Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Collaborating with multiple iPads using Reflector


Pages ($13.99 for iPhone/iPod Touch and $13.99 for iPad)
Wordprocessing Software



Reflection ($14 for Mac or Windows)
Mirroring software for you laptop



I was working with some Year 7 and 8 students at 'The Gardens' school and they were getting ready to storyboard their iMovie Trailers.
Their teacher 'Anna' had emailed them the iMovie Trailer Storyboard PDF which we had sourced from Timothy Jeffferson's blog. The students took screen captures of the PDF and then pasted into Pages. They then used the text boxes to add their information.
So in a group of four
  • One student was filling in the PDF storyboard
  • Another student was filling in the iMovie trailer headings
  • Two students were just sitting there
They were not really working together anymore as they were more involved in their own little projects.
I had Reflector on my laptop so I hooked my computer up to the projector, launched Reflector and then showed the girls how to use the Airplay on their iPads to mirror to the projector.
menubar.png Mirror your iPad by tapping on the Air Play button button.png and select the name of the laptop and turn Mirroring on.


The whole dynamics of the group changed with all four students able to see what each other was writing and their group became more collaborative.
Later they added another iPad where one of the girls typed up a list of what they needed to do next.

There was a great discussion buzz coming from them.
They said they preferred working like that as they could easily see what everybody was writing.


Saturday, November 10, 2012

Starting younger children reflecting

Kids Journal ($1.29 for iPad)
Diary writing, reflective journal for young students.




This is a great app to start young children reflecting on their day. It can be used for  for individual iPad owners and you can set up class sets of journals on one iPad.


Tap on the empty Journal box to add a new journal.
Add a photo, type in your name and choose a colour for your book.








Choose a Mood Picture
Choose a location picture



Choose a weather picture
Choose the 'Photo of the day'
Type in your reflection/journal/diary entry








These pages can be exported by tapping on the Paper Dart icon. They can be exported to iBooks, Kindle, Notability, Evernote and several more.








So it takes 5 steps to make a Journal entry
  1. Choose a mood
  2. Chose a location
  3. Choose the weather
  4. Choose a photo
  5. Type in your entry
The next step could be Kidblog which is an Internet based student blogging platform and which is now available as an app
Kidblog (Free for iPhone/iPod Touch; Free for iPad)



And then there is Blogger, if your students have a Google account through Google Apps for Education then they have a 'Blogger' account. It is a great way for students to blog as there are no distractions on the app, all they can do is type a title, type a post, insert a photo and post!

5 year old Chloe, doing her favourite thing...blogging on Blogger