Reflections after the first year of an 1:1 iPad Initiative

This past summer I spent alot of time reflecting on the first year of our middle school 1:1 ipad program. What went right and what went wrong was subjective and answers differed across the various stakeholders in our school community. Students had the most positive things to say about the program. I mean, we did give them their own an iPad! Most students wouldn’t normally have one of their own and they got one “for free” from their school so their superficial feelings towards the program was positive. However, some reflective students did have meaningful opinions about the program one way or another. Some embraced the organizational options that iPads gave them and others enjoyed the creative freedoms they were allowed to explore using ipad tools like iMovie and ScrapPad. A minority of students just couldn’t manage this new skill in the classroom.

Teachers were the in-between group. Those that valued technology in the classroom embraced it, learned from it and tried to used it to elevate the learning. Those teachers used it well in the area of student-teacher and student-student collaboration and communication. One major challenge was classroom behavior management. This was a huge added strain in the classroom and was never really mastered.

The majority of parents were against the whole ipad program. Saying it was a waste of time, upset when their child shattered their ipad screen and they had to get it replaced and were overall annoyed with it. They did not fully understand the goal of the program and how it is not an end result but a means to an overall goal of elevating student learning in our middle school.  As a result, it made the administration very anxious about how we were doing and now, as our first year begins, we are taking precautionary measures to ensure that we have learned from our year-long experience. As we begin this tightrope walk back into our iPad program, all of our school community stakeholders can see that we are missing something without these mobile devices in our students hands and that we still have a need to pursue becoming a 21st century school.

I have learned several key points after experiencing our first year of a 1:1 ipad implementation. The first one is patience. Having patience with all 4 major stakeholders is key. Patience with our administrators to get on board, with our students and parents to be able to understand the goals of the program and with our teachers who are apprehensive about altering the way they teach. Not everyone is tech savvy and even those who are in their personal or business world, may not understand it’s place in education. You need to be patient while giving them as much information as they need to get on board. This leads me to my next area of improvement, communication. Communication with the entire school community is critical. What are we doing, why we are doing it and how are we doing are essential questions to answer over and over again. In particular, to our parent body who is the most cynical of the bunch. They do not see what our students and educators see is going on in the classroom. They are missing out on the amazing and positive learning outcomes achieved from using ipad tools. It is our job to communicate it to them on a regular basis. Because, let’s face it, it doesn't matter how old a child is, when you as them “What did you do in school today?” the answer is usually, “not much” or “same old thing.” They are not getting information from their students and it is our job to share the classroom experiences so that any of their negative thoughts can be balanced with some positive aspects as well.

Finally, I learned something that as adults, we don’t often know how to do well, learn to fail. After reading  Aran Levasseur’s 5 Lessons for 1:1 Integration on Common Sense Media, I have come to the realization that our first year was a success!!! “All scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs understand that failure is part of creativity.  If you’re not willing to fail then you severely limit your creative capacity.  When integrating a 1:1 program there will be failures. Yet, for the most part, schools have an aversion to failure. Learning to fail, and how to recover and adapt, is an essential skill if you hope to be resilient teacher, student, or school.”

So as an educator and proponent of education technology, I embrace any and all “failures” and look forward to Year 2 of our 1:1 iPad implementation with more experience, a carefully thought out plan and a positive attitude.

Easy Summer Professional Development using Social Networking

It’s summer! We are all exhausted and perhaps we have already begun enjoying the carefree days that summer brings. Some of us have plans to travel with family and friends. Others may relish in the fact of staying home and re-organizing a room here, a room there and maybe even organizing other aspects of their life that require time and reflection. Yes, summer brings us time that we have already accounted for and as we all know too well, it will fly by before we know it!

