This blog is from a teacher in Australia who discusses the challenges of teaching in a classroom of 27 with only 8 iPads. This is an interesting issue to have and something I’ve never considered. She mentions several apps in her blog including Socrative, which we have used in our core class before for formal assessments. However, the applications she mentions are more difficult to use with the amount of iPads she has available, so she uses an app called Plickers. This app gives instantaneous results by giving the students special cards that correspond to the letters A, B, C, and D that your device can read. Using the app, the results are recorded and graphed on your device. Here is a tutorial on Plickers:

At the end of her blog, she talks about creating a google account to save all the work that her students do because it is difficult, not being a Google school yet, to save everything to one location on the school’s server. By creating a Google account, she can save her students work there, create Google Docs, and communicate to all her students at one location.

Using Apps in the classroom can be found by opening iTunes U, going to the “For Educators” icon, then scrolling down the next screen that opens up. Once you’re there, you will see a selection of 18 books that are filled with apps and how to utilize them within your classroom. Three of the books in the selection look interesting; Scoodle Jame Lesson Ideas, Skitch Lesson Ideas, and Hopscotch Lesson Ideas. However, the one I liked the best for my content area, was Tag Journal Lesson Ideas.

The Tag Journal is a digital journal that students can use to take notes in class, record their life events and thoughts, with text, photos, short videos, voice recordings, and more. Some of the suggestions in the book talk about creating a journal as if your students were on board the Titanic, chronicling dates, times, events, and important people. This could be a useful idea when discussing slavery, war, religion, or politics.

The reason I chose the app is because I plan on having my kids create journals on a regular basis in response to primary sources. A lot of my content area standards are about interpreting primary sources, so being able to think about what it would be like to be in any historical situation and then reconstruct their own primary source would be very beneficial to my students and meeting my content area standards.

There are 30 books . You can find it by going to your iTunes U application. At the bottom are three taps, the first of which is titles “My Courses”. Click on my courses and it will take you to your library which should store everything you’ve bought or subscribed to in iTunes U. If you have yet to subscribe or purchase, you will need to go to iTunes U and click the icon titles “For Educators”, it should then take you to a page that has, at the top, a selection titled, “Inspiring Lesson Ideas”. Click that and all 30 courses should appear.

Out of all the selections, they had several in my content area like, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Being the Change: Exploring Leadership and the Work of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, and It’s All Geography to Me.

I have chosen my lesson to be over Rise of the Frankenstuffies: The Industrial Revolution. In this course, you study the impacts of the industrial revolution. Along the way, you will read a “Steampunk” novel which is a type of science fiction novel that can be about almost anything as long as it incorporates steam power into it somehow. You will also create an iMovie starring a Frankenstuffie. Frankenstuffie’s will be created by the students by sewing 3 different stuffed animals into one. That Frankenstuffie will then be in an iMovie created by the students that will detail the effects of the industrial revolution, how it started, what did it involve, etc. The kids will also receive a multitude of guided notes on various European countries involved in the industrial revolution and participate in activities where they are asked to design new technologies. One in particular is when they are asked to design a mechanical device to help a dog that lost both back legs get into a van. Then the students are to figure out alternative uses for that device. There is a lot of higher-order thinking skills and creativity involved.

I would use some of the ideas and worksheets within this course. I like the idea of reading a “Steampunk” novel because it will be different than a lot of other material the kids will be exposed to and it will require them to make observations and connect one world with another.

I chose to do my book review about a One Best Thing iBook that talked about a technology program in Melbourne, Australia that has the students teaching peers about technology. It is called iLearn uLearn and they way it works is that students in grades 4 – 6 or nominated by leaders. Each student selected is directed to choose an area of technology that they would consider themselves an expert. Once they have decided, the student will then give a workshop to their peers on how to use the technology.

To be more specific, students are selected by their teachers. The students that are selected display reliability, confidence, and technical ability. When it comes time to begin the workshop creation, the iLeaders, or those selected by the teachers, are given a set of non formal criteria for the workshop based on surveys. The staff is surveyed about what types of technology they feel are most relevant to professional development and what questions about the topic that they would like to see answered. Those suggestions are then incorporated by the iLeader into the workshop. The students then begin construction of a 30 minute workshop and are assisted by two members of staff working as program coordinators to ensure the workshop will be meeting the needs of their audience. Leading up to the workshop, the students will use applications to create advertisements for their presentation. They will also be given coaching on effective presentation skills. All the marketing distributed throughout the school is done by the student giving the workshop. This forces students to become acquainted with other applications they may not be as familiar with. The workshop itself includes audience participation, as they will be following along with their own technology attempting to replicate what the iLeader is showing them. When the workshop is complete, the iLeader will have recorded two tutorial videos using QuickTime’s screen recording feature and a personal vieo reflection that they will bring along with them to a final project meeting with the staff program coordinator where the workshop is discussed. That is the final step and the iLeader is free to choose a new workshop topic.

I feel like this would be difficult to incorporate into an individual classroom setting. This particular program has been incorporated into schools and everyone within that school participates. I would have to implement a different version of this strategy if I were to borrow the idea for my classroom. Possible ideas would include choosing a topic of social studies someone would feel like they’re an expert in and present, using technology, to the classroom. Another possibility is using the same type of configuration we use for this class, where everyone has a particular assignment to complete using technology and if anyone is proficient in that technology, allow them to conduct a workshop for the class before we begin.

