Duffield Weeks Three and Four

One of the most positive benefits of this project has been the collaboration and sharing of new information between students. It has given the students a fair bit of independent skill building and “play “time with each of the apps. As they have found new features or figured out some mysterious, cool part of the app they are so excited to share their knowledge with the other students. It has been an excellent confidence builder for many of the student who struggle with strong academics. It seems to be the case that many in my room are quite fluent with technology and not afraid to get in there and try new features. When they find something that others have not yet discovered, they are so excited to teach it! Students have been so excited to share their work and those students who do not usually volunteer to be in front of their peers have been eager to stand up and share their work. There has been an increase in confidence engagement and active participation through the “medium” of IPads.

We were truly introduced to Google Drive and had some success moving the student’s projects over so that we could still access them when the IPads were no longer with us. We have struggled with wifi access being reliable which has limited our IPad use some days. At grade five there was quite a range of abilities when logging on and moving files over. It took a great deal of adult support for some but we did get everyone with projects on their drive to access at a later date.

Overall the IPads were a very welcome addition to the classroom and strategies we used for learning. We used them for everything from poetry (tiles), to fun facts (brainpop) to math (math workout, etc) to comics (toontastic, puppet pals) to videos (videolicious and video star) to 4 pics one word to many others in between. The students were constantly engaged, learning new skills and sharing knowledge. Students have definitely made steps to becoming life long problem solvers and 2.0 contributors. We made some excellent projects that the students were proud of and we also had some great game challenges between the students. It was hard to see them go, a truly sad day in the grade five class L

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Duffield Week Two

It has been another week of excitement and exploration with the ipads. It is always the first thing they ask about in the morning – when can we get out the ipads? I feel like it is a win, win when they are so excited to work and they don’t even realize they are using educational apps. 

We have experienced a lot of success with the cartooning apps. The students are creating some very exciting projects and enjoying sharing them with other students. The writing process has been very smooth for most of the kids. There are a few who have a difficult time getting started and coming up with their own ideas for a story. Once they have received some support from an adult or a friend, they have made excellent progress. The editing process has been a breeze! Since they are so excited to make the cartoons, they are just are excited to share them with their peers.

On the down side of the project I have experienced some technical difficulties. As a reward to hard work and good progress the students were begging for game apps. I followed all of the instructions set out by the fabulous Von but still could not download them using the configurator. They were in ITunes but couldn’t get them moved over. Eventually, Von came out and we finally figured out that the apple id had to be reset and it finally worked. It was very frustrating as some of the IPads had all of the original apps, some had been lost in the update and nobody received new ones.

The students have definitely enjoyed their IPads in music class. They have been busy working at using the photos in their camera roll as well as those found on the Net. We have watched and talked about videos and the use of special events and the use of different scenes. This week we worked at using different effects that were available on Videolicious. One of the problems we ran into with this program is that you cannot create your own digital audio recording and use it. We worked on downloading the free songs from Itunes to make up for this. When previewing the songs I found that the French song that is offered each week is better for this assignment as Itunes does not offer free English kid friendly songs. Students enjoyed modifying the songs tempo and pitch while matching their song with suitable pictures. Students shared the modifications, scenes and effects that they added in by projecting their videos through the Elmo. We used peer assessment to help improve our videos and to give student’s ownership of how to advance through the video making process.

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Week One Duffield MLI Projects

The excitement in our grade five classroom has been hard to contain over the last few weeks, just knowing that the IPads were arriving! Trying to harness that energy and apply it to learning has been much easier than I anticipated. We had a bit of a crash course on setting them up and good practices – Thanks Von!! We were then off and running!

The apps that we have chosen are lending themselves across the curriculum. The students are independently taking on challenges to learn new technology and expand their creativity. They are taking risks with new apps that they are not familiar with and learning things they did not know they could learn. Many are confidently sharing what they have figured out, even those who are not our typical leaders.

In language arts we have started working on cartoons. There are 3 different apps that we will be trying, each with varying templates and levels of direction. The students are currently exploring with Puppet Pals. They are looking at character, setting, plot, theme and problem in a fun app.

