iTeach, Therefore I Am

Several years ago I attended the California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) Northern California Regional meeting. I attended a session on teaching animation in primary and middle schools with Barbara Cohen who, at the time, was Director of Technology with the Marin Country Day School.

Barbara Cohen

Barbara began her workshop with introductions and went out of her way to explain to all the other people in the room that she'd known me for a very long time. She added that I had taught her everything she knew about teaching video production with students.

I was a bit embarrassed about this introduction to the group. After all, the work I did with Barbara was at least 10 or 12 years earlier. We worked together on a project I created that taught students video production with VHS camcorders and linear video editing equipment. That process became obsolete long ago.

It occurs to me now that Barbara was really saying I had taught her an important lesson about the power of teaching with multimedia in the classroom. More specifically, I had taught her the value of engaging students in media production in the classroom.

Student video producers circa 1994

Classroom media production projects create an environment that promotes a deepening of student understanding of the content in their classes. Student media projects are also an integral part of student assessment in the modern classroom -- especially in 1:1 schools.

However, today students make their own videos on tablets and cell phones, and publish it for the world to see -- without the help (or even the request) of their teachers!

Which brings me to iTeach 2014.

At San Domenico School technology is a vital tool in the entire educational process. Teachers use it for their own personal productivity and for managing their educational resources and student grades and information. More importantly, because we are a 1:1 iPad school, we are engaing our students with technology every day. Having a powerful research and communication device stuffed in your backpack provides amazing access to information. These devices also include a variety of tools we now call Apps. Students use them to collect, analyze, and produce their own projects based on their research.

This is all fine, as long as everyone knows how to use these tools.

In a recent survey of San Domenico teachers, 82% said they publish course materials online using a variety of "cloud" resources including Moodle, Blogs, Google Sites and Drive, Box, Turnitin, and our Library web page. 93% of our teachers say they engage their students with digital tools in their curriculum 25% of the time or more in class. Almost 40% of our students are required to complete some sort of digital portfolio as part of our curriculum.

92% of our teachers say their comfort level with using technology in their classroom is 5 or higher on a scale of 1-10. 68% said they were a 7 or higher. On the same scale, 77% of our teachers answered 7 or higher when asked how important it is to continue to expand the way they integrate technology in their curriculum.

When teachers were asked to name the most important areas for us to focus when thinking about ways to improve technology integration in our curriculum they answered:

   "More professional development"
   "Technology specific curriculum development"
   "Time to collaborate with my colleagues"

Whether it be regular faculty meetings, one of our school level technology committees, outside conferences and workshops, or the creation and delivery of  iTeach 2014, our teachers want to learn from and teach their colleagues what they know about teaching with technology.

Sharing what you know, and being willing to learn from others is certainly a hallmark of teaching and the teacher very often becomes the student when it comes to technology. Now, with  iTeach 2014, San Domenico teachers and other leading technology using educators come together to teach and to learn about using technology to enhance student learning.

Thank you Barbara for reminding me that engaging students with technology on a regular basis is a powerful way to deepen their learning. I look forward to learning with you at iTeach 2014 this summer.

Brad Lakritz
Director of Technology

iBooks Author and Book Creator Video Reviews

Here are two short video introductions to creating electronic books with Book Creator and iBooks Author created by San Domenico School religious studies teacher Mirza Kahn. They are intended to be helpful to a teacher interested in making and using electronic books in the classroom.

If you are viewing the blog on an iPad please click the text link to see the videos via the YouTube App. Computer users may watch the video within the blog entry by clicking the video thumbnail.

Book Creator video review

iBooks Author video review

For more on e-Books check out:

     Research and Non-Fiction Writing Guide

     8th Grade 2012 Voting Project




by Mirza Inayat Khan
Religious Studies Department

Synthesizing by creating in history class

Middle School lead history teacher Wynn Richards (who will be one of our workshop leaders at iTeach 2013) recently shared some of the work her sixth graders have created in a lesson on ancient Egypt.  They synthesized their learning by creating their own content on iPads:

Sixth graders have been studying ancient Egypt in their middle school history classes. The Egyptian gods and goddesses are colorful and dramatic, so we decided to use a fun, free app called ComicBook! to demonstrate what students found interesting about them. It was an exciting activity, the app was easy to navigate, and it took the students only one class period to create these little gems.

Mathematical problem solving with iPads

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

This time last year...

