Draw Cast Activity

So, my art teacher was looking for an activity to use the iPads with his students. He is beginning contour drawing. He took an iPad home every night for the last week looking for a way to do this. He came up with, what I think, is an awesome activity!

Contour drawing is focusing on the lines in an object and drawing from that. The idea is that you can draw the object with one line, without picking up your pencil. As an intro activity to this he took a picture of a shoe and a hand.

In this program you can choose an image to be your background. The students go in and set the first picture to their background. They then choose their writing ustensil, its thickness and color, and begin to trace around the picture. They are only to draw the lines that they are seeing.

Here is an example:

You then take away the background and you should be left with a great contour drawing of a shoe.

For example (not sure how great it is!)

I thought this was really cool (I can't draw at all, but it really looks like a shoe!)

Students email their pictures to the teacher and that is their grade for the day.

Lesson with student teacher follow-up

This activity went pretty well. I was in and out of the room all day, because of other things going on in the building, but for the most part this lesson was a success. The biggest snag we had when doing this was students getting logged onto the internet (through the internet filters) so that they could use the program.

One thing that she did, that was different than when other teachers have used them, was that students who had not completed their homework were not allowed to use the iPad. I like this and I don't.

Should using the iPads be a priveledge or should it be something that all kids are expected to be able to use as a resource. I have trouble with both sides of this. I agree if you can't get your work done you should have to do it, but should we give them class time to do it? And are we letting them out of another assignment because they didn't get a chance to do the iPad activity? Therefore are we requiring more work of students who stay up to date with their work?

I am not sure the answers to these questions, but I think it is something to think about if we are planning on expanding our iPad curriculum in the future.

iPad Problems

Today we ran into our first snag with the iPads. I took them into the classroom for use but I could not get the airport to work. We do not have wi-fi throughout the building so we use an airport that travels with our cart and iPads. We plug it into the internet and that provides localize wi-fi for that area. Anyway, this morning the airport was continually blinking amber. It should be green if it is working properly. So I tried unplugging and re plugging, and some other quick fixes, but nothing worked. So technology came over to look at it. It seems that the configuration set up with the port had been erased. It was not working correctly after that was reconfigured either, though. They took it with them to try some things, so we are without iPads today. I feel really bad for the teacher who had created a great lesson using them today. This is what I hate about technology!!! While I love so many things about it, when it doesn't work, it can completely ruin your day. I will let you know what we do to fix it.

Fixed!!!
Technology brought it back this afternoon working. The problem is...well we don't know. They have no idea why or how the configuration was deleted. Hopefully it is a fluke. If that is the case we won't need to worry about it, if not we will have to figure out what the problem is.

The fix, creating a new configuration on the airport and setting it up.

iPad Training for Teachers

So, tomorrow an Apple rep is coming to be in the library all day, teachers will come down during their plan to recieve a short training. I am very excited to see what the teachers think after they have been required to use them for 30 minutes. I will let you know how it goes. The rep has a sheet with teachers, their plans, and what subject they teach, so he should be prepared to offer them some content specific ideas for use with the iPads. I am so glad this is happening because so many teachers have not gotten a chance to see the iPad's full potential yet. This will give them the opportunity to do that!

Cancelled because of snow day...reschedule TBD.

Learn to Draw App

Learn to Draw is a free app that allows you to go through different steps in drawing. You start with an outline and then fill in from there. You have different pencils to choose from and you can choose the thickness of the lead.

I think this is a great app for students who are trying to learn how to draw, or just use a different medium to draw. I showed it to our art teacher and he agreed. I think the students will be using this app in the near future.

iPad Training Thursday Feb. 10

Even though Thursday was a snow day for us, we went ahead and had our iPad training for those who got iPads and/or iPods (class sets or individual use).

The training was definitely focusing on the basics of using the iPads, but I did learn a few cool and easy things that will help me out tremendously.


Email
You must have email set up on each iPad in order to send or recieve mail. Since we are using these for school, we don't really need to recieve mail, only send it. This will enable students to email their teacher what they were working on, on the iPads during class.
The Trick
Set up an email account for your school (I had my tech guys create one specifically for the iPads).
Go through the process of adding the account to your iPad. When you get to the incoming mail portion, take away the last letter of your password. This way you do not get incoming mail to the iPads (the password is wrong) it only allows you to send mail, which is what we need to turn in assignments.