In math we will be investing more time in journaling and blogging. Of course we are using many of the web sites to practice fun math, the kind where they are learning but don’t know it yet!! I plan on exploring more of the educational apps out there but have only used math workout so far.

The students are using their IPads in their music class with the music teacher as well. In music, students are exploring ways to make music videos by using pre-made songs and matching them with pictures, videos and effects that they have made. Students are verbally contributing to elements needed to make videos, through peer and self assessment. Students have been exploring two different apps for these videos; videolicious and video star. We are looking into ways to create our own music on these apps to match with our created visual effects. We plan on exploring more musical apps to help create original works.

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Week Four: MCHS ELA 10-1

Final Impressions

The weeks with the iPads have flown by. Most of the students really engaged with them when I found activities that weren’t too high risk or complicated. They loved making posters with PicWall, and memes with Memematic.

I also believe that assignment completion improved greatly because students were given various methods and choices to demonstrate their learning. It also made me really focus as a teacher to make sure that I was using a flexible rubric to allow for all those different choices.

Obvious negatives were off-task applications like goofing around with pictures of each other or iMessaging or Snapchatting back and forth. I think it is amazing that they all have the Internet at their fingertips and can research ideas about the Elizabethan era or any poet instantly, but it can be annoying that they prefer to use the access to the internet for their social agendas.

One place for me to improve with device use in class is even more collaboration. I had envisioned a communal environment of shared ideas and ambition, but not all of the students had the same level of comfort with the technology, and in high school it is tough to stand out even in that regard. There were plenty of collaborative app choices, but many students kept to themselves when making comments or critical readings.

However, I believe how each class will want to use iPads will vary from term to term or even period to period. For example, one of my favorite moments from a previous term was when my grade 11s were using VoiceThread, one group made all their comments out loud together as though they were conducting a business meeting. It was great to listen to them work through the problems verbally together.

There are clear strengths and weaknesses for any device that is brought into the classroom. There will always be obstacles on how to maintain and supervise them, but I do think the positives outweigh and will continue to benefit student engagement and more importantly learning.

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Week Three: MCHS ELA 10-1

Out Of Class

Another expectation I had was to allow the students the opportunity to take the devices out of my classroom and use them for notes or anything else they needed in their other classes. I wanted my students to find other uses for the iPads then report back to me whether or not they found them practical in different situations. I think it is very important that with 1 to 1 iPads, the students have the freedom to discover as many possibilities as they can without me dictating how they use them at every turn.

Unfortunately, logistics and configuration got in the way of this plan early on. It took awhile for me to change over the Apple ID to the official one for the cart. It wouldn’t have been such an issue if I hadn’t over-promised that my students would have access to the iPads for the whole six weeks. If I had just surprised them with the idea of taking the iPads on their own for the last four weeks, I might have duped them into being more excited at the prospect, but then again, I wouldn’t have stuck to my own ethics of being an open teacher.

One other hiccup was security. Since this cart is on loan to me from the division, I had made strict rules about when they could pick up the iPads and return them. I didn’t want students to be late for their classes because they “had to go to Saysana’s room.” The stipulation was for them to pick up their iPad before the warning bell at 8:35. Only a few students ended up taking advantage of this opportunity and never on a daily basis.

When I reflect for a moment on this, I wonder if I had been more structured, would I have gotten more feedback or participation? Perhaps if I had given them distinct goals or direction for iPad use in other classes, would more of my students used their devices in other classes? On the other hand though, I think too much guidance especially from someone, who has no clue about biology or calculus, would have made their exploration of the iPad artificial and not organic.

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Week Two: MCHS ELA 10-1

Setup

During our time with the iPads, I’ve been pretty liberal with them by allowing students to bring different ideas and apps to the table. To get these apps onto the devices, we’ve been using Apple Configurator. The first few times, it worked well, but either because of my error or a glitch in the program itself, it would often miss a few of the iPads. The program would give the iPads a check-mark, but when the iPads were turned on, the new apps would be missing, and I would have to apply the update again while everyone else was working. There were a few classes that a couple students fell behind because they were waiting for the apps. All in all, the Apple Configurator does save a lot of time and effort, but it isn’t 100% efficient and could be frustrating for both the administrator and user.

