Plenty of great discussion at our recent group session on 29 August.
We covered a lot of ground in this session:
- talking about the potential of using tablets in the classroom
- different ways to store passwords
- what to do with the teacher resource wiki
- the network drive for students is UP
- an idea of using google+ communities to connect different groups of students
Tablets
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How to choose (android vs iPad vs microsoft). Criteria could include, for example:
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battery life, apps, fitzroy readers (available on iOs only).
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What could we do with them?
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read (web, articles, stories), write (documents), listen (mp3), speak (eg skype),
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make things like video, presentations, documents,
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take photos, record audio, share documents,
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Will they suit our learners?
- What about this idea of getting 1 or 2 rather than a full class set? The idea is to explore possibilities, and then make a business case for getting the full set.
Related resources: someone in Queensland created this collection of mobile apps for language and literacy learning: “Love Apptually“.
Student drive: is up!
In the computer room, the S: drive is back online. You can make a folder for your students to save their work. This could make it easier to access the printer (open the same file from any computer), and also to share documents with students (put the file in the class folder).
Polling:
So many different apps for doing polling with students, for example
- Marg was telling us about one called poll everywhere,
- Shruti has recommended socrative – which has mobile apps as well as web,
- quizlet is also popular – but looks limited to me,
- ..and google forms we’ve looked at here before.
Resources:
- Assunta uses and recommends this site: ISL Collective. Teachers contribute resources they’ve used in class.
- Worksheet generators can be a good way to extend a theme or topic, to recycle the vocabulary students are already using. Michael has used these sites: SEN teacher, Tools for Educators, Worksheet Genius, A to Z Teacher Stuff. You’ll find things like crosswords, word search, word shapes, letter mashup, literacy dice, bingo boards, language dominoes, cloze activities, board games, mixed up sentences.
- Joyce has a login (After School Tutoring) for studyladder,
- Someone mentioned mathletics at this point.
- Assunta has a compiled list of resources that teachers built up a while ago. We’ve put this into the dropbox in this folder: DropboxLalorLLCDigitalLearningTeacher Resources (compiled by Assunta).doc You can add more resources any time you like.
Would any of these be useful for you? Have we missed one? Or would you like more information? Share your ideas in the comments below.
Google plus communities?
- Paul R had this great idea to use google+ communities as a way to share information with student groups. (Google+ communities are a bit like facebook or twitter, but more visual and more well-organised, in my opinion.)
- if you want a google account but not a gmail, you can create a google account with your existing email address here: http://goo.gl/tnwiwz (look for the bit that says “I prefer to use my current email address”.
- To follow up: Marg was interested in Paul’s suggestion of creating a “news-watch” based on theme. (But I don’t know how to do this – anyone?)
Storing passwords:
It seems everyone has this problem these days. Too many different passwords. How do you manage yours? Many people use a paper book stored next to the computer, or stored.. wait a minute, where did i put it?
I’ve been using a portable app known as “KeePass”. This app can run from your USB stick (look for the portable version on the download page).
So, on my USB stick i have:
a) the file full of my passwords,
b) the app used to open that file.
I’ve found this a great way to store passwords. But i must remember the master password to open the file, and I have to back up the file regularly.
Let me know if you would like a demonstration!
Plus: things that need fixing (IT dept!) :
- wikispaces on laptops and in student computer room
- dropbox on laptops (multiple login for teachers coming soon).
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Image credits: (1) Juhan Sonin (2) Steve Paine (creative commons at flickr).