As educators, we all know that education is an ever-changing field and we must do everything we can to stay on top of it. Ignoring it for 2-3 months will not help anyone, particularly our students. Professional development may be part of our intended summer plans but do we have the energy to go and sit in a classroom or start an online course that lasts the whole summer? Do we have the financial ability and flexibility to fly out to an educational conference over the summer? How can we keep up with trends, updated curriculum, innovating lesson plans, educational technology etc. without having to be tied down and losing our much needed summer vacation? The key is using social networking for your professional development. It’s quick, easy and mobile. You can use it to learn, reflect and share at your leisure and in the process expand your personal learning network and meet educators with similar interests and positions. And of course, all of these social networking options are iPad apps so you can PD wherever you go this summer! Here are some of my favorite and easy ways I try to learn from other educators and experts in education.

Pinterest

A content sharing service that allows members to "pin" images, videos and other objects to their pinboard. It’s similar to other social networking sites but it;s very visual and easy to follow.

Summer Professional Development Pins

iPad Apps for the Classroom Boards

Educational Technology Boards

Twitter

Instantly connect to what's most important to you. Follow your friends and experts. Connect with a group of people with similar professional interests with a twitter hashtag. You will notice that some have specific “meeting” times to discuss interesting topics and trends.

Here are some popular education hashtags on Twitter:

#jedchat – Jewish Education

#edchat – General Education

#ipadchat - iPads in Education

#edtech – Technology in Education

Check out a thorough list from November Learning and Edudemics 2012 List Of Educational Twitter Hashtags.

Here is a Twitter Guide for Educators to help you get started.

Blogs

Blogs are a great way to increase your personal learning network by reading other educator blogs and reflections. Some blogs are a part of a collection of many blogs in one field. For example, Edutopia is a K-12 Educators blog site which offers a great Summer Professional Development Blog Series. Adam Bellow’s EduTecher is the complete reference and resource for educational technology web tools. Kathy Schrock’s Blog is a helpful place for in classroom technology ideas. Don’t forget Richard Byrne’s Free Technology for Teachers and Sylvia Tolisano’s Langwitches blog.

Try writing your own blog this summer! You can start out with your family vacation and them get comfortable enough to move to a professional blog. Try Google’s Blogger app!  

Another easy way to increase your professional development this summer is to check out any virtual conferences and webinars online from the comfort of your own home. Any way you do it, learn something new, get excited about it, share with your fellow educators and try it in your classroom this fall!!

How do I use iPads to flip my classroom?

Have you always wanted to try flipping your classroom? The flipped classroom phenomena means removing some of the lecture-based lessons from your classroom and giving students the ability to learn that content in their own time at their own pace. Advantages to flipping your classroom includes eliminating the guesswork of whether or not your students understood the information you delivered. In addition, you have an opportunity to create an enhanced differentiated learning environment and attend to the specific needs of most of your students during face-to-face class time. This is sometimes done through recording video-based lectures either live or prior to delivery.

There are several online web tools that can be used to record lessons or screencasting your computer desktop to deliver content information to your students through digital formats.These include, TechSmith’s Jing, Screencast-o-matic and Youtube. Youtube even has the Youtube Annotations feature now that allows you to add interactive commentary to your videos.

iPad apps have jumped on the flipped classroom bandwagon with offering simple and easy to use recording, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard apps available for free or minimal cost. Many apps like Explain Everything, Show Me, and Screen Chomp lets you annotate, animate, and narrate explanations and presentations. You can create dynamic interactive lessons, activities, assessments, and tutorials using the ipad as an interactive whiteboard and record your voice and movements on the screen as you go. They also have the capability to upload your lessons to their respective web sites building a gallery of lessons developed and shared by teachers. Educreations has a similar concept but also offers animation capabilities to your illustrations which make for an amazing learning experience. Doodlecast Pro saves videos to the camera roll making it easy to import them into popular video editors or presentation tools such as iMovie, Keynote, or iBooks Author. One of the highlights of Knowmia Teach is the option to use your iPad’s camera to record yourself while drawing on the whiteboard. You will appear in the corner of the screen so that your students can see you while you’re talking them through the lesson. Students can use Ask3 to ask questions about the video, mark the video with drawing tools, and create their own audio comments about the video.

