So much to learn – that must have been the thinking bubble of each participant in our Learning Tech Inquiry group. It was a day to use the new technologies (laptops, ipads, software) and get a bit more comfortable.
This is what we explored:
- Start with a bit of brainstorming ideas. We used Padlet (previously known as Wallwisher) to park some ideas. This online board provides space for collecting inspiration, images, links and grouping content.
- Categorizing ideas? Popplet is a online application that allows images, writing, drawing, colours to visually convey ideas. Having an online account can connect computers and ipads – students have ready access at home. An exploration of Inspiration offered a powerful way to embed video to frame our thinking process. This gave us brainstorming with direct visual/auditory memory support from the movie. The addition of rapid-fire tool (in Inspiration) gave us the ability to type almost at the “speed of thought”.
- Image work – While image work can be done on the laptop, we chose to do this with iPads. The camera app on the iPad was used to take pictures or video and save them to the camera roll. Importing these into other apps was simple to further communicate our learning. We discussed the challenge of getting our projects off the device.
- Screen capture – Screenhunter was downloaded and installed on our laptops. [The software performs simple screen captures and cropping of any content displayed.]
- Writing and Sharing/Commenting support – in line with our brainstorm “out of the box” thinking, we went to 5-Card Flickr (http://5card.cogdogblog.com/play.php?suit=5card). This site pulls random images from Flickr, which you select to create a story. Once the 5 images were selected, we used Screenhunter to capture the image. This was inserted into a Google Doc. Then the writing proceeded. [Google Docs allows many people to be working on the same document at one time. Collaboration and revisioning at its best! Students and teachers gain the power of the commenting feature to engage in dialogue.]
You can tell we had a very busy packed morning. Time to mull over the activities and see how they might be used in our classes to support our inquiry journey. We encourage you to try some of these and let us know how it went.