Collaboration Sort-Of

An idea that really excited me was the use of Google Drive to store everything in the cloud and allow the students to submit everything to me by sharing their creations. So far it has been great for storing pictures and documents, but there have been some limitations to the Drive app for iPad. It only allows them to create a document or spreadsheet at the moment, so presentations still need to be done in the lab.

I had grand hopes of using Google Docs for peer editing because of the great comment features, but on the iPad my students are limited to editing, so the comment stream and chat features can’t be utilized on the iPad. I don’t mind booking a lab for peer editing, but my hope was for students to be able just to look at the one document anywhere with their iPads because many students can’t get their creative or editorial juices flowing when they are forced into rows of computers.

Annotation

One plan that exceeded my expectations was the use of Paperport Notes for poetry annotation. I’ve been trying to drill into my students the importance of annotation poetry to demonstrate their understanding and how the poem is more than just a haphazard arrangement of words. Over the past few semesters, annotation always started okay, but when students were forced to annotate on their own, they struggled or stopped altogether. However, with the app and the styluses I gave them, many students continued to annotate all over the poetry PDFs and used the comment boxes to provide reflection and connections to the text. The exporting/sharing of the PDFs is a bit cumbersome at times, but the engagement for annotation has really improved, and I hope their poetry understanding is also growing.

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Week One: MCHS ELA 10-1

The first semester ended in a whirlwind for me as a teacher, and I wasn’t exactly sure what the new term was going to be like, but I was extremely excited to be given the opportunity to engage with the students through iPads and cloud based applications like Google Drive.

The goal of my time with iPads is to enhance understanding by demonstrating the texts in new and interactive ways, but my real focus and hope is that the students will be more independent and take an active role in their learning by exploring the content and creating their own imaginative content.

During my prep for the new term, I started to visualize and think about the potential learning that was going to take place since my students had access to their own device for the beginning of this term. I knew that the first two apps that I planned to get them on board with were Goggle Drive and Evernote. I didn’t want to overwhelm the students with too much all at once over the first week. I had planned to only introduce a handful of Apps, so they could stay focused on the content of the course and not a flashy new way to view it. However, I quickly changed that stance during the first week because the students were engaging with the content by exploring new ways to understand it through the apps. I started downloading more visual creation apps, and organizational tools. I didn’t have any fears of overexplaining how to use the apps because they just started to pick and choose which apps they felt most comfortable using.

One App that I planned on using that is exceeding my expectations is Paperport Notes. Over the past few terms, some students really struggle with annotating poetry, and my hope would be that the touch features of the iPad and the little styluses would encourage or enhance how they could interact with a text. I had been using iAnnotate for my own work, but I was forced to find a free option for my students. Although it is free, it still has a great features and a dictation option that has been helpful for a few students. Many of the students have demonstrated a better connection to the text that goes the literal level. This new understanding has helped with their creative projects, and almost every night during the first week, different assignments have popped into their shared folder for me to assess. It has been amazing to see all the work turned in early, but it’s also forced me to happily reschedule a few of my other tasks.

A few great first steps, but this journey is far from over.

 

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Final Reflection – GCMS Project

I came to realize just how much the MLI iPad project had impacted our students as one of our darling Grade 7 boys was telling me, in elaborate detail, how he was going to “kidnap” his iPad because he couldn’t bear the thought of being at school without it! We knew going into this research that inevitably the dreaded day would arrive where the iPad cart would be wheeled out of our room, but I don’t think any of us knew how much our daily routine would be interrupted. We talked about how having constant 1-to-1 access became the norm in our room and we all felt a bit of a void the day after our iPads left! Although neither of us completely changed the way we teach, having the iPads did push us to challenge ourselves and our students to try new ways of doing things. Consequently, everyone in our pilot project learned so much and we hope to summarize some of our greatest achievements, discoveries and challenges in an attempt to further the discussion and reflection of implementing technology in the classroom. In addition, we hope to provide opportunities for future participants to connect with some active research as a starting point for their MLI initiative.

