Middle School math team shares our success with iPads in math at CAIS!

Krista McKeague, lead math teacher in the Middle School, writes:

Brooke Gelber and I recently presented at the CAIS Math Professional Day at Drew School in San Francisco. The day focused on the use of technology, mainly the iPad, in teaching math. The event attracted over 60 teachers and administrators from about 25 private independent schools in Northern California. We represented one of a several schools with a one-to-one iPad program, and there were a handful of other schools piloting programs this year, as we did last year. Most of the participants had some experience with iPads and were anxious to learn how they were being used in one-to-one programs.

We were asked to present our experience using the HMH FUSE Algebra 1 textbook app, and we also gave a thorough overview of the ways we are using the iPad for note-taking, homework, projects, workflow (Box), augmenting instruction and skills practice engaging apps and games. Apps highlighted in our presentation include Paperport Notes, Noteshelf, Socrative, Khan Academy, Algebra Touch, Easy Geometry, Math Snacks, Slice It, Rocket Math, Factor Samurai, and MMR Calculator. We were very well received and fielded many questions that I remember having a year ago. It felt great to be able to not only share our experience teaching with iPads, but also to share our iPad challenges, decision making and parent and student education and management throughout this school year.

You can select the following link to see our presentation and others from the day: http://drew.us/cais

Some Take-Aways from the Day!

The Drew School, also a one-to-one iPad school, has integrated iPads across the curriculum, and we picked up some great new ideas from their math teachers as well:

• Teachers and students are sharing their work using a notebook app Clibe (http://myclibe.com), which allows students and teachers to share (read) each other’s notebooks quickly and easily in one app, without using Box.
• Math teacher and student(s) collaborate in real time on math problems on a SyncSpace Shared Whiteboard document. This whiteboard is zoomable and the images can be emailed, sent, or saved for later editing.
• Teachers are sharing short video tutorials on Educreations (similar to ShowMe) in order to support “flipping” the class and to help students navigate homework problems outside of class.
• Teachers are enhancing their curriculum with texts from The National Repository of Online Courses.

Brooke and I are looking forward to presenting again on iPads in Math at San Domenico’s iTeach workshop this summer!

Still haven’t registered for iTeach 2012? There’s still time! http://www.sandomenico.org/iteach