23 Ways To Use The iPad In The 21st Century PBL Classroom By Workflow 23 Ways To Use The iPad In The 21st Century PBL Classroom by TeachThought Staff The iPad is not magic, and as many educators have found integrating them meaningfully is by no means a just-add-water proposition. The same applies to Project-Based Learning. Project-Based Learning is a method of giving learners access to curriculum in authentic ways that promote collaboration, design, imagination, and innovation while also allowing for more natural integration of digital and social media. Note that the visual is also arranged in a kind of visual spectrum, as our past visuals have been.
PicLab 2.0 Does Much More Than Add Text And Masks To Your Photos Released in the App Store just over a couple of months ago, PicLab has now been updated to version 2.0. It's worth noting that with the app's 2.0 update, PicLab has made the transition from an app that merely adds text and masks to photos to a photo-editing app that does that and more. For starters, PicLab 2.0 introduces nine new filters to enhance the look of your photos: Vibrant, Vegas, Renee, Monroe, Nevada, Cinema, Kruger, Danford, and Saga. PicLab 2.0 also adds support for image effects. PicLab[/caption] The update also adds an image grid for when you are repositioning text, allowing you to, say, center text more easily.
iPad Be Nimble, iPad Be Quick One of the most challenging lessons for schools to learn in implementing iPads is that the iPad is not a laptop. The conversation can sometimes get bogged down around the device, trapping schools in these definitions as they lose sight of the central reasons to use technology: To enhance teaching and learningTo differentiate instructionTo personalize the learning experienceTo solve authentic problems where technology must be used to solve those problems This is not an easy lesson. It requires a paradigm shift in teaching and learning. iPads vs. It's worth noting the different features of laptops and iPads and to see the benefit of both devices. While the laptop is heavy, takes a long time to boot up, and is often used as a word processing tool with typing and keyboarding being paramount, it's also a powerful device for computer programming and accessing Adobe Flash-based simulations, particularly in the sciences. The shift to iPads over laptops does not have to be a zero sum game.
Classroom Tablet Management SOLVED by TabPilot Wishing all of you who have been affected by Hurricane Sandy well. I am in the Boston area and we were very lucky here, only losing power for 10-12 hours. It did affect my blogging schedule, so apologies to my regular readers for the delay… For well over a year now I’ve been talking to teachers and administrators about transitioning to tablet use in their classrooms. So it’s a problem, right? That’s why I’m excited by what the folks at TabPilot have come up with in their Classroom Tablet Management System. 1. 2. 3. Student Interface The student interface is pretty basic: a student turns the tablet on and sees a bunch of app icons and/or icons for websites on the wall. Truly, that last part blew me away and is probably what sold me on TabPilot. Try it, I did, and it works. One feature that is not available in the TabPilot solution currently is the ability to lock down the browser. If you’re considering a tablet implementation in your school I encourage you to check out TabPilot.
iPad in the Classroom – Can we make it simpler? With many educational institutions choosing to use tablets for learning, it can be quite intimidating for teachers when faced with so many applications. The diagram below serves to illustrate that less than 20 core apps can play a significant part in the learning process and hopefully temper any trepidation. (with thanks to Greg Hughes @deepexperience1 for his ideas and input) The apps indicated serve to enhance or modify existing practice with scope to be transformational. The extent to which the learning environment can be changed is up to the educator and students. Twitter and Skype are part of many students’ lives, with immediate contact and communication a must. A PDF annotator and Skitch (with the ability to annotate images) might take a little more getting used to, but are invaluable to the educator with tablets in the classroom. Perhaps the most important collaborative tool however is GoogleDrive. (with thanks to dc12norfolk) (with thanks to Ron Bosch) (with thanks to XMA4education)
Hopscotch Technologies' New App Can Teach Kids to Code Hopscotch HD is a precursor or introduction to coding. Hopscotch calls this coding for kids: an iPad programming language. In case you didn’t catch it already, read my recent blog which has been getting its fair share of attention: 15 Reasons Why We Should Be Teaching Our Kids To Code. “All of today’s kids will need—along with reading, writing, and arithmetic—a basic understanding of computation and the role that it plays across a wide range of disciplines. Coding is engaging and empowering. It’s a necessary 21st Century skill.” Hopscotch Technologies is on the same wavelength with their new app Hopscotch HD. Why coding?