I was just getting the hang of using a new iPad textbook for my Algebra 1 class, and still hanging on to my beloved tablet PC to write and project my math notes.  I liked my iPad and how it facilitated communication with students (Box, Socrative, Educreations, etc)... but I wasn’t sure exactly how to integrate it seamlessly in to my daily math instruction.  A couple things have changed in the few months.  I now have the infrastructure in my room to make optimum use of my iPad, and developers are finally coming out with iPad friendly math apps that actually promote mathematical problem solving, something long promised by rarely delivered.

I’ll start with my room.  Instead of manually connecting my iPad to the projector (and having the cord fall out every few minutes!), I now have Apple TV, which allows me to circulate in the room while writing notes and teaching (I’m still working on the skill of writing, walking at talking at the same time!). Apple TV also allows students to quickly project their iPad screen when asked to show their work or contribute to the notes.  With a few simple buttons conveniently located by my screen I can toggled back and forth between writing notes with my iPad, projecting a book or answer key with my document camera, and annotating a worksheet or example problem using my “smart pen.”  (A smart pens works with a smart projector to electronically write on the board, with the capability of saving for email or future use.)  I’m still working on perfecting this dance, but it’s coming along!

Next, I have been pleasantly surprised with a new level of math apps that are both deeper in the conceptual understanding they require from the user, and easier to use!  One of my favorites is a game called DragonBox (we actually use DragonBox+ which includes more levels) that has you solving complex algebraic equations without you even realizing you are doing math at first!  It truly marries a fun, addictive game quality to a very important and often complex concept (especially as you get into rational and radical equations) of balancing an equation as you isolate the variable.  According to the reviews, children in early primary grades enjoy it, and I certainly found it engaging! While most math apps up to this point have been an overlay of math drills on top of an entertaining backdrop, this is a new generation of math game that I believe holds true to it’s promise of promoting mathematical and logical thinking.  I am planning to use this with both pre-algebra and algebra students to strengthen their understanding of this important concept.

All in all, I’m enjoying that both the hardware and software in my world is becoming easier to implement and easier and more meaningful to integrate into my curriculum!

For an interesting review of DragonBox:

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/06/dragonbox/all/

New apps and new opportunities

One of the great advantages of utilizing the iPad as a digital tool to enhance student learning is that the iPad is an incredibly flexible tool for both teaching and learning.  Teachers can prescribe specific apps and steps to support the design of a lesson.  At the same time, students are empowered to use apps that help them organize their own learning and extend that learning beyond the initial learning situation.

What are the apps that help students organize their work?  When we launched the one-to-one program at the beginning of the 2011-12 year, we found answers that worked for us at that particular moment in time.  Almost a year later, we have learned about new tools and have new insights into how our students use the iPad.  While it is still early in the school year, here are some of the tools that our students are using this Fall:

7th Graders in Annemarie Wheaton's Life Science course
use iPads.. with lots of other tools and media!

Notability - At this time last year, we rolled out Noterize (now rebranded and upgraded as Paperport Notes) to support annotating documents, completing handouts, organizing PDFs at other documents, and -- for some students -- taking handwritten or typed notes.  This tool was particularly used by high school students for most note-taking and by middle school students working with PDFs.  Noteshelf was an app used by middle school students for taking handwritten notes.  Throughout the school year, we kept hearing from friends at other schools about the merits of a $0.49 ($0.99/individually) app called Notability.  Notability integrates handwriting, PDF annotation, typing, recording, and organizing in one app.  It works with Box which is extremely helpful in our environment (though Notability's connection to Box is not as perfect as it could be yet).  Notability is now the app our high school, middle school, and primary school teachers show students first.

Socrative - Last year we used an app called eClicker for student response on iPads.  Student response apps allow you to take the "pulse" of a class's learning quickly and in a way that empowers less confident students to tell you whether they've learned something without embarrassment.  Such apps can also be used for quick quizzes.  eClicker worked but was limited to timed questions and was a little pricey for school-wide use.  Now the original eClicker is no longer available (more information on the new version of eClicker is documented here) but we have had success using a newer entry to this field, Socrative.  Socrative is a little more complicated but has additional features for running "quizzes" and instant response for quick student feedback.  I particularly like how it does not require student and faculty iPads to be on the same network and how quiz-takers can access quizzes through the web on any device.