I do think this is a good strategy to get kids involved with technology. Research has shown that teaching others how to do something is one of the most efficient ways of learning. This is also a good strategy to allow the students to feel like their knowledge is valued in some way. The children have become more engaged with learning using this model, “This program has achieved high levels of student engagement, enthusiasm and motivation. Students are employing higher-order thinking skills to problem-solve by using a combination of applications to complete the one complex task.”

I chose to create my screencast by using the free ShowMe application. This app was an introduction for me into this type of technology. I didn’t know anything like this existed. It was such a simple app to use, but it was simple to a fault. It wasn’t able to do some things that I would have liked it to and it lacked some features that were likely overlooked. For one, I never saw a way to include video within the screencasting which I would have liked. I also never found out if you could prerecord drawings and then put voice over it. That would have made it much easier. I also struggled with editing the screencast. As a matter of fact, I don’t think you could edit it. You could add to what already existed, but you couldn’t take the template you created and do something again. In order to fix a mistake, you had to complete recreate everything, right down to putting photos back on and imputing text again, etc. My screencast turned out okay, but it would have been easier had it not lacked some editing features. I would not use this application in my classroom.

I did my project using Adobe Slate.

I chose Adobe Slate because it seemed like the most appropriate for my intended use and it was simple to figure out. Storehouse seemed like a less formal app that was used to connect people and their individual stories so they could share with friends. I also didn’t want to use Animoto because I didn’t want my story to be told via video.

You can see my story on World War 1 if you follow the link below:

https://slate.adobe.com/a/aeO0d

This blog post is about the benefits of using educational games to help aid in our students education. Things like, improving hand-eye coordination, brain training, problem solving, learning to deal with choices and their consequence, and skill building/improvement are all things suggested in the post. This blogger even suggests that these games will trick students into thinking they’re playing video games, which have become quite prevalent these days, even though they’re playing valuable games that will help them with their educational skills.

At the bottom of the post there are several game options linked. Out of those options, the following are the ones I thought were the best.

FunBrain.com is a website with a bunch of different educational games. More games than I have time to play. It is designed in such a way that appeals to younger children, but included games that I even enjoyed, so the appeal is wider than what was intended.

PBS Kids Math is a very similar website to FunBrain.com. It is designed for kids, but the games are enjoyable for even myself, but the website design is much simpler. It is designed in a similar way to what most devices are today. It is organized into boxes of different categories that resemble apps which likely will make it more recognizable and easier to operate.

AdventureLand is the last on the list I will discuss and it is a little different than the others. AdventureLand is a single game where kids follow two different characters around a newly discovered island. This island adventure includes experiences that will sharpen the student’s math and reading abilities while explores caves, oceans, mountains, and taming local wildlife. It is for 1st and 2nd graders, but again, it is still fun even for me.

This episode reviewed three different social studies apps. The first on, called History Atlas, was the one the interested me the most. The app displays an interactive globe the highlights various historical events the happen across the globe during a certain time. At the bottom of the display is a timeline that you can adjust the time to look at occurrences at different times throughout history. This timeline includes the rise and fall of various empires and dynasties all over the word and even displays that corresponding color on the map in the regions they existed. I like this app because it relates historical events from around the world at the same time while incorporating a little geography.

This episode included information on 4 different apps. My favorite app was Google Earth. I have used this app before in social studies classes and it is an amazing app. Again, it uses a virtual globe, much like my first selection, to explore the world. It provides information on seemingly limitless amounts of selections across the world. For certain areas, it provides 3D images if zoomed in. In the video, it shows an example of Google Earth zoomed in to Rome in 3D. It provides information on oceans, jungles, cities, roads, deserts, politics, reefs, and many other things. There is also a built in game that the video did not talk about, in which you get thrown into an on the ground image of a part of the world and you have to look around and explore and then attempt to guess where you are in the world.

This episode is about Ancient Rome applications. The most interesting one within this video is an app called, Fotopedia. Now this isn’t necessarily a Ancient Roman application. What it is, is a collection of photos from around Italy, but it includes a wide range of photos of ancient Roman buildings and artifacts. It also provides detailed descriptions of whatever you’re looking at.

I had mixed feelings about the iMovie application. For the good, it is a very good application for those of us who have no idea how to edit video. It organizes and structures your video in ways that are simple and easy to understand. The quality of the application is also quite nice and provides multiple options for themes that best represent whatever it is you feel fits the content of your video the best.

The bad part about this application is the difficulty I had uploading the video. If it was that hard for me, I’m wondering how difficult my students may find it. It may be that the process simply needs to be outlined better, but spending hours upon hours on something that should take only a fraction of what it did will only frustrate students and the teacher creating unnecessary friction in those relationships.

This blog is consists of numerous classroom management strategies and uses for technologies within the classroom. The teacher who wrote this believes that any classroom management strategy begins with the three words presented in the photo above; stop, collaborate, and listen. However, she goes more in depth as she moves through her blog.

Classroom Management Strategies

In these strategies she talks about accommodating every type of learner, organizing the physical space in the classroom to make it more conducive of learning, how to address ESL learners, and most importantly, how to involve parents/guardians in the education of their children.

Technology Uses in the Classroom

In the other link she provides is a Word document briefly detailing the various technologies she uses/deals with in the classroom. She talks about the issues you may face with some of these technologies like cell phones. She also includes the use of games like Minecraft.