TCEA Day 2
February 2nd 2016
iPad Academy
My Schedule
-AR You Ready
-Adapting Toward Independence: iPad Technology for Special Needs Students
-The Future of iOS in the Classroom
-iPad Workflow and Formative Assessment
-Elementary Apps
Opening Keynote: Engaging the Next Generation of Learners
Fredy Padovan is Dean of Innovation and Technology at Immaculata-La Salle High School in Miami, Florida. Fredy began working on a 1:1 iPad implementation model, iLearn@ILS, over four years ago. Fredy is the recipient of the National Catholic Education Association’s Education Excellence award, an Apple Distinguished Educator. He is currently working on his doctorate with a focus on Global Education Leadership.
Let me start by saying that while this keynote was great, the presentation was riddled with technical problems. No the irony was not lost on me that there were tech problems at a tech convention. BUT I DIGRESS...If we are to engage the next generation of learners we need to be trained on the education context of technology and its appropriate uses in the classroom. One way we can promote this agenda is to create a technology focus statement for our campus. I think this something we should address at the beginning of the next school year (or before, i'm down).
There are three worlds for our students. There is the real world, the virtual world, and the school world and we need to use technology to our advantage to connect all of them. We need to move away from the novelty of having these great tools and move to the sophistication of time and place. We can do this by creating next generation learning environments where we design a classroom that maximizes iPad use. The rooms that the speaker showed were incredible. What his campus has done to the rooms was create a space that encourages moving around and is dynamic. Not only did this facilitate engaged and self motivated learners, it was also providing the minimal amount of exercise needed to get the blood flowing to the kids brains.
Students at his campus worked in teams to experience and explore relevant problems with permission to FAIL. Which reminds me, that is something that the opening keynote yesterday talked about. We need to let students know that it is okay to fail. The speaker had a good acronym for it. FAIL should stand for First Attempt In Learning. Back to this keynote though and how they relate. We need to create conditions for invention and NOT teach with pre-made learning habits, other wise we are not creating problem solvers! Challenge based learning allows the brain to relate to what is being taught.
One of the apps his campus uses is Explain Everything Interactive White Board where the students can make and share notes in a presentation format. They also created notes using Notability where they made digital comics. This is actually something I did growing up and in college to take notes. Fun little vignettes that turned what was being taught into stories. Math Space was very impressive. This allows students to hand write their problems and have those problems turned into digital text. It will then check their work and identify where they went wrong in their problem solving. This was a neat piece of tech for sure.
So at about this time the technical issues were giving me a headache and the keynote started late because of said issues. So in order to make it to my next session I left early.
AR You Ready?
This kind of stuff makes Mr. Porter want to cry. Not tears of sadness but tears of unabashed joy. This is no longer science fiction. This is real. Come talk to me some time about Augmented Reality, and I will gladly converse with you about it and its coming explosion into every aspect of your life. Then we can start talking about Virtual Reality and you will see me talk to you like an enthused maniac. I'm serious, this is stuff that will change lives not just in schools and entertainment but EVERYTHING. Mark my words, VR and AR are going to be huge. Let me reel it in though because just typing about it is getting me all sorts of worked up. I'm actually camping out for the VR session on Thursday...
This session had on display several readily available AR apps. For those that don't know Augmented Reality uses devices like tablets, smart phones, Google Glass, and the upcoming Microsoft Hololens to display graphics and information to you as you look at the world around you with your device. So imagine if you will, you have moved into a new house. There is a corner that you need to furnish. You go onto IKEA's website and really like the way this shelf looks. You print out what looks like a QR code from that shelf's page. You go over to the empty corner and place the piece of paper on the floor. You take a step back and get out your phone and load an AR app. When you look at your phone you see the room as if you were using the built in camera. As soon as you focus on that paper though, a 3D model of that good looking shelf pops up. As long as you keep aiming that camera at the area, you can walk around the shelf. You can look at from all sides. You can open the drawers. You get a real sense of how this piece of furniture looks in that space. This is AR. You are augmenting your reality.
How can you use this in education? Well, you are bridging the digital world with the physical world. This has so many implications for education. You are literally being engaged because you are actually interacting with the material.
Here are some of the apps that were on display...
-DAQRI allows you to embed animations and videos into your physical world. So for a paper assignment you could show an animation on how to best complete the problem when the student aims the AR device at the work sheet.
-Magic Plan uses AR to scan a room by looking at the corners and placing pinpoints. It then calculates the dimensions and creates a blue print of the room.
-Magic Measure uses AR to measure real world objects and will calculate the length, width, and height of the object.
-Space Craft 3D allows you to grab and manipulate space craft including the individual compartments and mechanics.
-Augmenter this is an app that provides questioning and labels for 3D models. An example that was shown was a mouth. The mouth floated in front of the user and displayed the names for the different types of teeth. You could then physically pull out the teeth individually to look at the whole tooth.
-Quiver Edu is a series of coloring books. When you finish, you scan the page and an animated 3D model is created using the colors that you used! Some of the examples shown were a political map that when scanned turned into a rotating globe that highlighted the nation when interacted with. Another was a volcano that could be examined from all angles. They even did a cross section so you could see the magma chambers.
-Google Translate has an AR function built into the software that will translate text on the fly and display it in real time. Don't know a printed Spanish word? Look at the word through the app and it will change into English in front of your face. The implications for ESL students ARE AMAZING. Absolutely groundbreaking. SERIOUSLY.
I am so excited about this stuff. I have been following AR and VR development since the mid 90's and to finally see it all coming out makes me giddy. 2016 will be the year for AR and VR no doubt. PLEASE check out the presentation link below and EMBRACE IT!
