Quick Tips for Managing Student iPads in the Classroom

If you have ever hesitated to use iPads in the classroom because you have feared that it would become a classroom management nightmare, then I have a few hints and tricks to enable you to manage and control the content that students are accessing in the classroom.  

NearPod- this free app allows the teacher to control the content that appears on student devices.  Teachers sign up for a free account, create presentations using a variety of content from the web, and have students sign into a student account and enter a PIN to view the teachers created presentation.  There is a video preview of this app available here. 

Guided Access- In the Apple iOS software, the option to lock a student into an app is as easy as activating guided access.  Go into Settings>General>Accessibility and under Learning, turn on Guided Access.  You will be prompted to enter a passcode, which you should keep to yourself.  When you would like to have students work in one specific app for a particular amount of time, triple click the home screen button and select START at the top right hand side of the window that appears.  You will see a notification that Guided Access has been enabled.  Students will not be able to exit the application, unless they have the passcode. You can end Guided Access by triple clicking the home screen button and selecting END.  

Air Drop- With an iPad 4, a WIFI connection, and the latest edition of the iOS7 software, you can push content such as photos or webpages to students.  To activate AirDrop, swipe from the bottom of your device's screen until the control panel appears.  Here, you can tap on AirDrop, select the people to whom you would like to be discoverable, and then decide what you would like to share with students.  In apps that you see the option to share, you can then determine the people you would like to push the content out to based on the name of the device.  This could include photos in your photo app, webpages you have searched out in Safari, or other apps that have the following logo:

Apps to Explore the Human Body

Learning all the different body parts and the functions of the human body systems is essential knowledge for all students.  As our Manitoba Curriculum covers aspects of the human body in both Science, Phys. Ed. and Health courses, presenting this content in a visual and interactive way makes it more engaging for students.   Here are a few of my favourite human anatomy apps:

My Incredible Body (Free for today! Regularly $2.99)
Allows the user to view 3D perspectives of the different human body systems.  It is free today in the app store, down from $2.99.

Human Body by Tiny Bop ($2.99)
Allows students to interact with the human body systems.  You can layer the muscular system over the digestive system and view respiration in action as the diaphragm pushes air out of the lungs.  This could be used as a student station in science as it actually allows the teacher to audio record content about the different parts of the body for students to play while exploring the different systems. This one has appeared in Apps Gone Free, but is regularly priced at $2.99.

Build-A-Body by Sponge Labs (Free)
This app allows the user to build 6 different human body systems.  It will not allow the student to add organs in the incorrect spot or order, the systems need to be build anatomically correct in order to move onto the next system.  This app is available for free in the App store.

Powers of Minus Ten- Bone (Free)
Available for free in the App store, the Powers of Minus Ten- Bone app allows the user to view normal and broken bones in the hand, and slide along an arrow to view the healing process.  You can zoom in and out to see the bone magnified down to the cytoplasm contained within the bone.

Apps for Student Collaboration

It often happens that while I am searching for apps to suit a particular need, I encounter a new app that does something more exciting and engaging than the one for which I am searching.  Can you tell I love tech? Such was my experience this morning.  There are countless blogs that have wonderful suggestions on how to create a workflow, having students use a series of apps to create a product or complete a learning outcome. This morning, I found a few apps that could be used to have students collaborate on a project.

I've previously posted about using Google docs for student collaboration.  I feel like this is still the best way to collaborate on a document in real-time.  If you are looking for a way to work together on a presentation, adding pictures, text, links to video content, annotations, and files, all while having the capability of video chatting, adding comments, and sharing your screen with others, then Real Time Board is the tool for you. There are many similarities to the way that Prezi operates, but the collaborative aspect adds another dimension to this tool.  You can invite others by email, Google+, and Facebook to view and collaborate on your board.  You also have the capability of saving your board as an image or PDF, or embedding your link on a blog.  This could be a powerful tool to have students collaboratively produce presentations and share and save in amazing ways!  I've shared a quick board that I had created when I first signed up for the account.  You can view a basic example I created on the human heart and circulatory system here.

