The iBook Author Project: Transforming the Classroom.

This is a great find.  For those of you lucky enough to be a Mac school, I firmly believe the library needs to promote--prodigiously!--not just the teacher use of iBooks Author, but STUDENT-CREATED iBooks.

I've blogged previously (ad nauseum?) about our iPad Trials  (though, personally, I think it's more of an iBooks Author trial at this point, but it may be expanding).

Basically, for this project, students are researching WW II, specifically some aspect of their home countries' involvement (we're an international school).  Each student will use iBooks Author to create an interactive, illustrated chapter on their topic, with each chapter also including a Timeline using BeeDocs Easy Timeline (very cool).  Then we'll pull all the chapters together into a single book.  Each chapter will being with a one minute video interview of the student discussing the reason for his/her topic choice, and what s/he learned. 

We'll also include interviews at the end from each of the teachers (history, tech integrator and me), discussing the project as a whole, and what WE learned from it.

Our major concern lay in keeping the tech from over-whelming the content.  After the projects initial introduction, students had one day with the iPads, looking at several different interactive books as models (especially this one).  Then they never actually had an iPad in their hands again until well after their research was finished and they had written their text and found their images.

We spent a day introducing the basics of iBooks Author, then gave them a week to put their chapter together.  We did spend one Saturday afternoon here,  a) to double-check for copyright compliance and b) for students who wanted to add extra inter-activity to their books.

Students handed in their iBA files, and an intern put them all together.

What we would add next time:

• Lesson on layout and design
• Lessons on advanced Keynote design (for creating interactive widgets)
• We'd plan a style sheet ahead of time. While students did all use the same template, we realized halfway through they were changing fonts and layouts, which gave the book a rather chaotic look! We had to decide on font choices and other design elements we wanted to keep consistent, then have students go back and change theirs accordingly.

It's a great project, in that students do (mostly) original research on topics of personal interest. Moreover, because everyone knew we planned to publish it world-wide, we were all on our A-game, students and teachers alike.  The whole experience was powerful for students and eye-opening for teachers, once we saw the students level of engagement and commitment.

Whether it would have the same power once more teachers jump on board and they become "old hat" for students, I don't know. I tend to think not.  In the meantime, however, I'm a believer!

Once the book is up on iTunes U, I'll post the link.  I think it will be a good model for similar projects in other schools!

iPad Trials: The Action Plan Documents

The brilliant Madeleine Brookes and I have been working hard at going school-wide with the iPad Trials.  Initially, we were working with students to create their history iBook (we hope to get that upon iTunes soon).  Now, the school has agreed has purchased iPad-mini carts for each of the sections (PS, MS and HS).

 http://www.ipadsforeducation.vic.edu.au/userfiles/images/TB_015_20101209_HP_2560.jpgcaption

In the HS, we are running action research trials, with a core group of 12 faculty, all of whom applied and were selected out of 30+ applicants.  Each teacher will be issued a new iPad (subsidized 60% by the school, and the rest from their PD funds).

I will be working with the Tech Integrator to run a series of workshops on using the iPad for academic purposes.  As part of their acceptance into the group, each teacher agrees to plan and implement a piece of Action Research.

We'll divide the group into four cohorts, each with a support person who will also sign off on their action research.

Now, all of this will fit into our larger action research:  Do iPads Enhance Student Learning?
Each of the individual plans will supplement our overall research by looking at specific aspects of iPads in schools.

I'm linking to--or embedding--the various documents we've created.  Feel free to use, modify or adapt.  We only ask that if you use these, you also make your documents available to others.

Needless to say, all of these are works in progress!

iPads in the High School (overall plan)
What Is An Action Plan?

Action Planner (for writing individual action plans)

From a library standpoint, it's been an interesting discussion about managing the iPad carts, deciding how apps will be added (being in China adds a whole new dimension to that!),  check-out procedures/policies, who gets priority, etc.   Thank heavens for my über-organized assistant who sees issues I never even think of!

Perfect Partners: Comic Life and Paper Camera

I can't draw to save my life.  Seriously.  Kids go into hysterics over my stick figures, and I don't even try anything more advanced than that.  So I'm very sympathetic to students in similar situations, and I've been wondering how to help them with my upcoming assignment in graphic novels.

