Since ipads and ipod/touches hit the district, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked what apps are great. I wrote about this previously (Apps) using the lens of “Relevance, Thinking Skills, Sharing and Usability” (adapted by Tony Vincent; Kathy Schrock). Another layer may be to connect the app against the SAMR model (a…
Tag: activities
PSA Day – BLOGATHON
As a professional, reflection takes up a large part of our lives. Active choices stem from reflective moments steering our professional learning. Ultimately that learning reflects back into our classrooms with students. We were privileged to spend Friday with a group of K-12 teachers and student teachers at Burnaby Central. Titled “Blogathon“, it provided an…
Engage in the Experience – Professional Learning
As we organize our teaching/learning environments, it is important to hold time to learn ourselves – to challenge ourselves to engage with new ideas, to seek out new opportunities in professional learning, and to reflect how they relate with personal beliefs. This is about connecting to what is important. Only then can we bring powerful…
Voice and Choice – Teachers & Students Ring Out
From time to time we continue our focus on sharing practices in SD41 that create community and build connected stories using our blogs. On the Cariboo side of the city, resides Armstrong teacher, Jude Comeau. Her blog called Division 11’s Class Blog-Learning One Byte At A Time, is a hive of connected learning. Her purposes are…
An Audience of One is No Audience At All
“Students need an authentic audience.” You’ve heard this statement before. Given the vast array of opportunities, you would think that this is easy. But any number of bells are ringing in your head and you recognize it’s not that simple. Consider questions like “who will be the target audience – parents, peers, people across the…
Dialogue With A Twist
How would you create opportunities for students to practice dialogue? Perhaps it’s talk between two people or two characters in a book or a conversation between you and yourself? MMhh…now that would be interesting. A bit of reflective action produced in video format. And practicing a host of literacy elements to boot. The tool you…
iPad Apps that Enhance your Language Arts Program
Joined by a group of enthusiastic K-12 teachers and principals, we explored a number of apps at our District Pro-D session on February 21st. The feature story was Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin. After listening to the story and the oh-so catchy song, we used a strategy called Milling…
Digital Learning Day – Feb 5
The days of January have been whizzing by, partly due to the start of another term and partly due to our wonderful west coast weather. Having some sun certainly invites a bit more energy in the steps as well as some hopeful signs of spring just around the corner. We are hearing about so many…
Digital Citizenship
Happy new year. Like all new years, it is a time of anticipation and new beginnings. Especially with all the technological changes that our students have at their fingertips. While they may be really comfortable at texting and bouncing from one interchange to another, there is a significant difference when using technologies for organized multiple purposes. Powerful…
App #10 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #10: Partner a beautiful image that you’ve drawn or photographed with interactivity and you’ve got Thinglink. These rich interactives provide another way to curate and organize information. I’ve written about this before using the SAMR Model as an example (developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, Ph.D) and also here where I was participating in CLMOOC. Thinglink offers interaction tools that tag photos or images…
App #9 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #9: In our effort to highlight the SAMR Model of integration of technology, we’ve been considering what activities might fit into Redefinition (technology that allows creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable). What activities might have significant impact to student outcomes? The “tell your story” concept remains one of the powerful ways we have to teach others, to increase audience,…
App #8 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #8: Image editors are the tools that help your ordinary images dance off pages. IrfanView is a free program (on your school computers) that does a variety of basics like compression. I love the “batch conversion” feature when I need a ton of images resized for the web. (click here for instructions) When I need to…
App #7 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #7: How do you present information from research projects? Usually we default to PowerPoint. Another option is Haiku Deck for all platforms. I wrote about this app for the iPad before (click here). The presentation software offers a beautiful, yet simplistic way to to share information. Each slide offers options for layout, format (bullet points), images (including…
App #6 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #6: QR Codes (or Quick Response codes) are everywhere – in magazines, on professional cards, on billboards, websites, newsletters all because those little squares can be packed with information. You can even find them at the grocery store gracing the fruit section (giving you additional details of the grower). Teachers have used them to create…
App #5 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #5: Many of us have our students write stories and then illustrate the text. While the artists in the bunch do flips and cartwheels (and I’ve had those students), what happens to those who struggle with drawing the simplest shapes. You know what I mean… somehow my tree just doesn’t quite look like a…
App #4 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #4: “I hate Google Docs!” stated a student in an advanced writing class. The teacher being stunned by this emphatic state turned my way with a “now what!” look. After probing, it became clear that this writer liked the thesaurus dictionary in MSWord. A quick introduction to online visual dictionaries opened a whole different world not…
App #3 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #3: What happens when you bring together an ipad, an app, words, thoughts, and sound? Why Book Creator of course. This app for the ipad is a thing of beauty when it comes to creating ebooks. Images can be drawn or photographed and inserted along with text. As well, audio can enhance both the background environment…
10 Apps to Countdown the Season
In keeping with the season and heading towards the winter break, I’m doing a countdown of 10 apps that add spice to your toolkit. Regardless of the application or tool you choose to use, it always comes back to purpose. APP #1: Picslice is an online application (no downloading) that will take…
How Do You Communicate?
More than any other initiative we’ve been a part, none have reached the level of activity as our wordpress blogging platform. This pilot grew from humble beginnings with the simple goal of “tell your story”. Our question – what would happen if we gave our people an opportunity to open a window into classrooms or…
Using Technologies With A Purpose
The SAMR Model [developed by Ruben Puentedura] offers a framework for viewing how we integrate technologies into our curricula. Broken into four sections [Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition], it is a simple way to group activities that provide a variety of purposes. The goal is to move towards teaching ‘above the line’. You can hover over different parts of…