We were fortunate enough to once again have visiting educators from around the state on our campus this May. Folks who attend the iLeap Academy are here because they have just launched an iPad initiative or are considering doing so. They spend 3 days in Austin, most of which are in a classroom setting led by Carl Hooker, Tim Yenca and Lisa Johnson. For 2 hours each day, attendees visit campuses across the district where they get a chance to see iPad integration in action. Here is the schedule we followed:

Our visitors saw a wide variety of activities. In Elisse Newey's room, we observed the 4th Graders making Stop Motion Videos. In Maci Shannon's room we saw a variety of apps being used for Formative Assessment: including Plickers, Nearpod, and Notability. We spent awhile Monday in Carin Champion's Kinder class visiting with students about projects that they had created with their iPads this year. On Tuesday, we talked to Mary Ann Simmons's students about the work they were doing in Google Classroom. Wednesday Second Graders let us observe and ask questions about a Mother's Day project they were doing using one of the following apps: Pages, Popplet, or Book Creator. 

As I told Tim afterwards, the highlight of these visits for me is that the amazing teachers on our campus have a chance to shine and shine they do! I couldn't have been prouder of and more grateful to the 5 teachers that opened up their classrooms to us. 

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!

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!

Carin Champion had the thought that perhaps her students might be able to get their ideas down on paper faster if they used the iPads to type out their thoughts without the added pressure of worrying about how to form each letter. So, she had them open Pages, type their sentences and then copy their sentences onto a piece of paper from the iPad. Not only did some of the students find that getting their ideas into written form was easier this way, but an impressive number of skills were learned by all in the process.