Digital Citizenship

Since my school is a 1:1 iPad school, it seems to be a forever challenging task of monitoring students and what they do on their iPads. All of my students know what a good citizen is, but none of them had ever heard of a digital citizen.  I know how important the topic is, so I have spent a lot of my class time and created my curriculum around it.

To start the year off,  I shared a few videos from the site www.nsteens.org and my students enjoyed the games later:)  After much discussion each group created a footprint and listed all the things that create their digital foot print. We then created the bulletin that hangs in our room as a daily reminder. I believe that with continued practice and knowledge students will be able to be good digital citizens, even when we are not watching.

This Bulletin board was a combination of several ideas I found on Pinterest. 

What is up with the Giant green wall?

I was lucky enough this year to have a freshly painted class but, why the strange green you ask? Yes, green is my favorite color but that is not it! As the mobile media teacher, my goal is to incorporate a Green screen special effect feature in my class.


My district purchased the app Green Screen FX to assist my students in their green screen special effects movies.

app store

To get a practice run in, I had my son make an impromptu video to demonstrate how it works.

Ipad classroom

I created this 3 foot ipad on www.blockposters.com for FREE. I was able to print a picture of an iPad in blocks, laminated it, and taped it together. I added a few basic apps and I will continue to add apps we use in our class.

Back to school! New classroom new subject!

I am starting the year off in a new classroom and I am now the new Mobile Media AKA ipad teacher! Bulletin board took a lot of thinking, but thankst o all my friends on Pinterest, my room looks amazing. More Pics to come.

Best poster in my class was made at http://freepostermaker.com/ for free.

The idea came from a post I saw on Pinterest and the grandma is my principal in a gray wig!

Rumor has it!

Well it is true IOS 7 will be out this fall, but rumor has it, it will be out June 26, 2013. I have checked it out and it looks pretty awesome! I just hope they get it out before school starts so the kids (mainly teachers) can get familiar with it from day one!

IOS 7 video

To save, to grade and to share.....oh my! PART 2

 After posting about how my class shared their iPad projects a teacher friend from Roland with iPads found this post about another sharing resource.  I personally have not checked it out, but I will be looking into before we go back to school. Let me know if you have used it.





Your perfect solution for Sharing Student iPad Projects

It may be a lot of work but it is WORTH it! Creating ePub Documents!

Creating an ePub document takes a lot of strange steps at first, but once you set it up, you can turn any webpage into an epub document and store it in iBooks.

I found this very helpful this summer as I took a class which required a lot of online reading. Sometimes the ads on the sides get distracting, so I would ePub them and read them in iBooks.

For your students, this is a great way to have them find online articles about topics they are researching and get rid of all the extra distractions. They will also be able to highlight and use the features of iBooks.

From webpage to iBooks......

 

Follow the directions below to set up your iPad to create ePub Documents. Once you set it up, you only have to click button to ePub it! 

(As long as you have the ePub bookmark, you never have to follow these steps again!)

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B06hCWqHWIGPdFJMeUhSOUFwT3M/edit?usp=sharing

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To save, to grade and to share.....oh my!

To save, to grade and to share.....
One of our biggest challenges this year with the ipads was sharing projects and assignments. Students need a place to save projects and a way to share with their parents and their teachers.

Saving was easy..... the ipad saves all projects automatically without even hitting a save button.
Since all our District's ipads are associated with one iTunes account, saving to the "cloud" was not an option for us.

    

WebDav

We tried Webdav. It seemed promissing. While on the school's network, students and teachers could access and upload files of all types to share their work and teachers could grade......
Down fall #1 ......since it can be accessed by everyone, changes and deletions can be made by everyone. We did find a few ways to make it more secure but it was still out there for the whole district to access. 
Down fall #2........since everyone can see, it would be unethical to give students feedback and grades.
Down fall #3 .......if students did not take ipad home (about 50% of our students), they could not share projects with their families or complete   
                                              homework.