In addition to specific apps available to record lessons and facilitate flipping your classroom, TED ed is committed to creating “lessons worth sharing”. It’s an extension of TED’s mission of spreading great ideas and encouraging “flip teaching.” Because every learners' needs are different, TED-Ed videos come equipped with optional supplementary materials. When you "flip" a video you get to decide which of those materials you keep, and whether to create your own. This will allow you to relate the resulting lesson to your class, to an individual learner, or to a wider group.

You can also use Itunes U to develop and store a series of recordings and/or podcasts associated with your classroom or subject matter eventually authoring your own course. iTunes U gives educators an easy way to design complete courses with audio, video, and other content and distribute them through the free iTunes U app. In addition, iTunes U integrates with iBooks and other apps to make it easy for students to keep up with your course. Documents, notes, highlights, and bookmarks taken in iBooks are consolidated for easy reviewing in the iTunes U app along with the course recordings.

There are so many available resources to begin flipping your classroom, try one and see what your students think? You may even want to test it out on your colleagues first as a professional development activity. You should stay focused but have fun with it and you may find that it will enhance your students overall learning experience.

Tachlis! How do I use the iPads to engage students and assess them?

Inevitably, we need to assess our students to make sure that they are reaching our learning objectives and improving achievement! Teachers are spending more time than ever before testing students, but testing alone does nothing to improve teaching or learning. It's the use of analyzed test data that improves teaching and enhances student achievement. Assessment has always been an arduous task because teachers need to spend many hours creating, grading, and analyzing assessment results. Thankfully, there is improvement in this area with the increasing use of web tools and mobile devices in the classrooms. These tools allow teachers to create assessments in a shorter period of time and create more of them for valuable results. Instant assessment results provide valuable insight to both the teacher and student. In general. assessments best suited to guide improvements in student learning are the quizzes, tests, writing assignments, and other assessments that teachers administer on a regular basis in their classrooms. Teachers trust the results from these assessments because of their direct relation to classroom instructional goals. With the onset of online tools and apps, results are immediate and easy to analyze at the individual student level. Teachers can also use informative assessment to make instructional and curricular changes intended to yield immediate benefits to students.

Basically, the concept of a pop quiz has evolved and has become a more interactive and informative activity with the use of iPad apps like Socrative and Nearpod. In addition, using app created assessments has made entry and exit “quizzes” both possible and easy to use. The traditional “let’s review what we did yesterday” only works for some students. We have all seen the same classroom scene. The eager to please students in the front row raise their hands and the students that are not so sure of themselves try to avoid the teachers eyes. Only a couple of students raise their hands to answer just a couple of questions which is not enough to make an overall class generalization. The teacher does not get a sense if every student in the class understood the lesson delivered yesterday or 20 minutes ago. Creating quick quizzes on an ipad gives the teacher the ability to assess the entire class and each individual student. Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers by engaging their classrooms with a series of educational exercises and games. Teachers set up their own accounts and construct a series of questions they would like the students to answer. These can be quick quizzes, multiple choice practice, short answers, or exit tickets. The teacher can receive instant feedback by watching live results or downloading a detailed report. Nearpod allows teachers to use an iPad to manage the content on their students iPad participate in assessment and collaboration activities. Teachers can create presentations with interactive features such as quizzes, videos, polls, and drawing tools. They share content with their students and manage the flow of the lecture and later on access post-session data and obtain detailed activity reports that will help them gauge each students understanding on the lesson.

In addition, there are various degrees of assessment presentations from answering multiple choice questions to writing essays. Social networking options like Edmodo offer several types of  assessment options including the most recent assessment option of commenting and microblogging. Edmodo is a safe and secure social networking site developed expressly for educational use that has a similar look to Facebook. In Edmodo’s environment, teachers and students can collaborate, share content, and use educational apps to augment in-classroom learning. These powerful capabilities enable teachers to personalize learning for every student. Current uses of Edmodo include posting assignments, creating polls for student responses, embedding video clips, create learning groups, post a quiz for students to take, and create a calendar of events and assignments. Students can also turn in assignments or upload assignments for their teachers to view and grade. Teachers can annotate the assignments directly in Edmodo to provide instant feedback. It’s a great tool for teachers to track student comprehension and understanding of concepts.