So, we are going to highlight our three major positives or benefits of the iPads and then touch on a few challenges or downfalls. With that being said, the most important characteristic of the MLI iPad initiative was the fact that it was 1-to-1. As my colleague said earlier, “1-to-1 has completely changed the dynamic of our classrooms,” and even at the end of the project that is still the key. Regardless what device you are talking about, the fact that each student has a device is what changes the dynamic!

Thus after having the iPads in our classrooms we found the three key positives or benefits included: ease of use and mobility, availability of apps and the peer mentoring that flourished.

First, the iPad is inherently easy to move and use. We loved the quick access of turning the iPads on and off and literally having the world at our students’ fingertips. Students could take their iPads with them wherever they went, which allowed for flexible learning spaces because learning was no longer defined by the boundaries of the classroom. Being able to quickly and efficiently access information, create content and share or make their learning public promoted an authentic audience for our students, which is so motivating and engaging. We think that the iPad is one of the best devices to engage in these sort of learning activities because of the availability of apps.

So, having constant and consistent access to the countless apps that the iPads offer was another major benefit for our students. We have mentioned some of our favorite and most effective apps in earlier blogs posts but did want to recap a few and talk about the purpose and reasoning of why these apps were so successful in our classrooms. We believe that the availability of certain apps makes the iPad one of the most powerful tools to access, create and share visual media. Our students loved working with iMovie, Show Me, Haiku Deck, Prezi and Inspiration to name a few, and although each different program or app has something unique to offer the common theme is creating and sharing content. Using Show Me, out students created Math tutorial videos similar to Khan Academy and through Haiku Deck and iMovie were able to visually represent and teach their peers about several curricular topics. Being so immersed in visual media, our students had the opportunity to further their learning by actually becoming the creators of the media instead of the ingesters. Consequently, the 1-to-1 access to iPads allowed for this to happen. Having our students constantly engaged in creating and sharing content brought life to our third major positive or benefit of the iPads, which is ironically not something that is very “techie” or directly related to the device itself.

Although our students are constantly immersed in technology, we found that the ability levels still vary so much from student to student, which is why the peer mentoring and teaching really shone through. We saw the iPad as a tool for collaboration, not only through online communities but as an opportunity for students to shine as the teachers! I know I was constantly asking my students for help and without a doubt could always find a way to solve our problem. It was so refreshing to see our teens teaching each other and often some of the teachers about new apps or how to upload something or access a certain piece of information. Not only were students sharing their learning online, they were sharing in the learning face-to-face. Amazingly enough some days I felt like the facilitator and was learning just as much, if not more, alongside my students! Therefore, the iPads served as a tool for collaboration, both on and offline and helped build confidence, as well as strong tech skills in all our students through peer teaching.

So now after highlighting our three major positives and benefits of the iPads, we need to touch on a few challenges we had in order to further the discussion and reflection of which device is best used in a 1-to-1 environment. In talking with Brad, we both felt that the major downfall of the iPad was the ability to create writing. We loved the availability and efficiency of the iPad in creating visual media, but we both felt that writing content was not successful. We had our students create EduBlogs accounts and often in Humanities we used the EduBlogs app. Although our students loved writing blogs the quality of the writing and editing capabilities is not matched to that of a laptop, net book, Chrome Book etc. Further, the ease of using Google Drive, Google Docs etc. still fell short on the iPad. Knowing that the iPad is an expensive device, we just want to make sure that it is the most effective tool to put in the hands of our students. Even though we absolutely loved having 1-to-1 iPads, both Brad and I felt that creating writing based content was something that was not very successful because of the device being used.

Regardless, having 1-to-1 iPads in our classrooms was such a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, providing us with some great reflection, tools and skills to push forward with our implementation of technology.