Solution #1:

Edmodo

Edmodo was what really began to shape my "paperless" classroom. I am able to give assignments, quizzes, polls and students can submit assignments privately to the teacher or create class discussions, like Facebook. Students can access Edmodo on all mobile devices and computer on the internet, so student can complete homework.  Although I did not use the parent part of Edmodo this year, next school year, we will use Edmodo as our main tool for home and school communication with the private messaging and calendar.




Solution #2:

DropBox

Although Dropbox was a little more of a chore to set up than Edmodo, in the last few weeks of school, we created an account for each student. They were then able to save all of their work to the Dropbox "cloud" and send a link to their teacher to grade it. Our students do not have access to email outside emails, like their parents, but with the Drop box account, they can log on anywhere and have access to assignments and projects to edit or share.

Class Dojo

Class dojo became my favorite tool this year! My kids loved the motivation of being able to see their personalized feedback about their behavior. I used the app to give and take points for specific behaviors and students used the website to check their daily points. Although I did not use the parent reporting tool this school year, I will definitely use it next year. Check out the PowerPoint  about Class dojo. I got it from their website and added a few extra items I also found on their site. On another note, they have the best customer support of all the app creators I have ever talked to.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ot7nttjcha1ao7t/ClassDojo.ppt

What is black and white and scanned all over?

Not sure how to make a QR code? Do you want to add audio to your QR codes? Open this link to a PowerPoint to explain how do do it using free apps; Red Laser and Croak it.QR code help

Kid created QR codes

My students were working on creating word problems with expressions using variables. They created a book to show what they know.  On the inside, they made a QR code that had their problem and then on the back side was the answer in QR code form. After the kids made their books, we set them around the room and they went around to scan their friends problems to see if they got the same answers. There was great debate when a few came up with different answers. They had to prove why they thought they were right.

Zapd App

I created a guide for teachers in my district to introduce them to Zapd. This is one of my favorite apps and I plan on using it to organize my lessons for next year

http://tidwells-turnerusd202-org.zapd.com/zapd-tutorial?Z4eB3AbG

Seven Days until Summer!

As summer comes, so does the chance to reflect and BREATH. Make sure to check back often as I begin reflecting on what worked and what do not this year in my new school, new curriculum and 1:1 ipad initiative!

With the help of my friend and fellow blogger, Roland with iPads, I have created an app using www.appguppy.com. Just scan the qr code and follow the directions to download my app.

Qr code fun!

I got this great idea from this blog...http://flapjackeducationalresources.blogspot.com/
She has wonderful items for free and purchase. I was able to find checker boards at Dollar Tree. (yes, they are only poster board cheap material, but for a dollar they are perfect!) I printed the Qr codes on full sheet labels, cut apart and stuck them to the checker board. Kids have to get the math problem correct to stay on the square. Their partner scans the Qr code to see if it is correct. Trying it in class Monday!

Qr code lesson

Qr codes were my favorite ipad activity to start with. I have since used the app Audioboo to create audio clips and then turn those audio urls into QR codes. This is a great way to have a read aloud accommodation for students. They can scan the qr code and hear you reading the question to them! They can replay directions as many times as they need.

You can also have students record their own voices reading a presentation. This could be displayed in class for Open House or sent home for families to be able to treasure their young ones reading aloud.

Here is a sample........

Oh what a first semester!

Now that  the first semester of our new school, new, principal and new 1:1 ipad initiative is complete, I finally have a moment to catch up. Ad it is a snow day away from school! Literally snowed in!

First semester went by with not too may glitches. As of this week our student are allowed to take the ipad home! Only about 1/3 of my students' families agreed to attempt this, but I think as next year approaches, we will get much more family involvement.

Since I have not posted in a while, I will try to update my new App suggestion. Boy did we find a bunch of awesome apps and programs!

Stay posted. Tomorrow is a snow day too!