Using Flipboard to teach Minecraft and other things

The nice thing about Flipboard is that the people you follow in your network of teachers et al are can now be followed on Flipboard. Many of these people make smaller curated magazines and some with original content of their own. This content can be drawn from all over: other social areas like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc and individual URLs.

It's this custom URL addition that makes it really handy for a teacher to build their own magazines for any topic they desire. Flipboard has its own online editor at editor.flipboard.com where you sign into a 'dashboard' of sorts and rearrange tiles on the page. The tiles being the pages of your content.

The real beauty of this is that you can do this live while the students are in front of you. It's a bit like Nearpod except the presentation is a bit more organic that Nearpod's ultra linear feel. The tiles you can see below are in lesson format. The '1' you see is the introduction to Ancient China topic and the inventions the Chinese founded many moons ago. These lesson pieces can be swapped out to suit the classes or the students you are aiming it at. You could divide this up into different magazines for groups or even as a research exercise prior to the topic.

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Setting Up Guide for Class Sets of iOS Devices

Cloning iPads or iPod touches isn't illegal. This note from Apple iTunes Support tells you that you can sync 10 devices to one account per authorised computer. If you read here you can see that iBooks is somewhat different. As too iCloud. If you have a home account for the iOS devices in your home then you obviously sync to that account. Your child, brother, sister, aunt, dog, cat, husband or wife all do the same. This amounts to a lot of copying of data and contacts (Can you see how useful that is for school? Not so handy for family though. I'm not sure your 14 year old child would want his/her contacts syncing to your iOS device!) to many devices on the same account. Is there a limit? Well, yes and no. I point this out below too. The limit we find is about 20 restores. Then it becomes a little sticky and we have to use more than one Mac to finish completely. Hence, below you see we use 5. I am not using Windows PCs with iTunes as you can't sync multiple devices at once with iTunes on Windows. See below from the Apple discussions board.

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Sound Uncovered - iPad App for Science/ Topic in Year 3

​Sound Uncovered is a great, free app from here that is made by Exploratorium.com. We're beginning to use it in science and topic work where we're continuing using an ICT lab-free environment.

The Prompt sheet below is for the children who prefer a very structured way of going about things. The other children will have white boards etc to explore and revisit the prompts on the IWB.​

You're free to edit the sheets and the presentation as you see fit.​

Scratch and Bee-bots for Primary ICT - Year 1 Intro to Programming

Scratch and control as an ICT skills boost.

This term (February 2011) we are running a school wide control and programming topic that I feel is missing and entirely necessary to boost the attainment of ICT skills across the age range. Why am I doing this? The cohort I have inherited has such a wide ranging set of skills and inthe most part, poorly attaining children that we need to boost their awareness of what they can create with ICT. The way I envisage in doing this with Scratch from Year 1 to Year 6.

In the break between Christmas and Chinese New Year there is short half term that has seen the Year 3 children (who are my lowest achievers) realy take their learning into their own hands for te first time this academic year - and has prompted me to re-evaluate the path of the attainment for the rest of my year groups.

So this is ths plan:

To integrate scratch projects across the school from Year 1 to Year 6 with video accompaniment which should allow me to support the less confident children in my classes.

The first of the resources are as follows

 

Downloadable Scratch resources.

Children's Scratch introduction template

Children's Scratch template

Teacher's Scratch Template

Children who need help to make the ICT Challenge - Basic grid game with several backgrounds

Tips on Making Google Mail, Sites for Primary School Children, their Parents and Class Teachers

The downloads here are the spoken ideas and what I would probably changeif I was to set up the Gmail accounts again. If you're a teacher and wish to set up Gmail accounts for your class then the advice I talk about here could come in handy.

 

1. Gmail and Google sites part 1 - setting up, templates, owners and invites

2. Gmail and Google sites part 1 - settings, web links

3. Gmail for Parents and Teachers - ownership

4. Gmail for Students - settings, chat, contacts, policing

5. Gmail for the Teacher - settings, homework, interaction