Ipads in Education Participants,

Having taken my first Ipad class, I'm wondering what to do next.  What's the next step. I want to first go back through these past 6 weeks. I want to see what I can expand upon and what I need to set aside.  Thinking about one teams project connecting qr codes to book reviews sounds like a great way to motivate students to read.  My book trailer project has a similar theme.  There both trying to encourage students to pick a book and read.  I like Jeff's idea of making it easy to get to and read ebooks.  On my phone I have a book going all the time.  I'm able to check out my favorite authors with that phone and easily find reviews.  For me I want to be able to pick the book easily, review it with a couple of sources, and read it easily and continuously.  Kids want to read but the process of picking out books and reading needs to be quick and easy.

My next  step will be to continue to learn and apply it in my life and in the life of the students and staff.  This summer I will continue learning by taking a self paced ipad class through TIE.  I hope to pass this learning on to others and evaluate how others receive it.

iPads in education class participants,

I just finished watching our video assignment.  I feel like one of the most important points he made was how a teacher can decide what technology to use for a given project.  Do we use 1. Social technology.  Do we need to communicate to a larger audience our ideas or creations.  Do we stress the 2. Mobile technology.  This of course is the idea that we want to be able to create our final product and have it viewed from various locations.  Do we stress that 3.  Visualization...creating with technology allows our abstract ideas to become more concrete.  Do we stress 4. Digital story telling.  This would be combining text, audio, video to tell a story.  Does our technology decision stress 5.  Educational gaming.   If we can answer which of these or which combination of these we should then    our instruction will be much moe effective.

I have done digital story telling for several years.  The students at Corral have created many fiction and non fiction book trailers.  One down fall of the projects is that an iPad will not play any of these since they are all wmv. Files.  Here is the link.    Book trailers.    A PC will run these.  This year I am having students create their own non fiction story.  I created a rubric that guides them.  Every 2nd - 5th grader has 1 power point slide with this rubric.  It covers the essentials of putting together a
nonfiction book.

 I had each of them create a bibliography first with instruction.  They learned what was available in our library and chose 2 non fiction books on the same topic.  All the  students received instruction then on how to evaluate web sites.  I used a great evaluation guide by Kathy Shrock.  After they selected their 2 internet sites on the same topic I showed them how to use easybib.com.  Having completed their bibliography the students began working on the cover page, title page, table of contents, body of the book, glossary and index.  I'm seeing students near the end of this process.  During this first part of the process they're learning lots about power point.  Once they complete this rubric I will have them import the slides into Animoto.   With Animoto they will record narration for the book.  They will also insert music  into each slide according to the mood of that slide.   As they complete the Animoto steps I will help them save it as a mov. file making it ready for the internet.  I will select those that have completed all of the above steps and put them on the internet.  Having them selected to be put on the internet is a huge incentive.  I'm seeing  some  near the end of the half way point and are visualizing the end product online for all to see.  I recommend you try digital story telling.  It has the potential to have teachers and students learn about many many aspects of technology.