Creating Links that look like apps
If there is a website that you know your students will need to use a lot, instead of having them type in the URL over and over again to get there, you can create a button/app that is a direct link to that page. For example, our English classes were using the No Fear Shakespeare website daily while reading Romeo and Juliet. Instead of Googling No Fear Shakespeare, clicking on the link, and then finding Romeo and Juliet, they can just click on the button/app to get there.

The Trick
Go to the website you are wanting to use to create your button/app. Click the arrow button to the left of the URL, go down to add to homepage.

A box will appear for you to name your button/app. (In our case we called it No Fear Shakespeare). Then click add.

You now have a button/app on your homescreen, you can add it to a folder, or leave it be!

Working with a student teacher

We have a student teacher this semester in our Geography Department. She is getting ready for her big observation and is wanting to use the iPads (she thought it would be innovative and creative).

I was so excited that she came to me for help. (off the topic of iPads, I am hoping this will help her realize librarians are there to help and cause her to use her librarian at wherever she gets a job)

We discussed the unit she would be covering and some of the specific topics this area covers.

We looked at the Earth Observer app to see how it related to the topic. It has a whole section on natural disasters (which is one of the topics of physical geography they would be looking at). We created some questions and ideas of how to use this, and still give the kids some accountability by turning in something at the end.

We decided to look at regions of the US and the trends for different kinds of natural disasters. We are going to give them a map, and have them use different colors to shade areas that are more prone to certain disasters. We will then have some questions about why they think that is.

We will then have them look at other countries and do the same thing. They will then discuss what the areas that are prone to specific disasters have in common. How are they different? How has technology helped these areas? And so on, figuring out some critical points of physical geography.

She is going to actually create the questions based on the notes we took at our meeting. I will be in the class during the assignment to help answer questions and for technical support.

I think this will be a really good activity for the students, because it is geared toward the tactile and visual learners (which most students are). They will have to interpret a map using technology as well as infer about these places using the information that they gathered. The lesson will be Monday February 21, we will see how it goes!

World Math Day 2011 App

I am always looking for ways to collaborate with the math department, so when I found this app it was a no brainer. World Maths Day is where you compete against students from all over the world on math problems. Last year we tried to participate, but the server go bogged down and the computers were running too slow, the kids could not get anything to work. We hope that does not happen this year. Kids can get on and practice the problems up until the March 1st start date. On March 1st is when they compete against other students. There are prizes for students who do really well, but that is not the goal of the day, it is just a day to recognize math and its importance all around the world.

I asked all the math teachers if they would be interested in participating. We are so far behind because of snow days, they did not feel like they had the time to spare with their Algebra or Geometry classes, but they wanted to do it with their remedial classes. So I set up an account for our school and loaded their students from their Math Fundamentals classes. I loaded the app on the iPad. I printed out passwords for each student and we should be ready to go. It should be fun for these kids. They are not math lovers, so hopefully they will find this activity more enjoyable than some of the others they will do.

The app that I downloaded was in the practice stage, I will have to update it the day before March 1, so that it will be the actual login version. Every Wednesday we have shortened periods, so the Math Fundamentals classes are going to come in and practice with the App, and then on March 1, they will get to participate in World Maths Day!

iPad in Math-Special Education

Last Friday, the Special Education Math class came into visit to use the iPads. We were just doing drill and practice using the Flash to Pass Free App. On this app you can choose between; addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. You can then choose your level of difficulty (1-6). Another cool thing, we did not do this, is instead of a level, you can choose a number that you want to focus on and all the problems you are given have that number in it.

You get 50 problems and it times you. We all started on addition level 1 (I joined in the fun!). The best time was awarded a Jolly Rancher. We then went again to try to improve. Then moved on to other levels and operations.

The kids really got into the competition of it, and improving their scores. They would yell out when they finished, I got better by like 30 seconds!

After seeing the enthusiasm, the teacher and I have decided to make this a weekly event, every Friday 7th hour.

We will meet, and go through some together as a challenge and then have them do some on their own. We are also planning on graphing their average times as a class each week on a big chart to study and look at improvement.

I also downloaded a few more math practice apps for them to use after they finish with flash to pass (15 minutes is about as long as anyone wants to play it).

I am looking forward to doing this with them every Friday, I already have kids from the class telling me they are going to beat me this week, and so on.

I will let you know how it goes...