iPads in the Classroom

iPads are becoming increasingly popular in the classroom. Teachers are finding that there is so much more their students can do than they could without an iPad. Students can take notes on their iPads and add their own touch by drawing on their notes. There is a website that lists 20 educational apps for iPads that teachers are using more and more in the classroom. Some of the programs include eClicker (a way of polling students), Teacher's Assistant Pro (track student behaviors), gFlashPro (quizes, flash cards, stores images and audio, and more), and Pages (create handouts, tests, quizzes, assignments, notes and presentations). You should really check out 20 Amazing iPad Apps for Educator for more information!

Instagram Images

We created instagram images in our educational technology class. Here is a link to the website that I used to create these Instagrams. You can cut these out after printing them and attach them to a tile with mod podge. Then you can glue a magnet to these and hang them anywhere magnetic. This is also a cool idea for a project that your students can work on and give to their parents!

Cupcake

This is a cupcake we made in my educational technology class. First I used the quick selection tool to delete the background and the paint bucket tool to change the color of the cupcake. Then I selected the gradient tool to create the rainbow. I saved this as a ping file so there will be no background showing.

Discovery Education Puzzlemaker

My friend and I created a tutorial for the website  Discovery Education Puzzlemaker. This is a great website to use to create fun puzzles for your students that are specifically designed towards your lesson. You can also have students or parents create puzzles for each other. Here is the link to our Education Puzzlemaker Tutorial. Enjoy!

Holiday Plans

I went home for Thanksgiving break. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving was my little sister's birthday, so we went out to eat to celebrate. On Thanksgiving day my family and I volunteered at the Thanksgiving community dinner at my church. We served Thanksgiving meals to the less fortunate and whomever else came in for a lovely meal surrounded by friends.

I spent the next day with my high school friends, catching up and enjoying each others company. The rest of the weekend was spent working on homework and projects for my classes. Overall it was a wonderful weekend.

Teacher vs. Student

I have learned a lot over this past semester, in my classes and during my field experience. One of the big things that I noticed was that there is a HUGE difference between being a teacher and a student. As a student you have to complete homework and study for tests, but as a teacher you have to create lesson plans, correct homework, grade tests, communicate with parents, and organize your classroom (all while making it look so easy to the students).

As a student I always thought the teacher was mean for giving us so much homework and making us study for tests, but looking at it from a teacher's perspective I can see how wrong I was. Teachers need to assign some homework to see what the students can do on their own and what the teacher needs to reteach. Teachers also have to give out exams as a more formal way of assessing student learning. Teachers also have a pacing guide set for them that they need to follow.

As a teacher it is interesting to observe your students in the classroom and out of the classroom. It is helpful to watch their interactions with peers and with adults. There are some things that are difficult as a teacher. You have to discipline the students who misbehave (when you were a student you may have thought the misbehaving students were being funny) and try to redirect the class. You also have to deal with issues such as bullying and home life. As a student I was never bullied and was not a bully either. My home life was wonderful because I was raised by loving parents. As a teacher I will have to figure out the best ways to deal with bullying in my school and maybe even in my classroom. I will also have to be on the look out for signs of abuse or neglect on my students. It is so different to be on the other side of the classroom for a change.

QR Codes

We experimented with QR codes in our educational technology class. Here are the worksheets that I created using QR codes. It's a way to make lessons, in this case math, a little more interesting for your students. I created these QR codes on QRstuff.com but you can also check out Snap Maze or Kaywa for more options.

This is obviously a more structured worksheet, but you can also create matching, flash cards, and fun activities as well!

Polaroid Pictures

This is a fun way to create memories. You can cut them apart after printing them and create a collage of mini Polaroid pictures. You can glue these on tiles using mod podge and attach a magnet to the back of each mini Polaroid and hang them on your fridge, locker, or anything magnetic. Students could create these as gifts for their parents as well. Here is a link to the website where I got the template for the mini Polaroids if you want to check it out!