I came across an app that I think would do some of the same things as Real Time Board called SyncShare. SyncShare shares drawings between participants that are invited via email, Twitter, or iMessage.  This app allows two iPad users to collaborate on a drawing or annotate on a photograph.  I thought that the free app was the only version available, but I soon discovered that the paid version allows the student to share drawings without limits.  You could take screenshots of content from the web on which you would like to annotate or include as part of the drawing.  The only disadvantage is the $10 price tag.  The Aww app is a scaled down web-version similar to SyncShare, which can be used, for free, quickly between users.

Subtext is another app that I would like to mention, although it appears that we do not currently have access to the app in Canada.  What is superb about Subtext is that you can load PDFs, articles, and eBooks and highlight sections within the text to have students engage in a discussion. There are too many features to mention, but I was presented with this app at a conference in the States and it has incredible potential for use in the classrooms.  Bring it our way, app developer!

Educators and students alike have the potential to extend education beyond the classroom walls, making learning a continuous, collaborative, and engaging process.

Dictation using Siri on the iPad 2

Although there are a couple of options for students to be able to create and store notes, I've tried to explore the most cost effective way of enabling students who have difficulty with written production to create and organize notes. Months ago, I discovered the Notability app, which allows you to create notebooks and within each notebook, store note pages.  At a reasonable cost of $1.99, this app has great functionality. You can add photos, audio recorded content, graphics, web links, and sticky notes.  I have now discovered that when you enable SIRI in your iPad settings, you can easily dictate the notes you would like to create into the notepage.  With SIRI activated, one can create highly customized notes with visual content to support the ideas covered in the classroom.

Here is an example of what can be created with the options in Notability.  I dictated the text from a book called,  A Buffet of Sensory Interventions: Solutions for Middle and High School Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders by Susan Culp, MS, OTR/L.  I added a photo, wrote on a sticky note, and added a link to a video on sensory integration.  The note was automatically dated and stored in the notebook of my choosing.  This is a great tool that has a multitude of options to allow students to easily gather and store information.

Dictation and Text-to-Speech with Google Chrome

I am always looking for ways to meld free technology applications together to produce great results.  The other day, I attended an IEP meeting for a student who required a dictation application, as written work production was a real challenge. Today, I tested out a couple of applications, loaded onto my Google Chrome browser, that would meet the above mentioned student's needs.  Google Chrome is fantastic as you can add apps and extensions to your browser which can make Internet searches, writing, and producing content a whole lot more accessible. The two applications that I loaded onto my browser from the Chrome Store are Speechlogger and SpeakIt! Speechlogger is a great, accessible dictation software that allows users to customize the dictation by adding a title, dictate using a USB microphone, and enter multiple entries that can be exported to a text file or emailed.  Using SpeakIt!, alongside this dictation software, gives the user the capability of highlighting their text and playing back what they have dictated.  An excellent tool for students who have access to a desktop or laptop computer with an inexpensive microphone.

Access YouTube

If you are a regular user of YouTube, you will already have come to the realization that it can be overwhelming to try and find videos for instructional purposes.  Unless you have a specific video in mind, it can be a challenging task to try and find what you are looking for, due in part to the layout of the website.  I recently read a blog post that had information on an accessible YouTube searching tool.  Check out http://accessyoutube.org.uk for an easy-to-navigate web tool.  The search bar is enlarged in size, search results are displayed in an organized array, and all of the same YouTube content is brought forth once the search terms have been entered.  Accessible buttons appear once you have selected a video, allowing users with low-vision or those requiring a more organized display to easily search and view videos.

Curriculum Focus Presentation

On Friday February 7, I was fortunate enough to present to a small, but enthusiastic group of colleagues on technology that could be used with senior years students.  Here is the presentation that I created for the session, which pulls pedagogical ideas about technology together with practical tech tools to transform teaching and learning.  I very much appreciated having the opportunity to sit down with other tech enthusiasts to hear about the tech tools that they use and love in their daily instructional practices.