Clibe - Clibe is allowing our high school students to create beautiful (really -- they are stunning!) journals in science classes and in other subjects.  Notebooks are instantly shared with the teacher without hassle so that the teacher is able to review the progress of student work effortlessly and with no printing of paper.  We have had some challenges getting this sync process to work perfectly in every case and are trying to contact support with little success, but hopefully those challenges will be ironed out soon.  We do not use this app with younger students because there is no way to shut off the impressive -- but "open" -- Clibe library of notebooks others in the world have shared.

Pages - QuickOffice Pro HD was our word processor of choice last year.  Our students and teachers are turning more often to Apple's Pages app for word processing.  We will have more discussion of paper-writing in a future blog post.

In the coming weeks, this blog will narrate how these apps have been used in particular classroom experiences.  We will also highlight emerging trends and new uses for iPads in the curriculum.  For example, we are observing how software that had been flash-based on the web for younger grades is -- in some cases -- being supplanted by engaging iPad apps.  How is this changing how we learn and teach?  We will also discuss other challenges and successes as we work with these digital tools in Kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Thanks for being part of our integrated technology experience,

Christopher K. Sokolov
Director of Technology

Sixth Graders publish their own books with Book Creator

Middle School history teacher Wynn Richards empowered students to make their own books on their iPads:

Sixth graders in my classes created myths while studying ancient Greece. They made them in groups, which added an interesting element. Each group found pictures that illustrated their myths, then emailed everything to me. I have the Book Creator app on my iPad and I imported the myths and pictures to create a class book. At first it took time to estimate how much text could fit on each page, because the text does not flow from page to page. I soon got the hang of it and it was fun to put the book all together!

Please check out the two books we made (shared in PDF format):

6-1 Greek Myths

6-2 Greek Myths

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

The new iPad - First impression

We received a couple new iPads today to review and prepare for the next academic year. Middle School Technology Facilitator shares her first impression:

iPad 3 or "new" iPad? While I am not sure of the name, I am sure that it has gotten my attention! After spending just a few hours with the new, nifty device I can say that the display really is clearer. Before gazing into its retina display for myself, I thought that it was just hype (I mean, "retina display"? Who talks like that?). It's not hype. Crystal clear, even without my readers! I then tried the the voice to print feature. At first, I thought that it wasn't working and even said so out loud. Was I surprised to see my doubts printed across the page! I look forward to more feature exploration!

Kali Baird

Reinventing the Textbook with iBooks Author

Middle School Teacher Mirza Khan is our pioneer using iBooks Author. Today's post describes his first use of an iBooks textbook he created — less than a week after Apple released their iBooks Author tool:

Recently Apple introduced a series of iBook textbooks designed for the iPad. At the same time they released the software for Mac OS that allows you to make your own. These iBook textbooks include smart layouts, text, interactive pictures, videos, glossaries, highlighting and note-taking programs. These are books that move, interact, and come alive. And, as is the case with the exemplary Life on Earth by E.O. Wilson, they can be quite beautiful.

Like many of us, I have been making “textbooks” for years - first by stapling together packets of Xeroxed handouts, but later by making class websites and such. So I was very excited about the new software and spent my weekend making a textbook to introduce into my eighth grade class.

This afternoon I used the textbook in class for the first time. And I think I might have learned more than the students. Here are some of the key lessons:

Lesson One – Have a backup plan: Being a large file, my iBook took a long time to download. And many of the students needed to run an update just to open it. These are the normal birth pangs of any new technology in the classroom. And luckily I had a short writing assignment for the wait. But twenty minutes into class only half of my students had completed the download.

Lesson Two – Be willing to change: With only half of the class possessing my iBook, I divide the class into pairs. Each pair shared one textbook and together they read a chapter and took notes. It wasn’t the original plan, but I was happy that they were able to work together, discuss, and interact.

Lesson Three – An iBook is a book: The iBook is a wonderfully reinvented textbook, but it is still just a book. After the class had read their chapters, watched their embedded videos, interacted with images, highlighted and taken notes, we where in the same place as every teacher and every class: What do we do with the information we have read? How do we make sense out of it? How do we integrate it toward some conclusion that is relevant to us and our world?

iParents in the Classroom event

Our Head of School, Dr. David Behrs, highlights our "iParents in the Classroom" event which was held this week on our campus.  Dr. Behrs was pivotal in unifying the leadership of our School in all three divisions around the promise of integrated technology in the curriculum utilizing the iPad as our digital tool of choice:

Dr. Behrs welcoming families

We just concluded our "iParents in the Classroom" night. I am so proud of our students, faculty, and staff for developing and executing this informative program for parents. When we began integrating technology further into our classroom this year with our 1-to-1 student iPad program, we knew it would transform teaching and learning by building on the strong student-centered learning we foster at San Domenico. I don't think we fully appreciated the impact or how well the iPads would work in our classrooms. Every day I walk around this campus and see exciting projects and teaching occurring with lots of social group work that is so engaging.

