Yesterday I was working in Maureen’s class. She wanted me to start work on several projects with her class. The first of these projects was using Sam Animation in her numeracy programme. She wanted the students to create an animation using concrete materials such as units, tens, hundred’s and Thousands blocks to explain the process, algorithm, technique for subtraction over a 10, 100 or a 1000. The students storyboarded the process, organised the materials in their groups to explain and off they went.

After a little while it became clear that although SamAnimation could do the job of recording, a camera and iMovie in her case or Photostory in a Windows environment would have been perhaps more efficient. However that said, the process illuminated to Maureen a very interesting point. The students could do the maths, but could not articulate the logic of the mechanics of how they understood the maths to work. In other words they each had an algorithm down pat, but they did not fully understand the logic of that algorighm and therefore lacked full understanding. By introducing an elearning element into the numeracy lesson, Maureen has now got some concrete formative assessment data that she will now focus on. This information was only really fully revealed because of the videos the students created.

As you know I have long been an advocate of capturing student voice and this example demonstrates why. We may set up concrete examples on our tables for students to scaffold each other, but without some form of a capturing that conversation, we only see the end result and not the process and the misconceptions or fallacies. As far as Maureen was concerned, based on the results of her class, they all understood the process and mechanics of subtraction, but the student videos yesterday eloquently showed that they know the process but lack the understanding of how this works. Without the understanding, children will find it difficult to apply the process to other situations.

The Rover App

This weeks app of the week is the Rover app.  There is much to love about the iPad but there is also much that is frustrating and one of those frustrations is it’s complete lack of support for all things Flash.  As we know there is much content on the web that is Flash based and when viewed on the iPad a black space where once was content is all that is left.  This is particularly frustrating for educators.  The web is in a state of transition to HTML5 and a post Flash based world of media content.  But for teachers who have assiduously collected links to many resources over the years, much of what they know to be good sites for learning are invisible to them via the iPad.  Many legacy sites and even great current service providers, such as Mathletics are entirely Flash based and will take a long time, if ever to convert their sites from Flash to HTML5 and be a viable resource on the iPad.

This is where Rover comes in.  It acts like a third party browser and enables you to use your trusted Flash based sites on your iPad.  It is simple, and free and is my app of the week.

I have been working with a teacher at Wakaaranga over the last couple of months and we have been planning and he has been implementing an open ended programming unit.  The students have been given the task of developing a game that will teach other students about some of the facts surrounding the Treaty of Waitangi.  Today was my first visit to the class and I was in ‘role.’  I had been invited into the class as “Mr Kingdom” an executive from EA Games who was to assess the appropriateness of the students plans, and embryonic games.  I spent some time emphasising how projects such as theirs rely on having good plans and good teams, who all know what they have to do.  I was really impressed with how the students reacted to my observations and “Mr Kingdom” will be returning in a fortnight to see just how well they have progressed.

I was working at Bailey Road School today and it is really pleasing to see how far the school has progressed with its integration of elearning into the daily programme for students.  Indeed I spent all morning working with students showing them how to create, edit, upload and embed videos.  How to add images, videos and voice to Wallwisher stickies and then working with their respective teachers to ensure that the teachers could harness these skills and integrate the learning potential these tools and skills offer into their planning.

I had the pleasure of spending a part of the afternoon in Nat’s class.  The school was running its three way conferencing and Nat has set up system where she is using Evernote with every child in her class and they are using Evernote as an LMS with every child responsible for uploading at least three examples of good work to their Evernote site every week.  In addition in their notes are their test scores their AsTTle results as well as examples of their own work, their goals and evidence to demonstrate that they have attained their goals.  The students then ran their three way conferences and were able to demonstrate to their parents what they had attained and where they were going next.  Each parent has also been given the link to the Evernote site related to their child so that they can continue to drop in on the results and progress that each child will continue to make throughout the year.  The beauty is that as it is a cloud based solution, each student can take their documentation to their next school.

An elegant solution, well done Nat.  The video below shows one of the students running their conference and speaking to their Evernote hosted resources.

Fotobabble

Again like last week this app is not new. In fact I have been using the web based version of Fotobabble for a number of years. But as I said in my recent article for Edudemic Magazine, this app is the kind of classroom resource that will make the technology disappear and the learning happen.

