In one of my lessons students were tasked with understanding a tricky topic, in this case the three major belief systems of Feudal Japan.
To aid in this we used a concept of telling a story with pictures. Essentially students did some research on the topic. Students then created a small script and storyboard. The next task was to find a series of images that could be used to help explain their story. Finally, students recorded a voice over to the images and could zoom in and out and highlight key areas.
It was a great tactile and visual way to research, understand and share their findings.
In this case I am focusing on the free App Shadow Puppet, however this concept could easily be used in a variety of apps such as Keynote, iMovie and more.
Scrolling through the list below you can see that what was the typical homework time for students when I was at school (not that long ago) has radically changed. Using a blog allows students to respond when best suits them, again helping you teach more effectively.
Tess says:August 6, 2013 at 6:34 pmElizabeth says:August 6, 2013 at 9:52 pmJesse says:August 7, 2013 at 4:50 pmAbi Reynolds says:August 7, 2013 at 7:54 pm~Aleyshia~ says:August 8, 2013 at 9:17 pm Phu Pham says:August 9, 2013 at 8:58 pm Clay says:August 9, 2013 at 9:35 pmMirella says:August 10, 2013 at 2:26 pmFreddddd says:August 10, 2013 at 6:21 pmContinue reading →
I gave a quick overview of the Connected Classroom presentation to staff of Braemar College. As I only had 20 minutes I used it as an overview of what I have been getting up to. Hopefully this will work to one of my key points, exposure. The talk was then backed up with a bunch of online resources so staff could begin the other important step, training.
The video below is of the presentation, followed by links to the online resources supplied.
Most of this workshop has been about how can you better serve your students and parents. Well, time to turn it around, how can your students better serve you?
The more students use the platforms we have discussed today the more the will become familiar with its use and advantages. They can start with a simple Digital Portfolio, a record of their work and accomplishments throughout the year. Get them to upload videos of their work, Projects, Assignments, Comments, and more. Students can get feedback on their work, Have discussion groups the list goes on and you can easily follow their work and tie it into your own blog and assessment tools.
This is where a whole school approach is key. I can see the benefit of a student in my class using social and connected media but if they could take this to every class, use these skills in every class and know their teacher will support and encourage this not only will it be key in personalising learning, letting students find a way of working that they feel strongest in but it has the power to change the way students interact, engage, and share learning.
I use my blog as the main platform for connecting with students and parents, but what if you wanted to share personal information such as student comments, work, results etc.
This is where I use evernote. I won’t go into the details on how you can use evernote as a whole in the classroom and to make life and assessment easier for you (though I will if you corner me) as there are other workshops dedicated to that.
Instead I want to focus on how you can use is to connect directly with parents and allow them to follow the progress of their children. Information is up to date, can be accessed from anywhere and could make Parent / Teacher nights a thing of the past! You can link this information into what you have been doing on your blog to give parents even more resources (and you don’t need to re-do the work)
Here is a quick example student to check out. This is a public link so it can be viewed by you all but I create private links and can invite and allow only certain people to view, follow and add their own notes if needed.
I am sure I have said it enough by now but I can’t stress the importance and the benefits from simply pressing a button. I’m sure you have finished a class once and thought to yourself “wow, that really went well, I wish I could let others see that”, now you can. Even if you record a whole class and it only gets one view by a student that was absent, that is one enough!
Student revision, student absences, saving time before class, flipping the classroom, parent feedback, assessment, accountability, engagement, etc, etc, all of this you can achieve with a click of a button before class.
Just remember, you are also putting yourself out there, are you happy to be put on show?
Here are just a few examples from the last few weeks of last term…
Once you get familiar with all the tools at your disposal it is now time to unleash them on the students!
There are of course a lot more resources I use in the classroom, each dependent on what I want out of it (like the popplets and padlets you have used today, interactive Keynotes, thinking routines and much more) and a lot I just make up on the fly!
I have found that students will take up this challenge and run with it. Their knowledge and ease of adapting to what ever you throw at them is great, BUT, using these tools also comes with some risk. With any form of social or online media these are the tools that your students use everyday, probably not in this regard, but they expect a certain level of service. For example if you setup a blog with resources for students to use when at home and expect them to comment, then they would expect a reply, ASAP! You need to be ready and willing to do this. As I have said before the point of using this technology is not only for the benefit of students but also for you and once you have a system in place you will see the benefits, both in saving you time and student engagement. There is a bit of a learning curve, and you need to be a few steps ahead of the students every time but soon you can make this a part of your daily routine and incorporate it into how you plan, structure and run your classes.