Google Forms are also an easy way for teachers to give full on exams to their students with supporting tools like Flubaroo to make grading easier. They can be used as a survey tool where teachers can draft questions whose answers can be collated and analyzed. Question types are text, paragraph text, multiple choice, checkboxes, choose from a list, scale and grid. This makes pre-testing and post-testing students easy and available to teachers so that they know exactly what their students know at the beginning and end of a lesson.

Finally, using iPad apps we now have the ability to assess behavior which is a huge impact on student learning and meaningful classroom time. ClassDojo is a behavior management tool where students can self-assess themselves in addition to the teacher assessing them. This offers everyone in the class real-time feedback and can be effective in improving and changing behavior over a period of time.

Hopefully our assessment strategies are thought through and used to effectively improve student learning outcomes. Despite the importance of assessments in education today, few teachers receive much formal training in assessment design or analysis. This has been a long struggle with educators and school administrators over the years and there is constant conversations and improvements in the area of education. We must focus on helping teachers change the way they use assessment results, improve the quality of their classroom assessments, and align their assessments with valued learning goals. Apps have the ability to assist teachers and students on this journey towards improvement as well as offering a simple way to promote 21st century learning.  When teachers' classroom assessments become an integral part of the instructional process and a central ingredient in their efforts to help students learn, the benefits of assessment for both students and teachers will be boundless.

Tachlis! How do I use the iPads to engage students in writing activities?

You have a learning objective for a specific topic, unit, chapter etc. You always had one even before the iPads entered your classroom or even your mind. Your learning objective has not changed. What is changing is the way your students will learn and how you engage them to get the results and objectives that you want.

These iPad project ideas will focus on writing and publishing projects. Please note that you do not need to limit these project ideas to General studies. Most of these apps and project ideas can be implemented in a Hebrew or Judaic studies classroom. Let’s explore.

In general, your learning objectives may require your students to demonstrate writing and communication skills by researching material, collaborating and communicating with their peers, and documenting their sources. In traditional classrooms this may be done with a standard research project and research paper or book report assignment. Maybe even a Powerpoint presentation as an individual or group. In a 21st century classroom, objectives may include incorporating imagery and sound with written elements, citing online resources or interactive web sites, and possibly audio and video details.

Here are some examples to get you started on using iPad apps to engage and stimulate your students' learning.

Blogs
Apps examples - Blogger, Blogsy, TypePad
Develop your students writing and communication skills through posts and commenting on a topic of your choice. Insist that your students comment on at least one of their peer’s comments. You would be able to provide students a creative outlet through journaling and give those quiet students a voice they never had before. You can take blogs one step further and have them write posts as if they are characters in a novel your class is reading or historical figure. Blogs can also be used collaborate with classrooms from all over the world to discuss similar interests and international topics.

Movies
Apps examples - iMovie, Animoto
Have your students create 1-2 minute video trailers to advertise a book that they read. Like with movie trailers, these videos need to draw the audience into the plot, and introduce characters and setting, but not give away the ending. They can also get into character here as well and create a newscast or interview on a famous person or historical event. You can create a moving video but a photo video from many different resources can also culminate in a powerful project. This may be a way in which students with artistic talents can shine if they are able to create their own digital images.

PostersApp examples - ScrapPad, Glogster, Skitch
Students can create a movie-style poster to advertise their book. Poster elements would include the title, author, a representative image, a “hook” to get others to want to read the book, a student review or quotation of a review which could in character or from a peer. The class can each create a poster of a US state or different country and create a whole “book” with everyones “page.” Other ideas can include a parsha scrapbook, or pages for each part of the Seder to culminate into a class Haggadah. Web tools like FlipSnack can be used to create the book.

Online Presentations

App examples - Keynote, SlideRocket, SlideShark, Prezi

Presentations are an oldie but goodie way to show a final product of research and collaboration.

The presentations are in the cloud so it works well in groups. No more excuses about not be able to get together with your partner because they can do it all online!

