used it to Songify some poetry they wrote:  

A few weeks ago I posted about a poem one of my students wrote about ActivExpressions. Here's the same poem on Songify: ActivExpression, ActivExpression.

Teaching in the one-iPad Classroom

As I write this, I'm reminded of my early days in teaching when I was lucky to have one computer in my classroom. Although we've come well past the days of the one computer classroom, I now find myself trying to troubleshoot how to use my one iPad in the classroom. Here are some ways I've begun using it with my 24 students:

1. Small group instruction-There are countless apps that can be downloaded for free or at very little cost that are beneficial for a small group of 4-6 students to work on together. During my small group math instruction, I've used Coin Math and Math Drills Lite. The children at the small group table take turns (round-robin style). While one child answers the question/problem on the iPad, the others work it on white boards or with money manipulatives. The iPad gets passed around the table in a clockwise motion and we continue this until everyone has had at least 2 turns. 
2. Paired with Document Camera-I'm fortunate enough to have a Promethean ActiView camera in my room, so many times, I've simply placed my iPad under the document camera and projected the image onto our ActivBoard. One or more students can take turns clicking the iPad. I especially like to show BrainPop's featured movie using the BrainPop app.  I've also used Grammar Jammers in this way.
3. As a Center Activity-If it's not being used with small groups (or maybe after we've finished), sometimes I allow small groups of students to take turns playing games on the iPad in groups of 2-4. (I love this idea for school-purchased iPads, but as the one I have is my personal iPad, I do this sparingly). Some of the apps I've used in this way are Crazy Tangram and Rocket Math.
4. As an Interactive Slate-With the Splashtop app ($4.95), I can control my computer with my iPad. This allows me to walk around the room and use my iPad as an interactive slate. Instead of having students come to the board to click, drag, write, ect...They can do the same things from their seats on my iPad! This allows for even more interactive lessons because of the time efficiency. Let me explain...previously if a page on my flipchart lesson called for something to be revealed by clicking, I found that having a student walk up to the board, click the object, then walk back was not very efficient and slowed down the momentum of the lesson. Therefore, I simply clicked it and moved on. Now, I can give that control back to the students as I move around the classroom.
5. As a Student Response System-With Promethean's free ActivEngage app, students can respond to questions using the iPad, rather than ActiVotes, ActivExpressions, or other mobile devices. ActivEngage works right alongside the other devices and groups of 2-4 students can "share" the iPad when choosing their answer. One desk grouping could use it (3 desks are in a group in my room), then pass it to the next group for the next question. This allows for more active engagement and collaboration. It reminds me of the "Think Pair Share" strategy we use in reading. I've yet to try this out in my classroom, but I've explored the app and this is definitely on my To-Do List.

I'd love to hear how you're using iPads in your classroom!

Heating Up a Lesson with Photo Booth

 

While learning about heat and thermal imaging today, one of my students quipped "My iPad has an app that takes those kinds of pictures."

"Hey, MY iPad will do that too!" I said. (Good thing I had a kid there to remind me of that app). So, of course an impromptu experiment began. We took thermal images using PhotoBooth and showed them on the document camera. Then I had the kiddos rub their hands (same kids from this post) together and snapped a picture real quick to see what color their hands were.  Then we compared the colors in the pictures to this scale from NASA's website.

Yet another use for iPad in the classroom!

Splashtop

Teachers, if you have an iPad you have GOT to get this app! Splashtop basically allows you to control your desktop or laptop computer with your iPad. It's like having an Interwrite Mobi or ActivSlate device, but you can actually see the same screen on your iPad as what is on your computer, which makes it much easier to allow students to interact with projected images.