Sites

I can see how having a website personalized to the classroom could be of great benefit. If you want it to be, it can function as an online syllabus for parents to keep track of things going on in the classroom. I know for my own kids, I have pieces of paper all over the place with contact information, classroom calendars, newsletters and homework assignments.  This is a great resource to have all of those things handy in one spot.

When designing my page, I tried to make it as if I were a kindergarten teacher.   Obviously I did not have a real school to put links to, etc, so I just used some fun clip art (free clip art...although I know you still have to be careful about that.  I would not use it on a real site) and made up staff name for the contact information.  I used lavender and purple as my background colors because, well...that is my favorite color and since it is a make-beleive school, I chose what I liked.  However, if making a site for a real school, I would have used school colors and pictures of the school along with a link to the school website and school calendar as well as just my classroom calendar.

I used a Google calendar gadget for my widget.  I added a few pretend field trips and events to correlate with the announcements page.  I also used sidebars and multiple page formats to experiment with the different types.  On my contacts page, I wanted to put a box around the information in each column but could not figure out how.  So, the information is divided into columns but I think boxes would enhance the page and organize the information to be more visually pleasing.

I added in Google Drawings in a couple of places.  It took me quite a while to get them sized to fit where I wanted them to go, but finally got my book-a-pillar to fit!  (I drew the caterpillar from Google Drawings!!)

I also got to experiment with organizing the order of the pages on the site list.  I created pages as they came to mind and then had to go back under the manage tab and figure out how to reorganize them so they would flow.

I made a "birthday" column.  In a real class, I might use the first names of the students after getting permission from the parents.

Overall, I enjoyed making this site and hope to get to use it as a kindergarten teacher someday!!

Here is the link to my site:

https://sites.google.com/site/mrsbroaddusclassroom/

Drawing

Well, I think what I confirmed most out of this assignment is that I am not an artist!! Thank you for not making us share our work!  However, if you had the creativity, Google Drawings could be a lot of fun. I was especially amazed at the artist that was able to re-create Goofy in the YouTube video.  I explored with many of the shapes, colors and line options.  I attempted to draw a map!

Google drawings has the ability to produce a wide range of visual documents, such as flow charts, custom graphs, posters and graphic designs.  These documents can be published using a unique URL. Google drawings has the ability to share real-time creations, which according to our reading, Microsoft cannot compete with. One website suggested that Adobe Illustrator would take hours of tutorials before being able to create a document.  However, that is not the case with Google Drawings.  Google Drawings is easy enough you can begin to work on it immediately. And, it is Free!!  When creating your document, Google Drawings offers tools to help make your work percise, such as spacing and alignment guides.

For students, Google Drawings can help organize ideas when working on a presentation or when beginning the writing process.  The sharing feature allows the document to be viewed, edited or commented on by the people it has been shared with. This can be beneficial in a collaborative project.  Another website suggested that you could create drawings to enhance a lesson and then export the drawings into Google Presentations. It should be noted that once the project is published, it is no longer open to the edit options.  A teacher might want to use this option when providing a visual aid to share with the class.

As was demonstrated in the lesson plan we were asked to review, Google Drawings can be beneficial for exploring math concepts.  Students can manipulate shapes by rotating and flipping them.  They can use shapes to create designs and then label the shapes they used.  This activity can help not only explore how to manipulate shapes but also help increase exposure to mathematic vocabulary.

I can envision many uses for Google Drawings in the classroom.  Even as a young elementary student, I have seen story organizers come home in my son's homework.  Google Drawings is just one more tool to help to enhance the learning experience in this digital kids age.

Apps

iPad Literacy

•     Preparation Section:

I previewed both Dictionary and Merriam Webster dictionaries.  Although both had very similar features, I liked the Merriam Webster dictionary a tiny bit better.  The Merriam Webster dictionary offered synonyms and an example sentence on the same page as the definition.  Both apps would speak the word so you could hear the pronunciation, which is a very nice feature.  Both apps also offered a favorites list and a recently used list.