100+ Teaching With the iPad Hacks: A Curated Playlist of Quick Start Resources A publisher recently asked me if I knew of a good iPad “Quick Start” Guide for teachers just getting started with using the iPad in the classroom. I didn’t, but had to imagine that I could find resources along these lines on the Web. As I searched, I found many good web pages, and knew right away that this was a great topic for creating a LessonPaths curated Playlist to share them. LessonPaths (formerly known as MentorMob) is an awesome free web tool for easily assembling digital content into an elegantly simple information resource. This hand selected set of sources will provide teachers who are new to the iPad with the information they need to get started, and offer both new and current users information they need to successfully integrate the iPad into their teaching practices. This LessonPaths Playlist contains the following content (it starts off with a few general iPad Quick Start references, then moves on to a set of education-specific resources): About Kelly Walsh Print This Post
Teaching With Tablets Stephanie Hedge is a graduate student in the Department of English at Ball State University. You can follow her on twitter at @slhedge. I love my iPad. I bought it this summer, and it’s still new enough that sometimes I just sit there, stroking the burnished metal of the back, and marveling about how neat it is to live in the future. One of the most awesome things about this tech, for me, is the fundamental ways it has infiltrated my teaching style. I present this post with a two caveats: first, this post is written with iPads in mind (particularly as I discuss apps), because that’s what I use, but the basic principles hold for any tablet, including the neat-o Microsoft Surface. Why use tablets to teach? I mentioned in an earlier article that tablets hit the sweet spot between a computer and a piece of paper, which is the biggest reason it has become a staple in my classroom. Tablets are mobile within the classroom. Tablets save paper and keep notes organized in one place. Now what? Whew!
How to Save Web Pages as PDF Files on the iPad & iPhone One little feature that iOS really needs is the ability to natively “print to PDF” directly on the iPad and iPhone, a popular trick on the Mac and in the PC world that allows you to digitally print anything and, in this case, save the contents of any web document or web page as a self-contained PDF document, allowing it to be read later, printed, or used for whatever other purpose. Since this great feature isn’t around on the iPhone and iPad at the moment, we can use a nice bookmarklet trick combined with a free third party web service to be able to add a “Save as PDF” option to Safari in iOS, which allows you to ‘print’ or convert any web page to a PDF file that is then accessible to apps like iBooks. Let’s walk through the process of setting this up: 1: Create a “Print to PDF” Bookmarklet in Safari First we’ll create a bookmarklet that provides the PDF conversion service, this is easy and free: javascript:pdf_url=location.href;location.href='
I have iPads in the Classroom. Now What? 23 Things Every Teacher Should Be Able To Do With An iPad Using an iPad is simple due to its intuitive interface, elegant touch interface, and user-friendly operating system. Below we’ve listed 23 different tasks a teacher should be able to perform with their iPad. We’ve tried to focus on the basics, along with some typical tasks a teacher may be required to complete. We’ve also (roughly) arranged them from less complicated to more complicated, so consider yourself an Unofficial iPad “Basic Hacker” if you can get to the bottom. For more complex iPad tasks and functions, we’re doing a follow-up post. Stay tuned! And let us know which important ones we’ve missed below on twitter or facebook. 1. Power button; long press and plug it in. 2. Apple has you covered: “To redeem an iTunes Gift Card or Gift Certificate, click the Redeem link in iTunes, enter the code on the card or certificate into the Redeem Code box on the page, and click the Redeem button. 3. For reference, check Apple’s help page, or Appducate’s page for some troubleshooting tips. 4. 5.
How the iPad Can Transform Classroom Learning The micro-computer revolution of the 80's radically improved how teachers and schools carry on the business of learning. We now have iPads in classrooms that will not only improve it, but it has the potential to change the business of learning in schools. The question is, "Are teachers ready to adjust their teaching for this new learning revolution?" I have just become principal of a school that will be participating in this revolution this year. The ninth- and tenth-graders will be all receiving iPads. In the Classroom Let's imagine a math class full of geometry students with iPads. The teacher might be tempted to direct the students to use a geometry sketch program, a geometry vocabulary program, a self-paced geometry lesson, or an online lecture, but while those are good things you might do with a computer, they restrict and funnel student thinking, rather than expand it. Another Example A science teacher can provide similar learning opportunities. Getting Teachers Onboard