Take a little peek at one sample of what the kids did with MadLips:
 

She had a sheet with questions in Spanish that the students filled out with responses. These questions would later be used for their oral exam. There are something like 15 questions and some conjugations on the back they were responsible for learning. During the exam, the student would pick 3 numbers from a hat and those would be the questions they would have to answer during the exam. Mrs. Stringfield though that using MadLips on the iPad would be a fun way for the students to practice answering the questions. We asked the students to pick the 1 or 2 that were the hardest for them to record on the iPad. They had a blast. Listening back to themselves was an excellent way for them to hear their errors and pronunciation difficulties to practice and become more fluent with those words and phrases.

The kids and teachers alike had a lot of fun with this one.

One of my favorite mini-projects in my physics class is the spring constant lab. This hits on two of my personal objectives because it not only allows nearly all of the TEKS within the energy unit, but it also forces students to be the scientists. The lab consists of heterogeneous groups of three or four that are given a projectile launcher. Their task is to find the spring constant (a measure of the amount of force required to compress/stretch a spring a certain distance) of their launcher with the goal being to be as close as possible to the actual spring constant. Throughout this entire experience I tell them that I am no longer their teacher and can now only assist with lab equipment and that they have any equipment in the room at their disposal. There are a wide variety of ways that the spring constant can be measured and I require that they figure out and carry out two of these methods. Last year I had the students write a lab report and found that, although their discussions in the lab were very scientific, their writing reflected very little of the science they did and got bogged down in the nuts and bolts of their lab. I want students to better be able to talk about what they did using science concepts learned in the class so I looked to the iPads. The Videolicious App turns some people away because of the 50 second limit, but this was very appealing to me. With only 50 seconds to talk about both of their methods the students could not get bogged down in the minute details without going over the allotted amount of time. The resulting products were fantastic and showed the learning and science that they did in the lab much better than the lab reports from last year. I am looking forward to being able to incorporate this technology every so often when it shows the potential to enhance the students’ learning.

Jon Samuelson has been teaching for 16 years and was named Technology Teacher Leader in Anchoarge in 2005. Jon has presented multiple professional developments for teachers including “Tech Integration in the Classroom”, “Twitter for Educators”, “Educational Gaming”, “iLearning Innovation”, “$5 Apps in 45 Minutes”, and “Apptivities – Creative Lessons for the iPad”.

Jon will be sharing his personal experiences with his iClassroom as well as some of the ideas and innovations he has learned from the recent mobile conferences he has presented at and attended.

Jon also co-presented “60 Apps in 60 Minutes” at Mobile 2012 with Lisa Johnson.

Kathy has worked in the education sector for over 30 years. She actually had her start in Oak Grove elementary right here in NEISD! Kathy has held positions with Pearson, Scholastic Inc., and for the last 7 years Learning A-Z. Currently she reviews apps through her blog.

Kathy Burdick also presented this past week at Mobile 2012 and has a range of apps in the app store: Tools 4 Students, K-5 Mobile School Reading, & Book Chat.

She will be sharing resources from Mobile 2012: how to find apple apps that meet common core standards, how to group apps by theme, as well as other gems of iLearning.

Travis Allen is a young visionary for Digital Learning in the classroom. Before graduating high school, Travis created a viral YouTube video on revolutionizing education in America through mobile learning. Today, Travis is a junior at Kennesaw State University (KSU), where he operates his growing non-profit organization, the iSchool Initiative. Working closely with the Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) organization at KSU he has been able to turn his vision into a full blown movement with schools all over the world adopting the iSchool Initiative’s concept. Travis manages a team of thirty people who are touring the country providing seminars, workshops, publications, and a network for students and educators, to motivate them to embrace becoming life-long digital learners in the Information Age. Travis is quickly becoming one of the top leaders in the emerging digital learning revolution movement.

Travis presented at Mobile 2012!

Twitter: @iSchoolAdvocate

Derek’s Mobile 2012 Presentions include: Creating and Sustaining Effective Leadership in Digital Learning, The Educational Implications of App Innovations, The Paperless Classroom: Tools and Processes for True Digital Learning.

Twitter: @mrkeenan

He will be reflecting on his iPad 1:1 initiative, publishing content to iTunes U, as well as sharing info about TECSIG iPad Palooza.

Twitter: @mrhooker

In this episode, we are joined by Mobile Learning Guru Tony Vincent and Director of Technology and 1:1 iPad Implentation Felix Jacomino.

Tony is an Organizer for Mobile 2012 and presented 3 sessions focusing on the topics of Project-Based Mobile Learning and Collaboration.

Twitter: @TonyVincent

Felix’s sessions at Mobile 2012 included 21st Century Learning & Tools in Primary Grades and Combining 21st Century Skills and Project-Based Learning

Twitter: @FelixJacomino

We will also share some classroom ideas for creating your own podcasts as well as innovative ways to utilize exisiting podcasts to support instruction and core concepts.

We decided upon allowing the students to choose from 3 apps:
Puppet Pals, Toontastic, and Story Kit.

The criterion were:

1 Character Archetype
1 Situational Archetype
1 Symbolic Archetype
1 Set of Foil Characters
A non-traditional plot structure like the one we see in The Princess Bride
Narrator with either 1^st or 3^rd Point of View

She had a Storybook Final Assessment prepared with a checklist and rubric for the students. In addition, she had a Brainstorm-Storyboard which the students used to help prepare them for writing their story/show.

They then used this brainstorming list to write a reflection piece about their thinking behind why they chose the characters, point of view, archetype etc that they did. This they wrote in Pages on the Mac and turned it into an ePub which they loaded onto the iPads in iBooks. A very innovative way to turn in a project. The kids loved it and the final projects came out really good.

Below see a sample of what the final ePub looked like. The file is also available for you to download it into your own iBooks if you have an iPad.

ePub file: Caili and Karissa