This coming year we are going to continue to grow our integrated technology program in age appropriate ways. In addition to iPads in grades 6-12, we will have a 1-to-1 program in grades 4 & 5, an iPad cart in 3rd grade, and expanded iPad stations in K, 1, and 2.  Our "iTeach 2012" event in June (www.sandomenico.org/iteach2012) will bring educators from around the country to our campus to benefit from our leadership and experience from this pivotal year.

It's difficult to express the energy of this great evening.  Much like a traditional science fair, tables around the room featured students who demonstrated all kinds of apps and how they're used in (and out!) of the classroom.  A video montage from the evening gives a taste of the students' enthusiasm and engagement.


I want to give special thanks to all the students who showcased their amazing work; their families for supporting their participation; the all-school technology committee who coordinated everyone's amazing efforts, and and all our faculty & staff. What a wonderful community we have here at San Domenico!

My very best,

Dave Behrs

iWalking @sandomenico!

Kali Baird, Middle School science teacher and technology facilitator, has been instrumental in the success of our 1-to-1 integrated technology program.  She recently took a walk through the classrooms during a prep period:

After a full semester of iPads in our classrooms, I decided to hit the hallways and check out the scene to see what I could see. I knew that the teachers were integrating technology and had an overall sense that things were going well but needed a clearer picture.

In Valerie Davis’ 6^th grade math class, she has her iPad on a stand and is projecting the latest concept in math via iAnnotate (@iAnnotate). As she explains the steps to her students she is also writing notes. The students are either viewing the worksheet of problems or taking notes, in Noteshelf (@noteshelf), on their iPads. The feeling in her classroom is uncomplicated. In other words, the ease with which the students use their iPad as a math tool is impressive.

As I walk in to Rob Shashoua’s 7^th Spanish class, he informs me that they are just wrapping up their iPad use for the period. Too late for me. But wait! He gets excited and switches gears in class. He asks the students to go to the app store and download the new app, Rover, which allows access to sites that use Flash to be played on the iPad (@theroverapp). The Spanish textbook is aligned with the website Classzone.com which has several interactive features that use Flash to re-enforce learning and vocabulary. It took the students literally under five minutes to get the app downloaded and onto the chapter that they are studying.

Entering Wynn Richard’s 6^th grade history class, all is silent! The students have their iPads docked on external keyboards and are typing their Ancient India stories. I ask the students about this project. They first did research and note taking on their iPads to gather information and images which would help them write detailed stories from the perspective of a selected caste. Part of this activity involved viewing maps of the different regions and photos of different caste members, and using Google Earth to really see the geography of the area. The goal of this project is to combine the students’ final stories into an eBook to be shared with the whole class. Exciting!

As I walk back to my classroom, I am thinking about what I have seen and also how many tours we have recently hosted. When a tour comes through, we really want them to be able to see what it is that makes San Domenico such a high quality school. On the Middle School tour, parents walk into my classroom to hear a bit about our foray into technology integration. I realize at that moment that our “everyday technology attire” is so amazing that it is like our “Sunday best!”

iPad adventures in Spanish class

Middle School Spanish instructor Deborah Fugate shares her experience in 1-to-1 iPad teaching in her classes and shares "radio announcements" from some of her students:

August of 2011 seems so long ago … summer vacation was at an end, and I was facing five days of iPad training and worrying that I (who learned to type on a manual typewriter) would be teaching these kids about iPads. I was nervous and excited about learning something new. What excited me most? The prospect of not spending (endless) hours at the photocopier every time we began a new lesson and not seeing disorganized binders, loose papers lying around, and not hearing, “I lost my handout,” or “I was absent and didn’t get that.”

Almost five months have passed. Now, when friends, former students or family members ask me (with envy) how I like my iPad, I find myself launching into full ‘teacher mode’ giving a tutorial on the basics, explaining the difference between the iPad vs. a laptop, and exclaiming the virtues of teaching/learning with the new technology. I sound like ‘quite the expert’ -- I’m not!

