Collaborative Whiteboard Apps for the Classroom Interactive and collaborative - Whiteboards are a great way for teachers to explain concepts to their students. With the ability of some iPad apps to record, you ensure that students who did not develop understanding of the concept the first time have the opportunity to watch and listen again and again. Working in small groups or brainstorming as a class, collaborative whiteboards are a great way to share ideas. Educreations: FREE Educreations turns your iPad into a recordable whiteboard. ShowMe: FREE Turn your iPad into your personal interactive whiteboard! Jot: FREE Tired of complicated, unstable, or abandoned whiteboard apps that get in your way? SyncPad: $10.49 AU Forget those whiteboard and sketchpad applications that require you to be few feet from each other in order to collaborate.
The Very First App You Should Load on Your New iPad I am often asked by new iPad owners which apps they should install first. That’s a tough question as it all depends on each individual and how they want to use their new device. There are literally hundreds of lists out there about the best iPad apps — especially since a lot of those are year-end lists. But even if you send these lists to the new user they have to wade through these lists and make decisions based on limited information — after all, they just got the iPad and may not realize how much they can do with this great device. So, instead of sending all these lists — I’m not going to mention any of them here — simply because all you have to do is search for “Best iPad Apps” on your favorite search engine — try an app called AppStart! AppStart is a great app for finding the apps that fits your needs. For an introduction to AppStart, take a look at the short video in the upper-right hand corner of this post. Tagged as: App Store, ios, iPad
iPads can’t improve learning without good teaching Pt 1 Clearly there is a lot of buzz around iPads in schools at the moment. You can’t log on to the Web without reading about another school or entire district or department investing massive coin in a sparkling set of the Wonder Tablets, excited that they will cure all the ills of the current education systems around the world. From reading my blog, you would be no doubt convinced that I am very much in this Pro-iPad camp. However, no matter how versatile and potentially powerful a product the iPad is, it is merely an extremely expensive placemat without creative, well planned teaching behind its use. Its about Teaching and Learning, not iPads The kind of shift in learning the iPad (and other tablets) can initiate is dependent on good teaching practice and preparation. So let’s look at how we have gone about teaching up until now and examine how the iPad can fit in to our current programs. This type of sophisticated note taking will take time to embed in both student and teacher practice.
13 Enlightening Case Studies of Social Media in the Classroom | Blog @ BOU Social media is the thing right now. It provides a way to connect people of similar (or dissimilar) interests from around the world. Social media also provides networking tools for professionals and even for job hunters. And it offers a platform for friends and family to keep up with each other. But social media isn’t just for professionals, computer geeks and families who prefer not to send email; increasingly, social media is becoming a part of the classroom. 1. It isn’t surprising that social media is used in newsgathering. This is a graduate level class in the Graduate School of Journalism that teaches students that they can use real-time searches to find breaking news — and to find comments on that breaking news. 2. Many universities are interested in sharing projects with the world — not to mention educating others in the school. Also, gathering this information into one place makes it a little bit easier to search for news and research being done at Stanford. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Teaching and Learning in Virtual Words Keeping Students Engaged in a 1:1 Project-Based Classroom [guest post] Image approved for copy by Creative Commons. Source: When laptops first arrived in my classroom, I worried about classroom management. How could I create an environment where students used their computers as tools rather than toys? I was worried for nothing. Students make a plan. Much of the time, students think they have a plan. Instead, ask What are you trying to learn? When you ask about learning and communication, you are signaling that the content is more important than the technology. Students set time-bound goals. Create an outline for my essayWrite my introductionFind three pictures about…Do my voice recordingFinish four slides of my Power Point/KeynoteFind at least three database articles on…Draft at least three paragraphsUse Google docs to peer-edit so-and-so’s essayUpload my story to Voicethread Tasks should be specific. Laptop screens are “fisted” or “put at half mast”. Teachers don’t lecture much in a project-based learning environment.
The iPad 2 and Apple TV … Ed Tech Industry Killer? What would you rather get for your classroom, an iPad 2 and Apple TV or an Interactive Whiteboard? Are your teachers asking for Interactive Whiteboards? Hold on to that discussion and don’t answer until you know all of the possibilities! I think we now have the ability to put together a very highly effective digital classroom with the combination of iPad 2′s, a digital projector, and an Apple TV. Maybe we can get rid of the need for document cameras, scanners, clicker hubs, and still or digital video cameras as well? Perhaps you don’t know about the new possibilities of this fantastic little black box called Apple TV. Now, if you are looking for the rationale on why you might want to go with this new setup, here is mine! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. There are so many other facets and reasons that I have missed … Can you add to this list?
18 Enlightening iPad Experiments in Education You know from experience that when you enjoy a subject, learning about that subject is easier, more fun, and you retain the information longer. Getting kids to enjoy learning is more productive to education efforts than spending more money, lengthening school days, you name it. This is the reason many educators are excited about the possibilities inherent to the iPad. More than 600 school districts in America have brought iPads into the classroom. Had they waited a bit longer, they could have taken advantage of studies like these to know whether the iPad movement is the wave of the future of education, or a waste of valuable resources. Motion Math in Class: An assistant professor of education at USC’s Rossier School oversaw this study looking at whether having students play a learning game to teach them fractions increased their knowledge. Oklahoma State University iPad Pilot Program: OSU experimented with iPads in five classes in the fall of 2010.