I also previewed My Spelling Test app. I could see very practical educational applications for this app.  Digital kids would most likely enjoy doing spelling practice on an app like this rather than traditional pencil and paper practice.  Practicing spelling this way seems more like playing a game than doing work.  The YouTube video had a testimonial from a teacher and a student. The teacher enjoyed the fact that the student could work independently and the student enjoyed using the technology for learning.  One nice thing about this app is that you can customize the spelling list.  This app can have practical application in the classroom as you can use it for your classroom’s spelling list.  This app also could be using on an interactive whiteboard, enhancing the abilities to use this app and capture student’s attention.

• ·      Presentations:

Educreations is an interactive whiteboard app.  Educreation gives you the opportunity to record a lesson. This app is a good way to individualize a lesson for a student and also to have a recorded document of the lesson in case students need to hear the lesson again. This app gives you the ability to use color in your lesson, which could be helpful in a math situation where you have multiple steps. Pictures can be inserted into your document if they are helpful to what you are teaching. You can use pictures from your library or take a picture to use.  You can also have multiple pages so that if your lesson has multiple points, you can have a page for each.  Educreations had editing features that can be used, such as zoom, rotate and annotations. Annotations can be helpful if you are making a study guide because you can underline, circle, X-out things. One neat thing about Educreations is that if you do not have an iPad, you can do this right off of the Educreation website.

• ·      Stories

The PuppetPals app was very interesting.  Students or teachers could use this app to create a story to enhance a lesson or just to experiment with creativity.  By picking characters and backgrounds, you could create many different types of stories. You can record your voice while moving the puppets around on the background. You have the ability to pause so that you can change your characters or backgrounds in order to make the transition smoother. If you do not see a character or scene you want, you can use file-sharing options to use your own characters or backgrounds from iTunes. The movies can be exported to your camera role for further use.  Right now, the process to upload your specialized settings is a little cumbersome.  However, according to the YouTube video, they are working on ways to make it easier. The downside I found to this app was that you cannot go back in and edit your puppet show. In addition to this version of PuppetPals, I also found Bible Buddies. It is the same format as Puppet Pals but uses Bible characters.

iPad Disciplines

• Languages Arts:

For language arts, I previewed, and later purchased at home on my personal iPad, Auracle.  I liked several features about this app.  I liked the fact that you could preview the stories before committing to buy them.  One thing I have found with purchasing books online is that many times, we get the story and there is something in its content that I prefer my kids not read or the title catches our attention but the story is not so exciting.  It is nice to get to try the book first. This is not a feature found in all story apps.  Next, I like the three reading options. The books can be read traditionally-you read the book, or you the iPad will read the book to you.  There are two options with having the book read.  One option is that the child can turn the pages at their own pace.  Sometimes, after reading a page, it is nice to be able to ponder the picture.  However, for kids that are not quite ready to be in charge of turning the pages on their own, you can choose the autoplay option and the book pages will automatically turn after being read.  

• Mathematics:

I previewed the Math Drill's app for mathematics.  In elementary school, I think it is important to lay a good foundation for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Just as I mentioned in the write-up for the spelling app, I think an iPad app for something that used to just be a pencil and paper activity, or classroom drills on a chalkboard, just makes the learning process more fun!  This app is simply old fashion math drills. It even looks like chalk on a chalkboard.  If you miss an answer, it gives you the opportunity to go back and correct it, showing what you had put previously.  I also liked the aspect of familiarizing students with using a number pad, as they have to enter their answer on the number pad and then press the enter symbol.  I have a testimonial from a 7-year-old boy that this app is a good way to learn math and is better than the math papers he had to do in class.  I could see this app being used in a learning center.  It is a good activity that could be done independently.  And...I have learned through observation that sometimes you may learn your user knows a lot more than you thought they did!!  In this way, it can help you to know when your student is ready to move on to something else. 