We look forward to reading, discussing and connecting with our colleagues who join us on the MLI journey! Thank you so much for sharing in our reflections and thank you PSD70 for the opportunity to do some active research in our classrooms!

Brad & Jenna

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Week 4 – GCMS Project

Currently we are halfway through our fourth week with the 1-to-1 iPad project and I cannot imagine our classrooms without them! Students are already asking when they have to give up their iPad and are not often impressed with the answer I have to give them. Seeing as it is the first few weeks back from Christmas holidays, all of us are taking some time to get back into our school routines and I have to say the iPads in our classrooms have become just that. Our students having constant 1-to-1 access to iPads in our classrooms has become natural; something we often do not even consciously think about anymore. In many ways this is a positive and the opportunities our students have had to expand their learning is without a doubt engaging and effective. Yet being the reflective people we are, beginning to explore some of the potential obstacles this could present in our students’ learning is only a logical next step. (I think it is mostly the fact that our iPads are going to magically disappear in less than two weeks!!!) But we do need to start considering some important questions. Is 1-to-1 the key? Or is the iPad the right device?

As one of our students said, “the novelty has worn off, we like aren’t that excited that we have iPads anymore because now it is just normal, we use them all the time for so many things!” To some degree this is true and we still witness both ends of the spectrum in our daily interactions with the iPads. Students have become accustomed to having constant access to a personal device but there are still “aha” moments; moments where students discover something new and exciting about the topic we are studying or about what the iPad can do. We think it is important to continue to push students to further uncover the potential the iPads have as a learning tool without losing focus of our main goal, which is student success. Even though students are used to having the iPads at the tip of their fingers the effectiveness of how students continue to use the devices has not diminished. Instead of viewing the iPads as more of a “fun” addition to our classroom learning, we have truly integrated 1-to-1 into our daily routines.

Consequently, students have been working with several apps regularly throughout the majority of content areas as well as integrating some new apps for specific inquiry project-based work. Students are consistently working with their Gmail accounts and Google Docs to collaborate with their peers and teachers, providing an online learning community for further exploration, connections and even assessment. One example relating to Humanities was the availability of students to instantly create, edit and rewrite topic sentences for our RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) paragraphs. Students could read each others topic sentences, edit a friends and receive some feedback on their own sentence within the same document. As for myself, I had the chance to quickly assess the students on who understood the main components of a topic sentence and without even having to leave the document I was able to quickly type in some formative feedback. Furthermore, students are working with social media apps to continue to broadcast our learning and the creation of both iMovies and Haiku Decks is still a popular pastime! In addition to the consistent use of certain apps, we have made an effort to get students exploring some apps that are being used for specific projects.

Our main inquiry project we began recently is a research focussed cross-curricular project highlighting the cultural, historical, environmental and economic impacts of particular plants including cotton, coffee, sugar cane, bamboo etc.  Obviously the iPads are going to be used for researching and collecting information as well as the creation of the students’ final presentations, but we wanted to go further. In addition to the presentation we are asking students to individually hand in a written portion, which can be published on their blogs. In order to provide students with necessary supports that the iPad has to offer, students will be collecting and organizing their research using Inspiration, which has proven to be a powerful tool for all students. Looking more specifically at the Science portion of the project, students are going to be using an app called Skitch that allows students to take a picture and add arrows and text boxes right on top of the picture. Students are going to use this app to not only explain how their plant works through charts, diagrams and visuals, they are going to create the charts, diagrams and visuals! Stay tuned to hear how Skitch worked out!

Although our 1-to-1 iPad project has completely changed the dynamic of our classrooms in a positive way, we did start to wonder if, to quote the wonderful Marshal McLuhan, “the medium was really the message?” Is the iPad the medium to be using? Would a different device offer better/worse opportunities? Does the way we present our information change depending on what medium we use? Would a laptop or netbook or iPhone for that matter be better or worse than the iPad? I don’t know if we have the answer right now, but the debate is open and the reflection continues. In our final couple of weeks with the Mobile Learning Initiative we are hoping to gain further insight into both the positive and negative influences 1-to-1 iPads have had specifically in our learning environments. Through good conversation and reflection we are looking to better understand the potential opportunities the iPad has in the classroom versus other mobile devices and maybe even add some of our thoughts into the ongoing debate!