For example whenever I begin to plan a new lesson I try to think about all the possibilities to incorporate the things we have looked at today.
I will create all my lessons in iBooks Author because I know I can then easily send these to students, make them accessible online for those absent, and give them to other teachers to run without needed extra resources.
I record ‘how-to’ videos on the blog beforehand for lessons I know would take some explaining to do in class so this saves me time and I don’t have to repeat myself (if students were away they know to follow the blog and watch these videos at home)
Every time I step into a class I record everything. It only takes a second to start recoding the lesson on my laptop or iPad. I may never use it but just having it there is the key. Great lesson? Had some great responses from the students? — Put them on the blog. Students away? — Upload the lesson to the blog. All this becomes part of my day.
I think the biggest advantage of all of this is freedom, for both students and the teacher. When I know students have all the resources at their fingertips I am confident in letting them go, work things out for themselves, and most importantly, work in a style that best suits them.
I brought up an example earlier about a project on reading Weather Maps. This was a class that I knew students understood (from the comments on the blog) had all the resources they needed (I created an interactive iBook for the class) and the knowledge to create the final product (I put up a video of how to use iMovie for the iPad on the blog they watched a few nights before [confirmed by looking at the analytics] — this was a video I created for another class but I knew I had it and it would work perfectly in this situation saving me time).
Armed with all of this I just let them go.
Below are some of the results. Through the use of the blog, YouTube and the iBook students had all the resource and knowledge at the start of the lesson. These final videos were completed in just one lesson.
Note: You can download this entire lesson as an iTunes U course here:
Update: Now teachers and students can collaborate and work together on courses
Invite Course Contributors
Now you can invite up to five course contributors to your course. Course Contributors can contribute to your course by adding posts, assignments, and materials. They can also manage the course enrollment and roster. To add Course Contributors to a course, click the Settings button in the Course Manager toolbar, and then click the Instructors tab.
So, you have created a great course containing books, videos, links, PDFs, Word Documents, Webpages, audio, other courses – anything. With iTunes U you can easily structure these into an engaging course run completely on the iPad.
iTunes U is like a delivery system for your amazing content. You can structure everything exactly how you would in the classroom but have everything stored in one place for students to access at anytime. You can run the course over a timeline or let students go at their own pace. As everything is stored online there is no need to hunt down and distribute resources. Courses are made easily with a web-based interface (Mac & Windows!). Over the next few pages you will see some of the potential of using iTunes U with the iPad.
As I have said before my school is a 1-to-1 iPad school so my focus has been on the iPad and Multi-Touch iBooks however you can use iTunes U for other resources. Instead of making iBooks (which run exclusively on an iPad) you could use PDF, video, audio, and more which will work on any system.
The layout I use below is designed for use on the iPad but I am happy to explain other options for this great, online platform.
So, how do you use iTunes U?
Well, what better way than by watching the video I put together for my students that will be using it this term. The video below was recorded at home (and in my painting clothes) while the students were on holidays. This shows the power and versatility of using social media such as the blog and YouTube. Minutes after posting the video my students were able to watch it, ask any questions on the blog and subscribe. Now when we meet for our first class next term they will be armed with the knowledge and resources to begin (and hopefully plenty of energy)
The iPad is an amazing tool for consuming and creating resources to enrich the classroom. With iBooks Author you have the power to create tailored, personalised, original, interactive and engaging ‘textbooks’ – but the ‘text’ is just the start…
iBooks Author is a free program that creates amazing multi-touch books for the iPad. As this program is designed solely for the iPad they work seamlessly together to make the best use of the size, format and capabilities of the iPad. I create Multi-Touch Books for every lesson. Some are very detailed and cover several weeks of a topic. Some, just for the lesson we will be looking at today. I look at these Multi-Touch Books not as the only resource but a platform to jump off and come back to, explore sections further, try new things and come back again.
I will be giving a workshop on iBooks and iBooks Author shortly in which I will run through the benefits for students and teachers and also an introduction into their creation. I will be filming this workshop and it will be made available as a video below.
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The Connected Classroom 