iPads+-+St.+Francis+Grade+6+-+March+2012

1. Students are reporting on their experience - (2 - 3 students sharing - recorded on video) attach videos 2. Students have acquired new technology skills that they had not had previously - please see the 21st century list below Inventive Thinking Adaptability/managing complexity Self-direction Curiosity, creativity, and risk-taking Higher-order thinking and sound reasoning Effective Communication Teaming, collaboration, and interpersonal skills Personal, social, and civic responsibility Interactive communication High Productivity & Quality, State-of-the-Art Results Ability to prioritize, plan, and manage for results Effective use of real-world tools The ability to create relevant, high-quality products 3. Students have learned about digital citizenship - please see the digital citizenship list of skills below Students worked on tasks together to solve problems and create projects such as digital posters. Accomplished task of students being lifelong learners with many students loading the apps on their own devices for use outside of class or researching apps and them coming back with suggestions on curriculum related apps. 4. How has our teaching changed? What practices will you continue? Using Ipads in the classroom on a regular basis allowed us a great opportunity to encourage students to become more independent learners. We also increased our involvement with at home activities to improve Math abilities by allowing students the opportunity to become engaged int apps that they can download and use at home with their own devices. We will continue to promote 5. What are some best practices? Assign iPads to students to encourage personal responsibility and a sense of ownership. Have students place the Ipads to sleep when instructing and don't bother plugging in the Ipads after each use as the battery will last all day! Have a student in charge of making sure all Ipads are plugged in at the end of the day. 6. Listing what I have learned and what were some of the challenges Students became more engaged and excited to learn new concepts which also allowed more time for me to help those struggling with the material. Ipads are a great motivational tool to increase on task behaviour and decreased inappropriate behaviors. Challenges are finding ways to allow the students to keep work/products they have completed on the Ipads. 7. Personal growth as a learner on an online collaborative environment. We became more familiar with apps and strategies to keep students on task such as putting iPad to sleep in order to give instructions and being as specific as possible when giving instructions. 8. What are some tips for next time users? Always test apps/websites as our filter doesn’t let everything play or allow all features to be used. Ie. emailing prodcts/videos/pictures.. When incorporating independent learning with students headphones are often necesary, but students do not always have them and some of the Ipads had headphone jack issues. Not having access to flash media really limited some of the lessons and websites. 9. What is your legacy piece? How have you left a digital footprint to let other know about your important work with kids? (Video, digital storytelling, celebrations with parents, inviting senior administration, manual, collaborative place for yourself and your students) Glogster, classroom blogs and Edmodo were used as part of our lessons allowing parents the opportunity to view the learning taking place in the classroom with the Ipads. 10. Sample lessons - share 2 lessons that you taught using the equipment -Post an image of a Fingerprint on your classroom blog -Have students access the blog, save the image from the blog to their Ipads -Use the App FreeDraw to highlight and label the various characteristics of a fingerprint. Ie. Bifurcation, lakes, Ridge endings, Deltas, etc. -Hand out paper copies of the same fingerprint to the class and have students fill in the various characteristics as a group. Keep in notes for future reference/studying. -Using the Math App, students view video tutorials on how to convert mixed numbers to improper fractions. -After viewing tutorials, students complete included practice questions (This was a very simple lesson, but resulted in 100% engagement from all students as well as giving them an opportunity to practice independent learning skills.) 11. Websites, tools, or apps that you used with your students School A-Z, Brainpop, Fraction basic, Factor Samurai, Itrack lite (animal tracks app for science), Your Teacher Math, Exambank, Discovery Education 12. Other unexpected findings from your project Project was good for review of concepts, intro of concepts and practice of basic skills. Time consuming to distribute and collect equipment. Struggles with wifi causes problems and delays. Was disappointed to find that the Mac came clean (no previous apps downloaded on it). We were under the understanding that all of the hard work done by other teachers of searching and testing apps was going to be passed on, but the Mac came completely empty. 26 Ipads... 29 Students ;( 13. Final thoughts about your project.  Good project which allowed for great student engagement however the lack of flash media made using some ideas difficult.  This technology proved an excellent way to introduce or review,key concepts as well as a great way to work on basic math skills.  I would love to see teachers create Ibooks using Iauthor that would serve to act almost as a Webquest guiding students towards using various apps and completing various tasks. Hopefully a collection of Ibooks created by RDCRD staff could become a resource that anyone could sign out the Ipads to use for shorter durations of time such as 2-3 weeks.  14. Would you recommend to use this equipment?  Yes for sure! Every school should have a class set and we should begin sharing lessons and activities just like we already do with Smart Lessons.
 * How do we know we have been successful? **
 * Lesson 1 - Science Fingerprint Identification **
 * Lesson 2 - Math Fractions **