Publishing

App examples - Strip Designer, Scribble Press, BookCreator

Instead of the standard book reports, have your students create cartoons. The dialogue should be creative and relevant and could take a story to a whole new level. You can also empower your students to be published authors. Have then write the next chapter in a book, their own creative writing story, a biography or autobiography about a relative. They can create informative and interactive iBooks for their classmates, teachers, and family members.

As you can see, you can use simple apps to engage your students in a lesson and in a project. You can use the iPad as a tools to promote collaboration, interactivity, publishing and digital citizens without separating the class from the learning objectives. As they say, “when in Rome.” I think that we are already there, might as well enjoy the sites and be in the pictures!

Managing your iPad Classroom

So your school came into a large donation or grant and handed a 12 year old a $400 toy with the hope that this academic year will be one of great achievement, enhanced learning and collaboration with their peers. Uh oh. What did we do? Middle school students lose things all the time, they are not the most careful of age groups and they LOVE access to the Internet! It wasn’t that easy before. How am I supposed to manage them in the classroom now?

One of the scariest things about new technology is putting it in the hands of students. My fellow educators and I have shared some tips and tricks over the last year to help each other integrate iPads into the classroom and basic strategies help manage student behavior when using online tools. Here are some that may help you in your journey using iPads in your classroom:

1- Set expectations - Classroom management challenges can easily be overcome by setting clear and simple guidelines and expectations for iPad use. Remind your students of the school’s iPad and Internet use policies that both the students and their parents agreed to at the beginning of the year. Remind them that they are using a school-issued iPad for academic purposes only and it should not be used to play games or shop online. Remember that the best lever available to you is simply taking the iPad away from them. Tell your students how you would like them to behave during iPad time and that there will be “iPad time” and “no iPad time” during class. Perhaps you want them to have your full attention for 15 minutes at the beginning of every class before they even take out their iPads. Communicate your expectations about iPad use at the beginning of every task.

2- Set a routine - If you ask your students to get their iPads at the beginning of class and leave them face down on their desks, it will direct the students’ attention away from the iPads and on you during instructional time. In addition, when it is time to use the iPads, they should be placed in a slightly elevated position or flat so that you can see what the students are doing on the iPad at all times. Do not let students use the iPad in their lap where the desk/table can block your view. You can also set up a reward system based on how long the students take to set up their iPads.

3- Differentiate - Our students differ in their style of learning and their ability to perform a task. They range from visual learners to audio or verbal while others are readers and writers. When you ask your students to perform research on a topic and create a presentation, you may want to give them options so that you can avoid distraction and disengagement from the task at hand. For example, you can offer an essay option using the Pages app but a presentation option using ShowMe or Educreations as well as a more visual scrapbook type assignment using ScrapPad. The end result will be the same and by using the iPad you will have differentiated the learning and engaged the maximum number of students.

4- Get up and move! - Currently, teachers are very limited in being able to “see” their students’ iPad screens from their desktop computer or from their own iPad. The technology is still not available. So the only way to be able to see your students’ screen is to really just take a look. Circulating around the classroom is your best bet in order to give your students the signal that you are fully aware of what they are doing on the iPads. Arrange your classroom so that you're able to see all iPad screens easily. If your students are facing the front of the class, stand behind them. If they are in a circle, just do a walk through. You want to send them a message but also make sure that they are on task and keeping up. Some apps like Nearpod can create an environment where your students login to the app, only work in that environment and you are alerted when the student “left the room”

5- Test your apps and sites ahead of time - Make sure your school isn't filtering a resource you need (and try to do it enough in advance that your tech team can unblock something you need). Make sure the student iPads have required apps installed and updated so that the features you need work properly. Technology does let us down sometimes. The most important thing is: don’t panic in front of students and relax, show them that you control the technology, not the other way around.