• Social Studies:

I previewed Stack the States (I know it said not available for summer 2013, but I looked it up on my own iPad).   This app was a fun way for kids to learn the placement of states and facts about the states.  Again, this app provides a fun way to learn these facts.  I like the way they animated the states to make them look fun.  However, as I use this app, I see that it might not be most appropriate for lower elementary students.  Students need to have a knowledge of state capitals and basic state information in order to play this game. They also need to have the ability to read the questions if they are going to play independently.  

I also did some experimenting with Google Maps.  I know we had a presentation regarding this app in class, so I will not re-write what we have already heard, but I did install it on my iPad and have had many conversations with my children about the world map thanks to this app. 

• Conclusion:

It dawns on me, as I look at so many of these apps that help students learn independently, how effective iPads can be for learning centers.  I know from the limited amount of substitute teaching I have done that one teacher in a classroom is many times pulled from group to group and learning centers are not always as effective as they might be. Providing an activity that you know is a core education standard to be done in centers can really help enhance the learning process.  

GOOGLE FORMS

Well, I have to say, I had a much easier time creating this form.  It was actually kind of fun!  Thank you for the detailed lecture and example in class.
Google Forms can have many applications which will be discussed below:
     Gone are the days of having to pull out the red pen and hand-grade your student's tests!!  Teachers can use these forms to administer tests and analyze the responses given on a test, as demonstrated in our assignment for this week. While I only created a multiple choice test, I did experiment with the other test question options.  Teachers can create tests/quizzes in many forms, depending on what kind of response they are looking for.
     Forms can also be used for other types of evaluation. They have the options of keeping track of behavior, grades, progress, student information survey's and parent survey's.  Teachers can even keep track of these things via their mobile devices.
     It is also a good way to follow student's strengths and weaknesses.  This could be beneficial for faculty meetings or even parent-teacher meetings. Having an ongoing record of the student's progress makes the meetings more efficient.
     Forms are not only beneficial for teachers and administrators, but also students.  As a part of the Common Core, students will need to be able to use this technology to prepare for college and possible careers.  Anchor standard 1 discusses using digital data-gathering techniques and how it can save time as well as prepare students for the future.
     In a world where we have become accustom to instant information, this is just another way that we can provide instant feedback to our students, instant analyzation of the responses we get back, and have instant information at our finger tips in case we need to convey it.

URL of Sample Test:
<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KfsQ3sGHv6Ro_wgq06c2maHVq_3-S2BytSI7dI67zS8/viewform?embedded=true" width="760" height="500" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0">Loading...</iframe>

URL of Sample Test Spreadsheet
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmCb6csWKhr6dEtXSEVrczZ1dGR5cXRha0tvdUVoN2c&usp=sharing

Apple versus Microsoft Applications and a few other things....

Apple's Pages, Keynote and Numbers all function very similar to Microsoft's Word, PowerPoint and Excel.  In fact, not having used the Apple applications prior to this assignment, it was hard to point out too many differences in the programs just based on the tutorials.  I did notice that Apple's programs seem to be very intuitive.  This is not a new realization, as I have always found Apple products to be easy to use.  However, I would say that in some cases, you might have to figure out what the icon is representing before realizing it is intuitive.  For example, I might not have thought the paint brush icon on Pages to be where I would find the editing tools.  However, when I stop and give it a little bit of thought, it does make sense.

I do not feel I can adequately speak to any one Apple versus Microsoft application to completion.  However, there are some differences I can point out just by simple observation.  For example, the use of the mouse is not required for iPad applications.  It is nice not to have a peripheral device to keep track of.  Moving pages around and manipulating the menus is easy to do.

In Pages, it appeared to be easy to insert and crop images into a document.  While this is not a difficult task in Word, the ability to just grab the picture, squeeze it together with your hands to resize it or rotate it, seemed simple.   It is also a nice feature that Pages can be put into Google Drive.

For Keynote, there were a couple of features I found to be appealing.  Adding animation appeared to be an easy process and there were many animation options available. In fact, I know of one professor who prefers the options of Keynote (backgrounds, animation, colors, artwork) better than PowerPoint but still prefers to display the presentation in PowerPoint.  I also like the fact that you could use your iPhone as a remote when giving a Keynote presentation.  When looking at the iPhone remote, you could see any notes that you had added to the presentation as well as see each step in the animation chosen for the presentation, as opposed to just having the presentation view as your viewers have.