In a nutshell, Fotobbble for those of you who have not used it allows you to take a photo on your iOS device, you can then edit it, even add annotations and then you can add your voice. Then with a simple click the file, providing you have set up an account on the website is uploaded to fotobabble. Once there the file can then be embedded into the location of your choice, wiki, blog, LMS website etc. This has so many classroom based connotations that it is a wonder that it is not more universally used in class. I was working in a Year 1 and a year 3 class last week, I introduced Fotobabble to them for the first time and you can see how easily they took to the app in this video:

You can get the app here.

Audioboo

Audioboo is not a new service or a new app, but it is a good app.  It is a great tool to use on your iOS devices and also as a web based service to capture student voice.  And for that reason it is a winner, it can be used everywhere and when you do you are in good company.  Stephen Fry uses Audioboo as does the BBC.

It is not necessary to set up an account with Audioboo to record your students’ voices.  However if you do all of your “boos,” as they are known, will be collated into one place and on the Audioboo site you can create your own channel.  If you use the same account on your iOS devices the students can simply record and upload in a matter of two or three clicks, the technology and the app become transparent, which is what makes for excellent blended elearning in a class.  I was using Audioboo in a class last week and the students were working on a range of devices with ease.

With Audioboo you can use it in the classroom in so many ways that they are almost too numerous to mention.  However I have used it as a running reading record for students and also as a resource for students to listen to their own reading and to set their own goals.  With only three minutes of recording time on the free account available to you, the students have to learn not to waffle or to pause their recordings.  It is a great tool to use to capture student thoughts, ideas and concepts and use these recordings to scaffold later work.

In short this app is what good elearning tools should be, greater than the sum of its parts, simple to use, transparent.  Oh and its free!

Audioboo

Audioboo App

Tweet

Tweetvox

This new app is designed to be the next big thing. It’s aim is to make it bigger than Twitter. Despite the hype that surrounds it, the app actually has some great potential for the classroom. Its name is Tweetvox and as it name implies, it enables a user to send audio clips via social networks.

Obviously a school will have to enable access to Twitter, Four Square or Facebook for the app to fly.  This will mean that schools will have to think through all of the potential issues associated with Twitter accounts in classrooms, but for those that have already thought this through, this app has potential, especially when combined with the new timeline feature in Facebook.  I can see lots of Drama potential in using a tool like Tweetvox in conjunction with Facebook for example.  I can also see how debates and other oral language skills can be recorded, disected and examined as a series of tweets and Facebook updates.

Perhaps best of all, for those using Twitter to communicate with other classes, for collaboration around the world.  Tweetvox offers the potential to escape the 140 character limit and open up a recordable, archiveable collaborative dialogue for students and school administration alike.

Draw Something is the latest craze in the world of iOS and Android apps.  If you have not heard about it the basic premise is that you are given three words to choose from, you then have to draw the word and share your drawing with your friends, who then have to guess the word associated with your drawing.  To help, you are given a selection of scrambled letter tiles which include all the letters needed for the word you are trying to decypher from the image plus some others.  A screen looks like the following:

Draw Something Screen Shot

The purpose of the game is to earn coins which will enable you to unlock more colours to make your drawings more varied. However this is not the point for education. I think that this game, could be used as fantastic literacy warm up activity for students of any age. Students could all be able to set challenges for each other, so in one session a student could pick up a challenge from one student, guess it and then set another challenge for someone else. All of which would take less than 5 minutes. Using this game in class is a good example of using tablet devices to do more than busy work. By setting word challenges that have to be solved as an image, children are forced to think in terms of homonyms, to think of visual puns and the recipient of the challenge has to do this too and also has the added chalenge of using the letters to decypher anangrams. All of which are higher order thinking skills and make children focus on the meanings of words, great for vocabulary building and fun to boot.

As you earn more coins you can also unlock more words which get progressively harder and each challenge is graded as a one, two or three coin challenge. I have been playing this game with four others for a couple of weeks now and in all of that time I have only found one word which may cause some slight concern for a teacher and hilarity for the students. This app is a good example of how a tablet, or iOS device can be integrated into an existing class programme and have identified learning outcomes related to the curriculum and at the same time engage students in a task they will find engaging and authentic.