Germ Cover

This is something that we made in my educational technology class. After printing it off I wrapped it around a hand sanitizer container using mod podge. This is a really awesome way to make a boring hand sanitizer container look like it belongs in a classroom! Children are always spreading germs around, so if you have this on hand you will be able to quick give them a squirt if they sneeze in their hands, or on a desk.

iPad Rules

When you introduce iPads in the classroom you need to make sure that you set rules and regulations for your students to follow. You can either make your own or look online for ideas. Above is a picture of a poster that I made of rules for iPad use in my (future) classroom.

Forms

Here are two forms, the first one is before and the second one is the one that I edited to make a little more fun! I grouped the information into three categories: Your Child, Parents, and Contact Information. This makes the form easier to look at and it looks like less of a burden to fill out. Different fonts and colors also enhance the overall look of the form.

Blurring out Faces

This is an example of a student collage I made. I blurred the faces on Gimp 2. I first opened up the picture that I wanted to use to blur the face, then I selected the ellipse select tool and circled around the face that I wanted to blur. Under the filters tab at the top of the page is a blur option. There is a list of options, click on pixelize. Gimp gives you the option to choose the pixel length and width. You can experiment with the numbers but I found that it's best to use between 10-20 pixels.

This is a very useful tool if you want to show off your work (that includes pictures of students) online. All you have to do is blur their faces and you can still get your idea/project across to your audience.

Magazine Cover

This is a magazine cover that I created on Photoshop. All you have to do is create a new project in Photoshop and make it 8 X 10 inches. The resolution I used was 300 pixels/inch. When you create this magazine cover, make sure to give every block of writing a separate layer. This will be very helpful for moving the words around and tweaking your project.

iSpy Picture

Here is an example of an iSpy page that I created in my Educational Technology class. There are a lot of educational uses for an iSpy page. It's a lot of fun to create and then students can work on their writing skills. Different levels of writers can be challenged with this task. Younger students can work on writing complete simple sentences. Older writers can work on compound sentences and more skilled writers can work on rhyming words. The teacher can even go one step further and create a book out of his/her students' pages.

Apple in Education

Schools are increasing the amount of technology in schools every day, and one way this is happening is by including apples in education. 

Students can read textbooks that come alive on their apple device. This includes interactive diagrams as well as videos. This creates more hands on learning than a textbook would never be able to provide. As textbooks can be dull and boring, apple books prove much more interesting to the student and keeps them on task. Students can still highlight text as they would in a normal textbook and the apple device is much lighter than carrying around several textbooks in their backpack.

Apple also allows you to create your own textbooks of which you can include pictures, microsoft word documents, diagrams, backgrounds, tables, charts, animations and so much more! You can read more about this by clicking on the iBooks Author Website on the homepage of the website.

For more information and a free download visit Apple in Education.

Paperless Educator

I read through The Paperless Classroom about becoming a paperless educator. I think that it is possible to become a paperless educator to an extent. You cannot avoid textbooks and workbooks, because lets face it, sometimes it is just easiest for the students to write out their work on paper and read from a textbook.

The best way to go about becoming a paperless classroom is to be organized. Every subject and assignment needs its own folder and sub-folders. You, the teacher, also need to understand how to work online assignments and group projects in order to explain to your students.

Once you are comfortable with these programs and have an organization system that works for you, you will be able to start getting your students involved. All of your students will need an e-mail address.

You can start out with Google docs. There are many different programs to use on Google docs.: email, blog, websites, questionnaires, documents, presentations, spreadsheet, forms, drawings and tables.

One really great way to go paperless would be instead of writing papers they could be done on a computer and submitted online. Instead of writing out multiple rough drafts and a final copy, students can type up their rough draft, submit it for peer/teacher editing, and then revise it (without having to rewrite the whole thing and using multiple pages of paper) and turn the paper in via e-mail or however you would like to have it turned into you.

Build Yourself Wild

This is from the website Build Yourself Wild. You can have students visit this website to create a self-portrait or cute monster. After students create their person you can have them write a paragraph or paper about themselves or their monster friend. This could be a fun activity at the beginning of the year to help you get to know your students.