My learning curve has been on the slower end compared to some of the other teachers (at least it feels that way), but that’s O.K. (or so the resident experts tell me). I know plenty … for now, and I learn something new every week. Uploading documents to Box, receiving, grading, and returning assignments, using various apps (like NoteShelf, Flash Cards, iCalendar, Quick Voice) are all second nature now. I want to become proficient with the iMovie but there is almost no incentive because the students already know how to use it.

I laugh at some of my last year’s lesson plans that required students to cut and paste (scissors and glue stick) vocabulary lists into their composition books; now, they download them into their Spanish E-binder that has several sub-folders, one of which is called Vocabulario, and they make notes, draw pictures, or respond in some way to the new words. Another ‘old’ assignment was to make flash cards (yes, using index cards), a time-consuming and dreaded task for most; now they use a flash card app and download words from Quizlet (and can’t misplace them). Activities I used to love doing suddenly seem as old-fashioned as the typewriter.

Teaching culture with the iPad is another plus. Introducing a new country is so much more fun using Google images and/or youtube in the class room.  Foods, places, or animals like matambre, cazabe, patacones, tortilla española, El Morro, San Termo, La Sagrada Familia, sloths, oropendulas, howler monkeys, or artwork by Cándido Bidó and others appear with a tap of the screen; it’s as close as they’re going to get to ‘being there’ without actually being there! The group excitement generated around these images and video streams is genuine, and the images ‘stick.’ So simple.

Students are currently researching a genre of music, composer or vocal artist/band for their cultural report and for the first time, I realized that now I can give them class time for this. Yesterday, they pulled out headphones and got to work listening to this or that piece deciding what was most interesting, making notes about each, and I was amazed at how focused they were. Ironically, the room became very quiet. In the ‘old’ days, we had to reserve a spot in the library, go to the library (with books, binders), remove laptops from cart, find a spot to sit and then wait several minutes for them to boot up, and make sure we had enough headphones – not very effective (or fun, I might add).

Small groups of seventh graders made radio ads for an imaginary sporting goods store. Collaborating and taking notes on the iPad is much more fun and interesting than writing on paper; all members of the group stay focused and contribute equally. They shared in the ‘delivery’ of the ad, and if they made a mistake, they recorded it until it they were satisfied. They feel encouraged to practice more because they get instant feedback. They e-mail me their recording, and we all listen to the radio ads together. Truthfully, any project becomes more challenging and fun if they know they’ll be recording or filming it.

Stay tuned for more iPad adventures in Spanish class!

Apple shakes things up.. again!

Apple made a series of exciting announcements today related to education that are worth serious reflection in the coming days. When we committed to integrating technology in the curriculum with a 1-to-1 student iPad program, our teachers and leadership saw a natural connection with San Domenico's integrated sustainability curriculum. Handouts and assignments can be "passed out" to students and "returned" to teachers digitally without being printed.

Further, traditional textbooks -- with their weight, cost, and limitations -- seem ripe for iPad replacement. We have been successfully using HMH Fuse Algebra 1 in Algebra classes but few similar products have existed. Our faculty have experimented with moving "beyond" the textbook with course web pages or collections of material hosted in our cloud.

Apple, today, announced a series of new products that continue to push the iPads effectiveness as a textbook replacement. iBooks Textbooks promises to give us easier access to traditional textbook content on the iPad with a compelling interface. iBooks Author looks like it will give our own faculty the opportunity to take their own work and make it available on our students' iPads with a real Multi-Touch interface.

We don't yet understand all the implications of these announcements yet. I was excited that the infrastructure of the Volume Purchase Program does work with textbooks but I'm not certain how to deploy books to hundreds of iPads quite yet. One thing seems clear to me: the new offerings look strong and will do what Apple often does best: shake things up.

I welcome your comments and thoughts on today's news!

Christopher K. Sokolov

Revolutionary iMovies

Eighth grade San Domenico Students in Wynn Richards' history classes produced short iMovies using iPads on a range of topics while studying the American Revolution. Students used the newscast iMovie theme to create exciting interviews and breaking-news style broadcasts on the Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, signing of the Declaration of Independence, women during wartime, and unfair taxation. They incorporated photos, video clips, green screens, titles, sounds, and scriptwriting in the final products. Those with editing and filming skills taught the others. Everyone was engaged and had a lot of fun with this group project!