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

Last week I was working in a school where they had asked me to help them integrate elearning into their class programme, specifically focussed around literacy.  I was working with two year 8 teachers who wanted to collaborate together on something over a long period of time, like a term.  As part of my usual ‘interrogation’ I learned that they had ordered a class set of “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins for their classes to read.  And that was all I needed to come up with a plan for elearning in their respective classes.  By the end of the planning, the work had stretched out to two terms but the teachers were so excited about the learning and literacy potential of the unit,  I have no doubt that it will be a success.  I can not wait to get back to the school next term to review their progress and to tweak the plans accordingly.

This whole unit is based on the BIAM challenge, which is traditionally held every November.

The unit of work unfolds like this.  The students will read the book as a class set, we have even ordered an audio copy for those that might be challenged by the level of the text and have also purchased copies to be read on the tablets in the class via the Kindle app.  Pretty standard stuff at the moment.

However what I have proposed is that the two classes then plan and write their own fan fiction extension, back story or parallel story to the Hunger Games.  They will have to collaborate between classes.  This will mean that both classes will have to story board the work carefully to ensure that all are clear on the progression of their story, the characters, their attributes, mannerisms and style of speech.  All of this will be researched out of the original as they read it in literacy activities designed by the teachers and I.  Plus, this same planning rigour will have to be applied to any new characters they want to introduce to their story, again we have planned a series of language based activities to enable the students to have a large lexicon of descriptions, vocabulary, moods and settings to populate their story . As the students flesh out their ideas they will put all of these on a collaboratvie mind map using Mind42.

Running parallel with this planning work,  they will have the chance to read and review other fanfiction work related to the Hunger Games.  Fanfiction has a massive following, the Hunger Games itself has 13 618 stories posted to the Fanfiction site for those fans who do not want to see the series end and want to keep the stories and characters alive.  This will provide an almost limitless resource bank of teen generated written content, which the teachers can use with their students to hone their own editing skills and also their feedback and feedforward skills, as the students will be encouraged to give feedback to other fans on the site about the work they read.

To ensure that the students collaborate, their fanfiction variant of The Hunger Games will be made up of 10 chapters, with five groups in each class being responsible for writing one chapter.   The twist is that one class will write the even numbered chapters and the other class writing the odd numbered chapters.  Therefore, to ensure that there is an overall consistency the students will have to collaborate with each of the groups writing the preceding and following chapters to ensure consistency of style and plot.  I have even suggested that for those less enthused by the writing of this fanfiction genre, these students could create their own graphic novel, using tools such as Comic Life or ToonDoo.

I have also proposed that the teachers use the fanfiction site as a space for the students to launch their draft and completed work, in order that they get feedback and comments from a genuine audience that will know the work they are studying inside out.  They will have a authentic audience  for their work and the feedback will help them to improve the work as they write it.

Finaly when the book is complete, we have planned a J K Rowling style public reading of the first chapter, and not only that the completed book will be self published to the Kindle store where anyone will be able to download and read it for free.  Our students will become published authors.

Watch this space!

I have been working with Tanya at St Joseph’s today.  Most of the day has been focused around integration of iPads into the curriculum.  Consuming content is easy on an iPad, and there are a plethora of paid and free apps that enable you to do just that, passively consume content or never get past enrichment exercises.  The trick with the closed eco system of the iPad is to find quick and easy ways for students to create content that demonstrates their understanding and to post this work to a public space rapidly.  In all of my research with apps for the iPad this is my focus, can students create content easily and how easy is it then for them to share that learning on a wiki, blog, LMS or website of their choice.

Today I worked with some of Tanya’s class to show them the ShowMe app, a free screen capture and annotation app that enables students to write and speak their thoughts and ideas on screen.  We captured a block of text from a book in the library and then had them identify the text features on the screen.  The app is easy to use and within seconds the students were proficient at the tool and were demonstrating their learning.  Now Tanya has a record of what each student knows and this work has now been embedded into their wiki page.  The ShowMe site is a whole community of teachers and you can follow the videos of others, so if you want to scaffold students through concepts that they find tricky there are lots of videos up there for you to choose from and to passively consume.  However it is better to be the ones creating the content in my opinion and sharing it with the wider ShowMe community.  Below is a video I took of the students at work.