Who's Got Your iPad Backup? And Other App News

We want to use this opportunity to remind students about some important settings on your iPad and how we would like you to have them configured. We also want to explain a change to the QuickOffice App and how that affects your use of this tool.

iPad cloud settings

Back up Settings: 

Students should be using iCloud to back up their data. To verify this or make changes, go to the Settings option and tap on iCloud. Please make sure they have these iCloud settings turned on: Contacts, Calendars, Safari, Documents & Data, and Find My iPad. Photo Stream, and Notes are optional. Photo Stream tends to take up a large portion of your iCloud storage so please be aware of the amount of data you are backing up there. If students save information in Notes, then iCloud back up should be turned on for Notes. iCloud back up of Notes does require an iCloud E-mail address. Please know that this account is not part of the San Domenico School domain and would not be controlled by the restrictions we place on our San Domenico School E-mail system.

Notability cloud settings

Notability is another app students can automatically backup to their BOX or GOOGLE DRIVE accounts. To set this backup option open the Notability App. From the main page tap on the gear icon in the lower left corner. Then select "Online Storage." From here students can select either BOX or GOOGLE DRIVE. Notability will automatically create a folder and save all of your Notes in the Portable Document Format (pdf). 

Note: iCloud may be turned on here as well - some students have restrictions and may not have the iCloud option available which is OK since they are now backing up to BOX or GOOGLE DRIVE.

Finally, the Quick Office App is used by some middle school students at San Domenico School to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Recent changes in the Quick Office App require us to make some changes in how we use the software. 

Basically, we will be removing the current version of this App and replace it with the new version. However, those students who are currently using their Quick Office App and have files stored on their iPad will need to move them to Box or Google Drive before removing this App.

Old Quick Office cloud settings 

6th grade students should just delete the app as they have not used it this year.

7th and 8th grade students must move any items saved onto the iPad via the App into either BOX or DRIVE. To save and move these items select your iPad in the left column of the main Quick Office window. Then drag and drop your files to either BOX or DRIVE options on the left. 

New Quick Office cloud settings

Once you have completed the process to move all your files to one of your cloud storage areas please delete the app and install the new version from self-service. Once you have the new App installed you have access to Google Drive, ONLY. However, you can still create docs, spreadsheets and presentations.

If you would like assistance with this process or need help as you walk through it, please contact the Technology Team at techsupport@sandomenico.org.

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

Student Centered Learning with iPads in Global Studies

Dr. Justin Suran, high school teacher and technology facilitator, shared this classroom unit with us:

At the end of October, the students in my ninth-grade Global Studies class chose research topics from a list of possible topics on ancient India (e.g., “Aryan gods and goddesses” or “Chandragupta Maurya”) and ancient China (e.g., “bronze casting” or “Legalism”).  In a series of assignments, each student formulated a research question, found and took notes on several online sources, and wrote a works cited entry for each source.

I published each student’s research question on our Global Studies website, along with a one-paragraph synopsis of each report:

https://sites.google.com/a/sandomenico.org/globalstudies/resources/unit-two/ancient-india

https://sites.google.com/a/sandomenico.org/globalstudies/resources/unit-two/ancient-china

These student-authored synopses became a kind of “textbook” for our unit on India and China.  Each student also presented her findings in an in-class report.  Students created PowerPoint presentations using the Quickoffice app and projected their slides directly from their iPads. Ultimately, I used information from the in-class presentations and written synopses to write a series of multiple-choice questions for our summative assessments.

While some students may have benefited from a more structured, teacher-centered approach, most students rose to the challenge and learned a lot from the assignment.  They framed interesting and meaningful research questions, found reliable sources, and taught the rest of us what they had learned. In the process of writing their presentations and learning from one another, they learned to see themselves as co-creators of historically significant (and test-worthy!) knowledge.