As for Box.com, I did sign up for an account.  I have experience using Dropbox, as I frequently use it with my transcription business to share large voice files.  I found Box.com to be very similar. An application such as this is a nice way to share either documents that are too large to e-mail, items that you want to remain confidential between you and the person whom you chose to share it, or working collaboratively.  When using the Box, you can edit documents and share them easily.  I know from personal experience that my mother-in-law and husband share a recipe folder.  As cooking is one of their hobbies, they can easily trade recipes and have them on-hand at all times without having to call each other to "get your recipe." Box.com is also available for mobile devices.

When comparing iBooks and Kindle apps, again, they are very similar in function.  However, in order to purchase something through your Kindle app, you do have to log on to Amazon and purchase your reading material there.  This differs from iBooks where you can simply purchase your item from the link which routes through iTunes. Both can be uploaded to the cloud.  I did notice on the tutorial that iBooks allows you to organize your books into customized folders in a very easily.  When researching if this could be done on Kindle, it did not appear there were options beyond organizing by title, author or recent date.

Lastly, Safari and Rover.  Rover is a cloud based streaming system.  It is an answer to Apple not using Adobe Flash.  Safari is a web browsing application used by Apple. One feature I was not aware of when using Safari was the ability to search a document for a particular word. If I am not mistaken, this is just a feature available for iPad.  This feature caught my attention as I can think of times when I have opened a webpage from a Google search looking for a particular phrase and have had to search for the one sentence I needed.

Overall, I think both Apple and Microsoft offer good productivity applications.  I wonder if part of people's preferences is based on what they learned to use first.

My hands-on spreadsheet experience!

Well, I must admit, I am not very proficient in spreadsheet use.  The few times I have attempted to use Excel, I have given up, gotten my calculator out and just added the data myself!  I have mixed emotions about spreadsheet use.  In theory, I know it is supposed to simplify life.  However, I struggle to figure out how to set up the formulas and make it all work correctly.  Then, I spend a bunch of time double checking the spreadsheet's work to make sure I have put the right formulas in.  I know this is just a beginners issue that I need to work out but up until now, I have had minimal use for a spreadsheet, and, as I said, the data that I do keep on it, I just calculate for myself.

That said, I did find this assignment useful.  It forced me to sit down, listen to all the atomic learning lessons about spreadsheets and to dive in and figure out how to use it.  Now, I can think of a couple of ways I can incorporate it into the bookkeeping aspect of my transcription business.  So, I guess I can say, "I learned quite a bit in the embarrassing number of hours I spent on this project!!"

Okay, so on a more formal note, here are some of the things I learned:

• How to set up formulas.  I now have a better grasp on how to write the formulas so that they work. When we started the project, I had no clue how to weight the different assignments.  After some research, and a bit of help from a friend, I now know how to make that happen.
• Formatting.  I had seen fill-color option and boxes used on spreadsheets before, but never taken the time to color code and organize the data.  
• Settings. The tutorials helped explain the importance of setting up your information under the settings tab.  For example, if you are working in currency, you can set the currency tab to default to "United States" and the program will know that you are working in dollars.  That is handy if you are working with collaborators who may not be working with the same currency.  It makes the conversions easier between international collaborations. The time zone setting can also be of benefit for collaborative settings in which collaborators are in different time zones.  For example, if there is a deadline that is to be met, having the time zones coordinated can be of great benefit. 
• Deleting.  If you delete a document from your GoogleDrive page and have synchronized with your desktop, that document will remain on your desktop, possibly in the trash folder, but if down the road you change your mind and need that document, there is a place it can be found.  I particularly like this feature of GoogleDrive because sometimes you want to clean the space that you are working from frequently but it is comforting to know that your document is floating out there somewhere-in this case, your desktop-just in case you change you mind about needing it. 
• Importing.  I learned that you can import documents from Excel.  In fact, in order to double check my work, I used both Google Spreadsheets and Excel.  I imported a portion of my work in attempt to learn a little bit more about both programs. 
• Organizing.  You documents can be organized into folders for easy access. 
• Charts.  I also found the feature to create charts to be very enticing.  With just the click of a button, your spreadsheet data can be converted to a chart.  
• Comments.  I found this to be a nice feature too.  On the attendance/discussion grade that we were required to put in our spreadsheet, I added notes to two of the students scores.  In the field of education, this is a nice feature so that you can remember the circumstances surrounding a particular grade when it is not a "black and white" assignment. 