Adapting Toward Independence: iPad Technology for Special Needs Students
The major theme during this session was about putting special needs students in the workflow process. Allowing them to work independently to assist with the day to day workflow helped them create positive stigmas. Simple apps like timers, calendars, and schedules provide structure and prompting. The idea again is to create independence and have a fading support staff.
Video modeling provides live instruction in a manner that supports visual learners on how to do specific tasks. Video modeling generalizes other situations and self directed use allows students to teach themselves new skills. Video modeling supports retention of tasks and increases independent task completions and transition. The model that the speaker used on his campus was to first create a sample task analysis. They would then have the special needs student record it on their iPad. The student would then watch the video twice and have them imitate what they had witnessed. They then took it a step further by using a video scheduler app. This creates a checklist of their videos and allows the student to model the expected behavior. They could then either repeat the behavior or check it off their objectives once they successfully accomplished the task.
ibackflip is a messenger bag that acts as an iPad case that the student can flip from their back to their front and allows the student to have quick access to their device. VERY COOL. This something that would also be great for the teachers that heavily utilize an iPad in the classroom.
Using audio queuing apps keeps workers on task, reduces time required for job coaching, and improves independent task completion. So essentially you setup audio ques in conjunction with a timer that sends a reminder to the student of what they need to have accomplished. The speaker said this is also a great way to signal to the teacher to do their required documentation.
Bookshare.org is a website paid for by the dept of education where you can get the text from ANY BOOK for free. You can then manipulate the font to provide better readability. To use the service, the teacher or administrator has to provide proof that the student has a print disability. Voice Dream is an e-book reader that integrates with bookshare.org. This allows you to download the books from Bookshare and have them read out loud to the student.
The Crack the Book series are interactive Tech Books that takes the content in a text book and adapts it to the student's reading level. It’s the exact same content but adapts in real time to the students needs. These books also include embedded videos. This is a really impressive app.
Conversation Simulator is a great way to introduce social skills. First it provides a social situation that can be typed in or use the recorded voice of a teacher or another student. Then the student creates a list of appropriate responses that uses the student's recorded voice. This process goes back and forth and creates a conversation that models appropriate conversation behaviors.
Website: http://Tinyurl.com/tceapalmer
The Future of iOS in the Classroom
This presentation was put on by Apple themselves and was a preview of the new school-centric iOS 9.3 update. This is some very exciting stuff and alleviates many of the issues I know we have all been dealing with when integrating iPads into our classrooms. This all starts with the Apple School Manager. This creates a cross device classroom management tool set.
First off is the Shared iPad for Students function. This doesn’t really apply to our district since we are 1:1 but could be a benefit to teacher iPads. It will allow the students to login individually into a single iPad in the same way you can have multiple accounts on a single PC. This will all be tied into the new Managed Apple ID and will sync to iCloud. This ID can follow students from school to school and even district to district.
The Classroom App for iPad is a tool to keep students on task. You will be able to lock students to a specific app and finally we can MONITOR WHAT THEY ARE DOING! You can assign specific and discrete tasks to individual students or you can all work on the same thing together. You can launch and lock apps with remote control and see what your students see with screen view. You can also share student work on the big screen as well as reset forgotten passwords right in the classroom.
They are also going to include the ability to create and distribute iTunes U courses and be able to white list or black list apps. Now you can have a test on the iPad and be able to disable EVERYTHING else in use (except settings).
iPad Workflow and Formative Assessment
Sometimes we assess to late and the we don’t give time for students to stew on what they have been taught. Technology allows us to provide students with immediate feedback. So how can we as instructors leverage technology to allow for that feedback and allow students to assess themselves. This session was all about ways to use the iPad to create and implement assessments to accomplish that. Some of these we are familiar with. I know many of us use Kahoot, Quizziz, and Quizlet. Here are some ones that you might not be familiar with.
Pollev.com can be used to create word clouds. What you do is have the students give you one word (set of words or sentence) that describes what you have covered or what they think you will cover. You can check and see what keywords students are associating with the lesson and then be able to see what they have been learning or understand. It then allows the students to vote what they think the best responses were. You can then view the results and discuss their responses and why they chose what they did. This site also allows you to embed a picture that they can plot points on. The examples he gave where a coordinate grid and a map of Texas. These are pushed out to the class and it polls where they placed the points. All of this can be embedded in a presentation. So in the middle of a power point you can assess on the fly!
ThatQuiz.org makes little quizzes for your students or you can use existing ones. It has a huge database of math, vocabulary, science, and geography assessments though it is mostly a mathematics solution.
Socrative allows for on the fly questioning with no prep. So you can use it at the end of a lesson as closer and have it adapted to your classroom so you can target their weaknesses. This is a great way to check for understanding before they go home with their homework.
The Classkick App provides immediate feedback and allows you to view your student's work in real time, all at the same time. You can see it all in a thumbnail view and then zoom in to see individual work. You can then write on the assignment as they are working on it, and make notes for them as well as show corrections. You can also use stamps to reward good work in real time.
The app Nearpod allows you to create a presentation or virtual field trip. While you are presenting the lesson and they are experiencing the lesson you can stop, then poll them. You can then address the answers and check for understanding. They can also take screenshots and share them as answers. If you see one that you like, you can share it with all of the participating devices.
Elementary Apps
This session was really great but went at such a fast pace I couldn't keep up with my notes. So I just embraced it and messed around with the apps he was demonstrating. He began the session with a disclaimer that he would be moving fast so he provided all the apps used in an iTunes U course. PLEASE CHECK IT OUT! I know you will come away with at least one new app.
iTunes U course enroll code: K5X-Q52-RM6
Closing and Door Prizes
I didn't win a door prize.....