Mrs. Phi told me today that in years past, the Third Grade had done this simple machines project by taking the pictures with the classroom cameras, importing them into their Home Folders in the computer lab, and then using Publisher to create a brochure. Now that they have the iPads, they can do the entire project on the iPads in their classrooms. According to Mrs. Phi, it is much more engaging. 

I got to see the students in action today as they were finishing up their projects and they were all so very excited to share them with me. They were most definitely engaged in their learning!

Today we played our second Eanes vs. Bridgepoint Tic Tac Toe game using Google Hangout. I screen captured the event and have included a snippet of it here. Though the video is not of the highest quality, this piece gives you an idea of the collaboration that went on behind the scenes of the game. Mrs. Champion did an excellent job of making sure that everyone's voice was heard by having the students discuss the possibilities and then vote on the option of their choice. It was an exciting competition and we are looking forward to a rematch in the near future!

Mrs. Didlake's class rounded out their unit on the Civil War by developing Keynote presentations. Students could choose from 10 different Civil War topics such as Medicines of the Civil War, Music of the Civil War, and Sharecropping. They worked in pairs: one iPad was for research and one was for compiling the presentation. Not only did the students learn lots about the Civil War, they also learned some lessons about Keynote....some of them painful! For instance, Keynote is unlike PowerPoint in that you can't easily change the background color of a slide, so it is best to pay attention to the themes when you create your presentations. Not a fun thing to realize when your project is almost complete, but I think that the fact that they discThanks for sharing your work with me, Mrs. Didlake! 

My good friend and co-worker, Marianna Husain, found this idea on Matt Gomez's blog. She emailed me and asked if I thought that I had a Kinder teacher who might be interested. I asked around and Ms. Champion was willing to give it a try. We spent time up front talking to the students about the intentions of the activity: to practice developing strategies, to be good sports  and to HAVE FUN! Marianna and I familiarized ourselves with Google Hangout with the help of our fellow Ed Techs. And then we were ready for the real thing. So, this morning, we played our first three games with Ms. King's Kindergarten class from BPE. We started by opening a hangout. Then we opened the google doc that Matt developed and allowed us to copy that contained the Tic Tac Toe board and we were off! 

Though BPE won 2 games and we tied one, as Marianna said in her blog, "everyone in kindergarten was a winner today"!

Please contact me if your school would like to play!

I loved the process that brought this class to this particular culminating activity. 

It all began in their literature circles. One student in each of the circles was designated the Illustrator and his/her responsibility was to draw a picture of the assigned reading. At the end of the novel study, each book circle assessed its pictures and decided what pictures were needed to complete the story. The missing pictures were drawn and the students completed storyboards that helped them plan the Strip Designer project that they would be doing with me today. All of that prep work made for an easy lesson on my part. I gave a 5 minute overview and they dove in. When it was all said and done, I walked out the door having learned 3 things from the students about the app that I didn't know before today. I love it when that happens and so do they!!!

I got to work with a few of Jennifer Wolff's first graders today using Keynote on their iPads. Though it was an activity grounded in curriculum, Jennifer's main intent was to familiarize the students with the app, so we didn't spend a lot of time talking about content. We kept it simple and the beauty of that is that the next time the students work with that app, the technology itself will be secondary and the focus will be on the content. 

I had the privilege of traveling to Atlanta for EdTech Teacher's iPad Summit. It was a powerful conference with an inspirational theme. Although every attendee had an iPad, this conference was not about the iPad, it was about the transformation in education that is happening in classrooms because of the iPad. 

This Thinglink contains some of the many resources that were shared during the summit. Hover over the image to access the links.