Spring is definitely in the air – the buds are on the trees and the daffodils have poked their heads above the ground. This also  means that the latest newsletter is out.  Check it out here!

District Pro-D arrived on February 22nd.  Offered at two sites (Byrne Creek and Taylor Park) complete with video feed of our keynote to Taylor Park, it served as a reminder that connection, collaboration, ideas generation happen when we all come together.  With over 110 sessions, it was an electrifying event. No small feat for a large school district!

The iPad ShootOut Panel of Dragana Mihic (Teacher-librarian at North), Dave Maclean (Principal at Westridge), Livia Chan and Janet Chow (District Learning Technologies) provided a series of fast-paced rounds of idevice apps framed around the following questions:

Please connect with any of our panel or our Learning Technologies team to further explore.

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One of the things I find challenging is the inability of the iPad to support multiple open softwares (like my laptop).  Try using Side by Side.  This allows you to split the screen up to four windows at a time.  Read, research, download files and take notes can be integrated into a session.  This app has just been updated with access to Dropbox, making it even handier than before.

No doubt you’ve run into many screensharing apps that connect a teacher computer to iPads.

Join.me is a free screen sharing meeting site that is simple to facilitate.  This can be used to enhance a lesson by sharing the teacher’s computer screen with student ipads [imagine the possibility of a student with visual challenges being able to participate fully in the lesson].   When the teacher wishes to share the screen, they go online to join.me and downloads a tiny exe – file to launch a session.  A number is generated  to be shared with the students to create the connection.  The student ipads must have the join.me app already installed.    [Thanks to Debbie Sitar for suggesting this!]

Apps come and apps go.  All of them serve a purpose.  It is the teacher who makes “magic” happen through the lesson experiences.  Our iDevices Blog is where you will see an ongoing vetted list of apps. (Click  Apps Collection list)  Please add to the list if you run across an app that you love.

Here’s one you may find useful:

Reading text online is just as challenging as reading a book if your students struggle with reading.  Try Voice Dream Reader Lite.  This handy app reads online webpages, documents, pdf, text, powerpoint, ebooks, Pocket, using text- to -speech technology.  Words are highlighted as they are spoken making this a great app for your readers who have difficulties.  Articles identified are stored locally so you can read them anytime, making this very useful when you are offline.   [Adding additional voices are part of the paid app.]