iPAD HELP MAT

So if you, like me, are tired of answering for the 7 millionth time in one hour the password for your firewall or what Safari is exactly, then this will hopefully be useful for you. I have made a little "help mat" for each of my girls that will hopefully, by the end of a couple more lessons, enable them to start sorting out each of their own issues. This is a life skill that they will need going forward in their lives and it is a life skill I need less of in mine.

I made this in word, so if you would like a copy pop me an email and I'll send it through to you which you can edit it to suit your needs.

Happier apping!

THE MELTDOWN

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of Apple. His and hers MacBooks, ipods, ipads, iphones, Apple TV, Apple stickers on our cars (ok not that bad). Let's just say that my life would be vastly different without Apple.

But sometimes I feel that South Africa is not ready for such greatness. Our connectivity to everything causes endless woes in my life. My lack of understanding of certain apps makes me ugly cry in my stock room. My inability to think things through logically, because thats the way I am, frustrates me to no end.

So when on Tuesday 11:00 rolled around and this ever enthusiastic and slightly over confident teacher announced to her class the "grand plan" and the "grand plan" didn't work. This is what happened:

Maybe it was a combination of many late nights due to play practice. Report stress. 8 year olds not listening for roughly 5 hours of of the 5 and a half that I have with them. But it got ugly. First, said App (that I will let you know all about soon) would not function. 25 girls standing around, looking like fools, whining, fighting, making me sad. So next plan. Mathletics. No internet connectivity. Next plan. Reading App: locked. Next plan: Einstein cubes: all levels completed, no reseting.  

By now the patience that I dont really have anyway was now gone. 

Lots of angry words. 

Lots of hate towards ipads. 

We then moved on to "sand art". Possibly the most un-educational App available to mankind. 

I sat in my own self pity threatening the lives of any child and ipad that came near my desk. I eventually made the mature decision to let it go and not write an angry post before at least 24 hours had past by. Lets hope that this little episode has added to my ipad growth. 

Happy apping!

EXPLAIN EVERYTHING

Time:                                6 weeks
Level:                               Hard
Would I do it again:            Yes, maybe, we will see

They got the name right on this one. You will explain everything, over and over and over. I literally invested half a terms worth of one hour lessons on this app, but it was totally worth it.

We made a small tutorial on how to build a fire after our "camping" outing. It was quite a challenge to get this right and I would recommend practicing on the app and writing down step-by-step what it is you want to do. I did not do this. I paid heavily for my laziness. It's functionality is amazing and if you youtube some ideas you wont be disappointed. It took 6 ipad lessons to complete this task. Yes 6 weeks of painfully slowly instruction. Lets say if I was to enter survivor, I would be able to make a fire rather successfully.

Cons : Incredibly slow to teach, many steps are required
         : Hard to teach to a large group because of each individuals pace
         : There were some major changes when we did an update. And of course not all ipads are
           updated equally, this caused immense frustration!
         : *This is the DVD / PVR generation. I had to teach them about recording over long enough so
           that it covered the previous work. This was harder than I thought it would be. (see pros)

Pros : Once skills are learnt it will be easy to use the app again
        : *You can record the sound / voice over again and again until you are happy.
        : No internet needed!
        : The final product looks quiet amazing and so will you by association.


These are really in all their raw glory. Please don't judge if you hear my teacher voice being bossy (it was hard work ok!)

I hope to be using this app a lot more in the future. I think I was slightly schooled by this one. But as they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Happy Apping!

NAILING IT WITHOUT NEOTEL

Time:                            1.5 hours
Level:                            Medium
Would I do it again?         Yes

Today's lesson was proudly brought to you by Neotel, and their amazing ability to be down at least twice a week, usually on a Tuesday, between 11-12 when I have booked out the ipads. This is how I usually react...

...but not today!

Fortunately for me, this was not the end of a few plastic routers lives, as earlier that week at our learning area meeting the topic of going back to basics and focusing on the core concepts was asked to be properly reinforced for the remainder of the term.

We have been learning about adjectives, verbs and nouns all year but I was struggling to get my girls (especially the weaker ones) to identify them in isolation. This I know to be true, seems to be a universal problem amongst foundation phase learners.

At that exact moment I realized that the life of the ipad, sitting infront of me was about to be no more, the age old saying of "tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand" popped into my head. And (under the circumstances) this idea became a somewhat meaningful lesson.

My girls were simply asked to make an educational video, that they would show the Grade 1's to teach them about the Parts of Speech we had covered.

I gave a little demonstration covering the basics:

1. How to hold the ipad steady.
2. How to not cut off heads in different shots.
3. What kind of backgrounds they were looking for.
4. To make sure the area they were in was quiet and had as little background noise as possible.

Again, I did explain this, as you will see not all my helpful tips were taken seriously.

They also had to:
1. Create a Flow Map on the sequence of events in the film (If you use Thinking Maps)
2. Be in groups of 4
3. Each have a turn to act and film
4. Delegate the tasks required to complete in iMovie (Working Interdependently if you use Habits of Mind)

We used iMovie to string the clips together which is by far one of the easiest things to use on the Ipad (and free!)  and I would say that it could be used right from Grade 1. We discussed what would be the best template to use and agreed that using the "simple" template would be best for an educational clip.

The lesson took about an hour and a half. Considering this was the first time most of them had used iMovie before this was an excellent turn around time for such an informative lesson.

But in the end they had loads of fun, it required very little prep from my side and the valuable skill of inserting, cropping and fading in clips were taught, as well as the reinforcement of the Parts of Speech.   They all started to look a little something like this...

Give it a try, I think you will be surprised by the creativity and depth as to which they can go.  A great way to "save the day" and can easily be applied across all grades in the foundation phase level. 

THE PROJECT

The reality is that most South African teachers although enthusiastic lack the training, understanding or resources to support these incredibly beneficial machines. Let's be honest teacher friends, we have be given the responsibility of rolling out one of the biggest investments that many schools around South African have made (minor heart attack) and turning it into something accessible in a third world wifi reception zone!? (slightly bigger heart attack.)

This is a blog where I attempt to share ideas, tricks and tips on how I didn't blow my top when the Syrex login password did not connect for the 5th time today. We are in this together, Simunye.