Journey to the Center of the Earth.. with iPads!

Sixth graders recently completed a science project that featured student iPads integrated naturally.  Kali Baird, Middle School Science Teacher and Technology Facilitator shared two examples of student iMovies and a description of the lesson unit:

"Sixth grade science students have recently completed a model Earth project in the classroom. They first read about the interior and surface features of the Earth followed by class discussions, guided digital worksheets, Google Earth and USGS exploration. The students brought in supplies to work in a group to create a model Earth using various items. They were required to take photos/brief videos as they created their models. As a project enrichment and wrap-up, students created an iMovie or a PowerPoint that showcased the model making process supported by vocabulary terms specific to parts of the Earth. It served to reinforce concepts that they had studied in a media that they enjoy - some spent an inordinate amount of time selecting the perfect soundtrack to go with their presentation!"

10 Minutes with iPads in the Library

As the learning hub of the school, the library serves hundreds of students daily as they read, research, word-process, email, copy and print. With the adoption of our 1-to-1 iPad program this year we wanted to assess how students use this new educational tool during a recent study hall for the middle school and 'free' period for the high school. From the following "snapshots", all taken within 10 minutes of each other on Thursday, Nov. 10th, it is apparent that the iPad is a valuable (and enjoyable) option for student learning.

Algebra Word Problems                         High School Research Project                   Reading E-Books

Mapping                                                        Typing a Paper                                              Science Notes

Creating a Photo Collage                          Creating a Quiz                                           Watching a Movie

All the students photographed were working or reading independently on projects of their choosing. As can be seen by the wide variety of uses, the 1-to-1 program has been integrated fully with the Middle School and High School curriculum.

—Scott Fletcher, Library Director

Paperport Notes (née Noterize) enables core student tasks

Students in our 1-to-1 iPad program use Paperport Notes
to take notes, annotate documents, record audio

The iPad impacts learning and studying in many ways that are transformative. New uses are energizing and exciting. Yet it is also good for us to review past choices with our 1-to-1 student iPad program and our app choices. There are some basic tasks for students where tablet computing excels:

• Organizing PDF and other documents: handouts, articles, assignments;
• Critical reading and annotating: making notes in the text and margin while reading, creating an active relationship with the text;
• Taking notes by either typing or handwriting with a stylus or finger.

One app that we have had as part of our core "toolbox" for our students is Noterize. We made Noterize available to our students because it combined the functions listed above in one, easy-to-use app. Further, it functions well with Box, the cloud file storage system we use. Better yet, it became free in the summer of 2011. While it has not been a perfect tool for our students -- some students experienced the app crashing with loss of homework -- for many, it has been effective.

Noterize disappeared from the App Store a few weeks ago and has reappeared with a new company and a new name: Paperport Notes. There are a few new interesting note-sharing features that are not directly relevant to our student community this year but are worth investigating. We're also hoping that some bug fixes made it into this revision. We're hopeful this is a first step towards a larger update. But don't get me wrong: Paperport Notes, especially at it's free cost, is definitely worth investigating!

Do you use or like Paperport Notes? Or have an alternative app that you love? Please comment below!

Note taking and the iPad

Middle School math teacher Brooke Gelber shared with us a reflection on note taking in her classrooms and how the iPad is impacting learning and teaching in this area:

"Note taking has long been a source of discussion in my classroom. It is, no doubt, a useful skill to have. As a teacher, I am committed to a curriculum that goes beyond math and into skills that students will take with them into the world as we send them off to high school, college, life... Furthermore, notes are an important tool to be used when completing homework, or preparing for a quiz or test. But note taking is a challenge for some students. While some absorb as they are recording, some are distracted by it, fall behind, and get lost in just copying while missing the "meat" of the lesson. So what to do?

Enter the iPad.... During class, I instruct while projecting notes using Noteshelf. Students are given a choice to take notes or not, and asked to think critically whether the process of recording helps them or hinders. At the end of class, with a few quick taps, I email the notes to all students and they decide what to do with them. Many save them in folders or make books out of them in Noteshelf, others delete. Even students who took notes, tend to save them as an additional reference piece and/or a way to check their own notes. The best part? Even those who chose to watch, are still learning the skill of note taking, through modeling, as they watch how I organize and record my notes, so that when they are ready, they can do it themselves!"