Thanks for reading,

Brad & Jenna

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Week 2 – GCMS Project

Week 2 – Reflection on GCMS Mobile Learning Initiative Project

We are already into Week 3 of our 1-to-1 iPad project at Greystone and the learning curve has been steep! I might argue that the learning curve has been steeper for the adults than the kids…but the skills we have gained in such a short amount of time will continue to benefit our students’ learning for the rest of the year. Interestingly, students have started this project at varying levels of knowledge, skills and ability when using the iPads, which has proven to be a powerful opportunity for integrated peer teaching. We often find ourselves watching students informally teaching each other about certain apps or skills needed to work through a project, as well as constantly showing us new and exciting things that can be achieved on the iPads. Consequently, I have found that my interest level in using and learning new things about the iPad has peaked, simply by watching the excitement and learning that our students have already displayed.

Having constant 1-to-1 access to the iPads has flourished into learning opportunities and gained responsibilities beyond the natural abilities of what can be searched, created and shared using the devices. Students are broadening their capacity for understanding what and how a good digital citizen interacts with technology in today’s society. Knowing that students have consistent access to an iPad reinforces the need to practice when, where and how the iPads should be used appropriately and effectively in differing environments. We have students constantly reminding each other about the etiquette of the devices, which translates into daily interactions when using their phones, laptops and other mobile devices. Consequently, students are responsible for the care of their iPad throughout the day and they are absolutely rising to the challenge. For many of our students (and mostly the teacher’s in the project haha) organization does not come naturally! Yet, as a group of learners, we are working together to find more effective methods to organize and manage our resources, materials and lives! Using the iPads, 1-to-1 has allowed us to collaborate towards a common goal of consistently using apps like the calendar, reminders and notes in order to model for our students the practical benefits of planning.

Students have been engaged with several different apps over the early course of this project and continue to find innovative ways to integrate the iPads into whatever we are doing. In Math, students have been working towards individual as well as common goals on Khan Academy and using interactive websites to help with adding and subtracting integers. In Humanities, students have been using Inspiration to plan and organize their writing, Haiku Deck to compile short presentations focusing on the powerful interactions between pictures and text and began working towards publishing their first blog posts on EduBlogs. Furthermore, students have utilized several different word game apps such as Vocabulator, Whirly Word and Bookworm as an alternative choice during our Daily 5 routines. One app that students love is Zite, which they use for daily reading and current events. Students have also consistently been using their Gmail accounts to communicate between teachers as well as peers, focusing on email, creation of Google docs and YouTube uploads. Another major benefit of having 1-to-1 access for students is the availability of apps that provide assistive features such as Dragon Dictation, which requires the repetitive voice of the user to become accurate. Students are beginning to realize the major benefits to learning that several of these apps provide and are beginning to break down the stigmas attached to using any sort of assistive device. Without a doubt, the most popular app the students are using is iMovie! Having no real background in creating movies, I was of no real help to my students, other than being the “monkey” taking the odd still frame that they all wanted to be in! Despite my lack of knowledge, students were not deterred by their inexperience and we saw students taking risks, making mistakes and sometimes even failing at creating the movie they had initially imagined. Regardless, students persevered independently to master the skills necessary for creating a fabulous movie production. We are truly enjoying being the learners alongside our students as we continue to uncover new and exciting apps that help to engage our students.

As my fabulous colleague said, “1-to-1 has completely changed the dynamic of our classroom.” I couldn’t agree more! We are constantly trying new ways to help our students access, create and share their learning and so far the iPads have been an incredible asset to our Learning Communities. We look forward to continuing our journey, reflecting along the way and hearing and learning from others on how to effectively implement mobile devices into the classroom!

Thanks for reading,

Brad & Jenna

P.S. Stay tuned for some blog posts about our iPad experience so far, Innovation Week at GCMS and our entertaining RAFT paragraphs!!!

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