Being inspired by the research happening at Durham University some years back, I wanted to lead the design and implimentation of new styles of collaborative learning with current technology in a bespoke area.
After 6 months of designing and building work, it's almost complete. We're just waiting on a few more items and it should be ready to go.
Find out about this journey at the Experimental Pages.
Durham University
2009
iPads, much like Apple’s laptops/desktops in schools, prestige only pays for prospective parents’ eyeballs as they walk around school. They see the logo glowing or gleaming from the backs of them and it shows that the school must put technology high on the agenda. This is no longer the case - it only means in the current climate that money is being willingly being thrown away where, it once had a strong argument due to ease of use and processes such as AirDrop. The iPad (Macbooks too) now have serious competition and I think that the once scoffed at Android/ Chromebook combo is making a lot of ground.
Read MoreCloning 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.
Read MoreSound 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.
QR Codes, I have to say, are a marvellous method for discovery in school. Why? Because they offer up the 'unknown' to children and techers alike. The children, as you can see to the left, don't know what is behind the code until the image appears, like magic, before them. The game we played ensures good language and teamwork as they try to work out which image matches the code. Some children didn't know what the Olympics were and none of them had ver heard of Greco Roman wrestling or water polo - "What? They play handball in the water?" Well, yes, they sort of do.
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We are coming to the end of another Year at your school. The ICT dept. is gaining strength and is asiPad with Children's Book impermanent as ever: we are to become facilitators instead of discrete ICT teachers (albeit our new guy is 'front loading' skills for me to transfer in cross curricular lessons).
The problem we both face now is that the Reception children are demons on the iPads. They have been utterly sublime all the way to the Easter break. We have tackled some really tricky clusters of skills such as in-app camera work (MadPad and Puppet Pals) and other combinations such as animation using imports of various kinds via DoInk.
Read MoreThis week I was observed teaching. Not usually a happy affair for some but this time I thought I might use the recent additions to ICT (iPads) I have been making to highlight the need for a larger focus put on ICT in our school.
With the recent training and a happier more creative outlook placed on tackling ICT by placing it firmly at the center of our teaching it was time to put the iPad to test in the very grateful hands of the Year 5 children.
Basically, the future plans are that KS2 will inherit a much overdue injection of iPod touches to cater for bespoke cross-curricular lessons. It means that the children will have a video camera and editing software in their hands; something I think is imperative in modern KS2 ICT. So far the iPads have been for the Reception children only with view to KS1 after Christmas and I needed to see what the limitations are when using them with the older children. This is the rationale anyway! Sometimes I really love my job!
Read MoreE
mbedding the final result below.
Simple and easy to share with our recpetion classes and further when we have to cross them off to curricilum areas.
For the inspiration see the Kathy Shrock blog for more info.
Read MoreThis is a snippet of the latest use of the iPad in Reception.
The children have used the app called MadPad that essentially turn the iPad into a musical instrument via video buttons.
This was a two part lesson - the first being to get to know the mad pad app and record percussion.
Then the second to import other children's percussion into new set of buttons.
They had to review what was good sound and what was poor sound. They also had to make sure we could see the instrument being played.
The result was a mixed bag really but the children understood immediately that they could use Johnny's hammer sound as it was the best and he was from another class. Collaborative effects next time where we chose who we want to send our sounds to.
Baby steps as they say as this is only really the end of the first half term.
Next up, drawing and painting with a stylus.
Read MoreThe case update is here:
