5C iPad Pilot at ASF Day by Day

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

First Day with iPads!

Today, the students received the iPads that we have been so patiently waiting for this year. There was a lot of excitement in the air, as the students opened the boxes. Unfortunately, we only received 16, but since a few students have been bringing their iPads from home, only a couple had to share.

We spent the first half hour exploring the apps that were already on the iPads. Some iPads had a large collection of apps such as Scrabble, Elements, Pages, and Garage Band, while others did not have anything. It was evident that we needed to somehow make the apps. available on the different iPads more uniform. Students began to download a collection of apps. that I thought would be useful in class and FREE. These apps. were then organized in folders. The applications downloaded included:

Reference
Wikipanion
Dictionary
Discover
World Book This Day in History
Constitution for iPad
BrainPOP
Google Earth
NASA App HD
AppStart
News
CNN
BBC News
AP News
ABC News
Eyewitness
Reforma
USA Today
Huff Post
NY Times
Utilities
Dropbox
Min to Go
Nightstand
Skype

Calculator 4
Dictation Dragon
Typing Test
TeamViewerHD
Books
ICDL
iBooks (download Alice in Wonderland free)
iFlow Reader
Garfield ED
Online Safety
Forms of Media
Cyberbullying
Fact or Opinion
Math ED

Number Line
TanZen Lite
Pearl Diver
Math Gr5 Lite
ArithmeTick Flash Cards
Geometry Test
Math Tutor Lite

LA ED
Vocabulary Bubble
Spelling Made Simple Lite
Miss Spell's Class
iSpeak, iSpell HD
Spelling Free
FreeGrammar
Word Abacus
Words Free
Hang Genius

Writing ED
Verses Poetry
Story Kit
Wordventure!
Story Builder

Science ED
3D CellStain
101 Science
Science Lab

History ED
Pass the Past
Westward Expansion
Our Virgina Jamestown
US Citizenship

Drawing
Doodle Buddy
Draw
Music
JamPad Lite

Puzzles
BrainGames
ArtPuzzles
Gravity HD
Slice It! Free
Now, if I could just get the outlet power strips, they'd be charged for tomorrow!

Wednesday, April 13th

The second day with the iPads the students were even more eager to use them than the day before.  Today, we changed the language on all the iPads to English, since it is bad enough to have to decipher the meaning of the pop up windows in one language, but in two it is downright confusing. We also added our ASF email account, and downloaded Garfield comic strips on Internet Safety and Cyberbullying.  The students were asked to read the comic strips and discuss their importance.  Then they watched a video on Blogging at the BrainPop app. and took the quiz.  The students took a screen shot of their scores by pushing both the power button and iPad button at the same time and emailed me the photo so I could record their score in Power Teacher. 

Once the students finished the above tasks, they were asked to check their email accounts to find the invitation to participate in our 5C iPad Pilot Blog, and to sign in and post a blog.  I felt a bit frustrated and overwhelmed with the amount of students complaining that they did not have internet, their email accounts were not working, or they couldn't type at the Blog.  The solutions were simple.  Go outside for a better signal or renew the lease of WaveLan to get internet.  Check that the email, password, or server is written correctly for the email problems.  At the blog site students had to type at the Edit HTML link, not compose, to type their blog.  Although the solutions were simple, if you do not know about them beforehand frustration builds.

The iPads are low now with 20%-30% charge.  I really need those power strips that were suppose to be delivered to my room. Iwill go back with Maintenance today and ask about them.

Thursday, April 14th 

Since Maintenance told me that the Storage Room (Almacen) will have to give me my power strips, I just brought them from home.  However the the plugs are too large to use all 6 outlets, so I need a strip that is side by side outlets, and not top to bottom outlets.  I will go with the Storage Room to ask today. The good news is that I can charge the iPads while they are locked in my closet.  Or at least as soon as I get the power strips I will be able to, since the closet door will shut with the cord going under the door.

The DLC lent me an adapter that is suppose to let me project my iPad onto the projector screen, but it did not work.  I will check with them again about doing this.

Enough with the technical difficulties.  Today the students used Safari to find specific sites, entered the ASF passwords, and then Linked the Site to their iPad Screen. Doing this gives them immediate access to the site without having to remember the url address or the usernames and passwords associated with the site.  After linking the sites, they were organized in folders: encyclopedia and ASF sites. We linked: 5C iPad Pilot Blog, EasyBib, Encyclopedia Britannica, Grolier Online, EBSCO, Newsbank, Google Docs, and Google Sites.  During exhibition time, some students used their iPads to film interviews (the ones who brought iPad 2s from home) or type in notes, and the ones that stayed in class used the linked sites to research their topic.

Friday, April 15th

Today, the students worked on their Google Site of their 5th grade experience which is an electronic portfolio that includes videos, photos, writing samples, learning styles, Excel graphs of Computational Fluency Growth, and writing samples.  We wanted to upload a pdf file of their scanned NWEA growth report from their email to Google Docs, and then insert the document into their Google Site portfolio, but we had some difficulties.  So the students used a laptop to edit their Google Site, and used the i Pad to review their site.   After updating their electronic portfolio and reflecting on their growth, the student used the i Pads to research their exhibition topic.