There are a couple of things I still could not figure out that I would be interested in learning.  For example, it is a very simple thing, but I could not figure out how to re-size columns of data without resizing the entire document.  On that same note, I was not able to resize the titles of my boxes either  :(

So, those are just of few of the highlights I found in this lesson.  Overall, the learning experience came from the hand-on nature of the assignment.  I am a visual learner and doing a project such as this was very beneficial to my learning how to use the technology. 

Tablets in Education

There is a lot of information about how schools have integrated technology into their classrooms and libraries.  It would appear that iPad is overall the favorite tablet. However, many people had good things to say about Nook and Kindle.

Nook has been successful in library settings. One particular librarian's experience was that she was able to personalize the e-book readings for students emotional, social, and academic needs.  This allowed these students to have their own personal library. The benefit to personalizing a students e-books is that you can capture either their interests to promote the love of reading, or you specialize their academic needs for research purposes.

One blog in particular discussed the struggles with paying for the e-books from Barnes and Noble.  Due to purchase order requirements by the school system, the school credit card was used to make the purchases and then the credit card information had to be removed from each device before passing them out to the students.  In order to purchase subsequent material, the information had to be re-entered and re-deleted. While this was not a problem for this librarian, it was an inconvenience.

Another topic discussed was the difficulty or resistance of some teachers to implement the technology in their classroom.  It appeared that the resistance was less significant for iPad users, as iPads are more usable in the classroom, having plug-in capability for a projector and increased apps selection over the competitors.

I found the blog suggesting 103 Interesting Ways to use iPads in the classroom to be very interesting.  Over time, I would like to explore many of these apps.  The apps suggested on this site benefit both students and teachers.  Some of the apps were designed to help teachers track student's progress, develop pin boards and even tutoring. I like the concept of making learning interactive, because it is one more avenue to being able to reach your students.

However, on an opposing note, some discussion centered around whether purchasing an iPad, or any other tablet, for students was beneficial because skills such as keyboarding still needed to be taught and spending money on tablets as opposed to a laptop was not advantageous.  The questions of how useful the iPad could be for applications requiring flash was raised as well.

I also found that users were happy with their Kindle uses, but the same concerns about integrating them into the classroom due to the lack of projection was raised.  It was also discussed that Kindle no longer allows for e-material to be put onto 6 devices using one account.  You must have an account per device, which can cause a bit of stress for administrators, especially those who originally bought this technology under the agreement that you could use this feature.

Some articles suggested that educators purchased Nooks or Kindle to integrate into their schools and once they were able to overcome that hurdle, the desire for more uses of technology grew.  They then had to reevaluate options and procedures used with their technology and in some cases, they moved to a new tablet option.

My personal conclusion after reading through this material is that if you are going to invest the time and money into purchasing a tablet, it only makes sense to go with the tablet (iPad in my opinion) that has the most applications so that even if your primary purpose is only for library use, you have a technology that can be expanded as you are ready to use it for more things.  I think in the long-run, while the initial cost is higher, it will spark the most interest in the technology and will also be more usable to a wide range of people.

Overall, it seemed that while the educators who purchased the respective tablets were happy with their purchases, they still were not confident that that was "The" tablet to buy.  Through reading the articles, I still felt like the question remained, "which is the best?" A question that will probably continue to be asked as schools begin to integrated technology into their institutions.