Mandate Update- PD Funding and Grants

I wanted to take a minute and update the mandate of this blog. Although the primary focus will still the integration of Google Classroom and GAFE into a one-to-one device classroom, I have recently been approved for two PD grants that will become part of this blog.

The first is a grant distributed by the Ontario Teacher's Federation. The approved proposal is comprised of a multi-disciplinary team of teachers from my school including science, computer engineering, Canadian World Studied, Food and Nutrition, and English. We will be using the funds to purchase key devices that will facilitate the integration of other, board provided technologies into the classroom. We hope to provide some valuable insight which will be published on this blog and on the OTF website.

I was also approved for school board sponsored PD to work with a teacher from a different school in our board. We will be investigating the use of GAFE to better allow for collaboration between students and teachers in a decentralized, highly independent learning situation, like an Interdisciplinary Studies Course, or during Independent Study projects. As suggested by my Principal, we may also look at how this could form the basis for asynchronous professional learning communities among staff throughout the
board and province.

I am very excited to tackle these new projects and hope that they will create valuable resources to be shared here.

Thanks for reading!

Adobe Voice is iPad Magic

If you are looking for an app that makes the purchase of an iPad worth while, look no further than Adobe Voice. Not only is this app simple enough for young children to use, but it is versatile enough that one of my Master's classmates uses it with great success; and it's FREE!

The App

The app is a very simple presentation creator which not only allows you to attach images, photos, or text, but also voice recordings to each slide. The app has a great variety of good looking themes, easy to use templates, and background music. Here is a video that shows the app in action.

Why it is AMAZING?

This app allows weaker or younger students to follow different types of stories which prompt them what to put on each slide. It also allows more advanced students to create presentations from scratch.

How I'm Using it.

I have been using Adobe Voice with my grade 10 English students while studying poetry. We have been working on developing deductive arguments. My students have been struggling with connecting textual support to their topic sentence/thesis. With poetry they work at identifying the purpose of a poem inductively and then trying to explain the purpose deductively. Instead of having them write their analysis, which they don't want to do and i'd rather not read, they create an Adobe Voice presentation in the same or less time that it would take them to write the paragraph. It is far more engaging and easier to share with the class.

My colleague was also very impressed with Adobe Voice after she used it with a very low functioning grade 9 English class. The students are reading at a grade 3-5 level and have a very difficult time sharing their ideas. They were able to use Adobe Voice after only a short introduction and created a presentation in less than an hour. This has allowed the students to be successful in an area that they have experienced little success in the past.

Update

The current version of Adobe Voice will now allow you to download the video to your iPad to then be used and shared in any way you like.

Using Google Classroom as an Assignment Dropbox

While in discussion with my colleague Nicholas Keller, he showed me an alternative use for Google Classroom that for him, as a Cooperative Education teacher, helps him stay organized and in sync with his students who are working throughout his community.

Because of the scheduling of Cooperative classes, Nick has decided to create three different Classrooms for his one course. Each Classroom deals with a different stage of the class, including Pre-placement, Logs and Journals, and Integration assignments. This unique use of Classroom has several benefits and disadvantages.

Benefits

1. By using the assignment dropbox feature of Classroom and by only having the assignments listed in the Stream, students are easily able to see what needs to be completed before and during their placements. Students are able to see what needs to be done and what they might have missed for the entire semester all within two or three page scrolls. 
2. One of the challenges for cooperative education teachers is managing the paperwork of students completing their work logs. Traditionally, this was done by having students hand in paper copies of the appropriate work when they are at the school. This can quickly become an organizational nightmare and can allow students to slip through the cracks. By using Classroom as a dropbox, teachers can quickly and easily see which students have not completed work and can then react accordingly, all with one click.
3. The thing that struck me most about this use of Classroom is that it doesn't utilize the Stream function in the same way that I have been using it in class. One of my main criticisms of the Stream is that material that students may need repeated access to quickly moves down the stream with daily updates. Using Classroom as an assignment dropbox, and for nothing else, keeps the assignments top of mind (and page) for students.
4. Not only will it keep material top of mind for students, but it also allows for the same Classroom to be used year after year. It should be nothing more then removing the students who completed the course and adding the new students to reset the Classroom and make it easily adaptable to the new semester.

Disadvantages

1. Because Classroom does not allow you to reorder Stream posts, if you want to change an assignment or just the order in which they appear in the Stream, you would have to delete everything and start again.
2. By not utilizing the Announcement functionality, and the fact that Classroom does not allow you to embed a calendar or create multiple Streams for one Classroom, students will have to go to more then one place to manage their course work.
3. Marking with a rubric is still an issue as there has been no functionality update to make this possible.

The simplicity of this approach and the ease by which teacher and student should be able to manage complete and incomplete work is an interesting and useful model for anyone in a highly independent and dynamic teaching environment. Thanks for sharing Nick!

On a side note, has anyone run into the problem of Classroom switching a student from one Classroom to another? This has happened to me twice so far this semester.