3-29-11 Tuesday

Today the class enjoyed meeting the family that donated the 10 iPads, cases etc to us. I met prior to the class and I explained how exciting it was to be able to teach with tools like the iPad that are at the front of the teaching curve.  The family was incredibly humble and explained that they were excited to be a part of the project.
    The class arrived, sat down (along with the contributing family, our PR person, the headmaster and our website consultant – almost more adults than students), downloaded the lesson, opened up their homework from the night before, placed it in their dropbox folder (which is shared with me) and we began to review the assignment. Things went smoothly and we moved on to the day’s lesson. I handed an iPad to the family and explained the fundamentals of using Noterize – they worked through the lesson and picked up on it just as quickly (if not more quickly) as the students. They were really taking notes and solving the problems! This was truly exciting.
The slides, notes etc went well and there were no tech glitches - which is a good stage to be at.  We now are to the point that we can begin experimenting again, finding “apps” to use in the classroom – I am considering creating an assignment to have the students find, download and review an application on their iPads – Not too sure how to support this as we have to pay for it – maybe they find it, select it, then we download it in class, at which point they can then try it and review it.

Other apps and uses for the iPad – So far we have been trying to focus on the mathematics instruction and typical note taking procedures that we have used in the past – supplemented by having a graphing calc built into the iPad. The next step is to find new methods of instruction – at this point I am looking into apps that can be used in algebra – At this point I know of only one Alg textbook that has been created for the iPad. This might be useful as it contains instructional videos etc. but the material is not quite as rigorous as we would like – we are continuing to look.

The other day I described the classroom procedure but I should elaborate on the tools- below is a more detailed explanation:

Pre-activity – I create the lesson on the Smartboard, save it as a pdf and upload to the school website under my class (this takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours – it will get faster and better as I get better and the lessons semi - repeat from year to year)

1.  Arrive in class and download lesson –
1.  Safari – log onto Whipple Hill website (students have individual logins), find the lesson for the days and click it (takes about 2 minutes – logging on + time to download)
2. Noterize app - Once the file has been downloaded, the pdf opens in Safari and at that point you can choose to “OPEN IN” Noterize. (30 seconds to 1 minute)
2.  Dropbox app and Noterize - With the lesson downloaded – place the homework assignment in the Dropbox app which I can access as it is a shared folder with my Dropbox  - I created a new account in Dropbox which they are all logged into. (3-4 minutes)
3. Noterize – Return to their homework assignment and correct in class – also take notes on (30 seconds)
4. Noterize - Open up the lesson for the day and take notes. (30 seconds)
5. Lastly – I open up the homework assignments from dropbox – HOWEVER I have been using Note Taker HD. I correct and comment on then EMAIL back to them. I have to email the files as the notetaker HD app does not support placing it directly into the dropbox app – I need to think of a workaround for this.

The additional time spent downloading, opening, and closing etc. does not seem to be any more than the time it takes for students to take out their homework, me collect it, take out notepaper for notes, then for homework etc, In fact overall it may save time. Until of course we introduce a new app.