6- Steps for technical issues - Define procedures for when technical issues arise in the classroom. Should students ask peers or you for help? Should they be sent to tech support? You could assign a couple of iPad student “experts” in your class to be your go to team so that you can continue with your instruction.
I came across the iTunes U course Classroom Management with iPads by the Palm Springs Unified School District that also gave me some more ideas and suggestions on class setup and behavior management apps like ClassDojo and PickMe.
In order to maintain order in your classroom when every one of your students has access to the outside world at their fingertips, you should always remember that you are the adult in control. In the beginning, constant reminders and communication needs to be given to your students about the consequences to poor classroom behavior as it relates to the iPad. Whether it’s the iPad taken away, loss of privileges, communication to parents or detention, the results must be enforced and made clear to your students. Over time, very few students will want to have their iPad taken away from them. Some may even prefer detention over that! You and your band of educators will have to stick together and enforce the rules so that it maintains consistency throughout the students day.
Although technology is often one of the best tools we have for instruction, it isn't the only one and does not necessarily need to be used for every lesson. Once classroom expectations and consequences are set and followed, managing iPads in your classroom will become second nature.

Got iPads? Where to start?

So you finally convinced someone at your school that a sure fire way to move forward and take your school into the 21st century is to get iPads (or any mobile device for that matter) into your classrooms. Now what? With over 300,000 iPad apps alone, where do you start?

Well, we started with the basics...the very basics. What are basic skills that we expect our middle school students to have? We may have many answers but I narrowed them down to three areas that reflect crucial student organizational skills. First, we expect them to take notes in our class; second, they should to do their homework in a timely fashion; and, third, we expect them to study for tests or complete final projects so that we can assess their mastery of the subject matter. Pretty basic, right?

This is the process that we want our students to follow so that teaching can be focused on student learning and achievement and maybe even some fun. If we are able to keep our students organized with their materials, then their mind can be clear and open to critical thinking and open discussion. The use of mobile devices in the classroom has been a hot topic in the last 10 years for many reasons which include alternative methods to differentiated instruction, enhanced creativity in the classroom and easy access to information on the Internet. But at some point you have to hold back our obsession with apps and start at the beginning.

So we started with the basics. The first step was to give each of our students a Gmail account through our school domain. From there, our students have access to all Google Educational Apps that can help them learn and collaborate which include Google Drive, Sites, Youtube, and my all time favorite, the Google calendar! We introduced the Google calendar to the students as a way to record homework assignments, project due dates and test dates. The iPad calendar app as well as the mail app were linked to their school Gmail account. I will admit that the iHomework student planner app is far superior to the the calendar app for recording school and student tasks but because of our initial pilot program, where our students left their iPads in school for several months, the Google calendar was the easiest choice for it’s portability, and no extra login requirements.

The next app introduced was Notability, a note taking tool. It  lets you take notes via typing, handwriting, or audio and all three methods can be integrated into one note. You can easily switch between the different types of note taking methods. You can insert many forms of media into your notes in addition to being able to annotate PDF files. This part was a key factor in transforming the classroom to becoming more paperless because students are able to annotate the worksheets sent to them electronically by their teacher. One of the main features in my opinion of this app is its seamless process for synchronizing with a multitude of cloud storage solutions. Once again, because we started off with a pilot period where our students had to leave their iPads in school and be able to access their notes at home, we needed to find just the right storage solution. Ultimately, Dropbox proved to be an amazing storage and backup solution for our students and teachers. They are able to create folders, into subject categories and even subfolders for further organization. The most amazing feature is that Notabily notes can be automatically synced to dropbox and all Notability folders can be backed up there so that it is seamless and instantaneous to the user. That means, no more “ I lost my notes.” In addition, files can be easily shared between students and teachers for collaboration purposes. A bonus to all of this the web tool DROPitTOme which offers a secure way for teachers to receive files from students so that answers cannot be seen. What a fantastic way to have students hand in assignments and even tests!

Just using these three simple apps has totally transformed the organizational process of our middle school students. Students write better notes, lose fewer documents and collaborate on more documentation with fellow students and teachers. This, in turn, results in better study skills for the students. Obviously, we have expanded beyond these three apps in our classroom but with the overwhelming number of apps, tools, and ways to integrate iPads into the classroom, these three were a great way to start our program and get our students used to this new learning environment.