Natalie Brewer's Fourth Graders learned about the tools that scientists use last week and finished off the lesson by using the Trading Card iPad app to make trading cards that focused on one of the tools. 

Natalie started by emailing photos of 3 tools to each student. Students saved the photos to their camera roll. They chose one picture, opened it in the app and began entering info about the tool on the trading card that they selected. I think the thing that I like most about the app is that it asks guiding questions to help the students decide what they want to include on their cards. 

The final products could be emailed and/or saved to the camera roll. 

Yesterday was the first meeting of a group of teachers on our campus who are interested in learning to use iBooks Author to create and publish interactive books for the iPad. We will be meeting monthly throughout the year and the group will be led by Laura Wright who created and published her first book(The Life of an Eanes Pioneer Child) with her Third Graders last year and is currently working on her second publication. 

The goal for each of our participants is to publish a book by the end of the year. The books will stem from the curriculum of each teacher's grade level and will be a compilation of contributions from both students and teachers. Each month's meeting will focus on one of the aspects of creating a book and the time between meetings will be spent exploring that aspect and collecting student work. During our first meeting, Laura helped them set up two iBook files: a sandbox file for them to practice creating the various parts of their final product and the file for the final product itself. The teachers left with instructions to explore their sandbox file before our next meeting. 

This is a pilot program in this district and I will be using this blog to chronicle the progress that is made throughout the year. 

Check out this List.ly list of resources for iBook creation. 

The faculty and staff at Eanes have spent this week going about the business of teaching and learning while at the same time focusing on holding the Ryan family in our hearts and minds constantly - trying to hold them up from a distance as best we can. 
 
Today we gathered in the library for our monthly faculty meeting and were guided by our wonderful art teacher, Erin Mcelroy, in making origami swans to help decorate the REXSTRONG hospital room. Suffice to say that each of those swans - the perfect ones and the not so perfect ones - is a gift of love to Rex and to his family. 

Natalie Brewer found a great rubric on one of her favorite resources: Digital Divide and Conquer, an excellent teacher blog. 

Here is what she did with it. She handed out the rubrics, assigned each student an app, and gave them a set amount of time to explore that app and complete the rubric. What a great way for students to learn all about the new apps on their iPads and share that info with their peers. 

I think this would be an excellent way to launch an exciting year of iPad integration! Thanks for sharing, Natalie!

The first activity that EE First Graders did this year with their iPads involved a set of instructions designed specifically to teach them how to use the iPads's Camera and the Photo App. 

Before beginning the activity, students were reminded to ask permission before taking pictures of their friends, so that set the very business like tone of this iPad project. During the activity, students took a specific number of pictures, took a video, deleted a picture, made a photo album and named that album.

What a great way to start the year!