We're starting off the year reading the wonderful  American Born Chinese,  studying the second chapter of Scott McCloud's brilliant Making Comics; the whole thing is great, but that chapter does a very good job of explaining the basics of analyzing comic images.

The obvious summative assignment to go along with these is to have students draw their own graphic "novel," specifically on a time they've experience a cultural misunderstanding or faux-pas.

An assignment like that would have had me in a panic when I was in high school.  Fortunately, it's less anxiety-inducing thanks to technology.

When deciding what tools to use with the students (those who CAN draw will be encouraged to do their own of course!),  I gave ToonDoo a miss because it's too limiting and doesn't allow students to play with angles,  point of view, and framing much.

Which pretty much left me with Comic Life.  It's a good tool, if you don't know it.  Basically, you take pictures (or sketch your own), then upload them into Comic Life.  It has filters that can "comicize" the photos, making them less realistic-looking.  It provides a variety of templates for the frames, and bubbles, caption lettering, etc.

I've never been all that fussed about it, however, because I think the photos still look like photos, unless you filter them beyond recognition.

Well, today I stumbled across Paper Camera on the iPad.  I adore it.  Here's the picture I took of my cat when I first started playing with it.

Isn't that great?  It really looks like someone sketched it!  And at 99 cents, it's not going to break the budget.

Tomorrow I'm giving the students their assignment to read McCloud over the weekend, and here's the handout I put together, to get into the spirit of the unit.

 I've loaded both apps onto the library iPads; after storyboarding, students can check them out, take their photos,  put them through Paper Camera, and create their graphic stories, all on the iPad.

The iPads Are Coming! (Part I)

This summer, I'm buying two iPad 2's to join our 4 Kindles for circulation next school year.  The Kindles have been a big hit, and I want to do a thorough job promoting and rolling out the iPads, so I'm doing my homework.

I have the main post for this partway written; however, while researching the Apps I want to load onto the iPads, I ran across these, and was so impressed I decided to blog them early.

First, two e-books that finally, finally, get what the iPad is all about and take advantage of it.  I am really tired of publishers whose imagination fails to extend beyond replacing still images with video, yet think they are being innovative.

Push Pop Press  is publishing Our Choice, Al Gore's sequel to An Inconvenient Truth, but designed specifically for the iPad. (In fact, Mike Matas, the developer helped design the iPad's interface). It is mind-boggling to see in action (video below).  I really hope textbook publishers are sitting up and taking notice, and we owe a debt of gratitude to PPP for licensing their ebook platform to other publishers, allowing them to create equally innovative texts.

One caveat, the program is so huge (over 50 mb), the download from the App store is only the introductory video. It then redirects and downloads the rest of the book.




Similarly, if not quite as jaw-dropping, Elements: A Visual Exploration,  explores the periodic table like you've never seen it.

Moving away from ebooks, I really like this nifty little app.  Frog Dissection allows student to dissect a frog virtually. The graphics are pretty realistic, as you can see in the video below, and it's cool that they can click on an organ to view it in 3D or learn more about it.  The app comes with a quiz and more information about frogs.  I showed it to our Biology teacher, and he's pretty excited about it--especially because it's hard to get frogs in Mongolia.

Flipboard: Your Life, in a Magazine

The hot new iPad app, Flipboard  links to your Facebook and Twitter account, showing articles and images posted by your friends.  It also links to sources chosen by Flipboard--they have a tech category, for example. It also allows you to share via the app.



I love the idea of this.  It's highly visual, and seems like a better way of working through your Twitter feed.  I must admit, I haven't had a chance to try it yet.  I downloaded it, but when I tried to connect to my feeds, I received a "the site is over capacity, try later" message.  As I said, the hot new app!

If your school jumped on the iPad wagon, this could be a useful tool for students to share info (assuming you're one of the rare schools that doesn't block Facebook/Twitter)  especially if they have different accounts for their school selves, vs. their social selves.

For myself, I'm hoping it will be a good way to keep up on Twitter, even when I'm not online, capturing all the links without me having to scroll through endless "more" links.

UPDATE:  OK, it's working.  This app is the COOLEST THING EVER!!   Forget checking my Twitter feed, I am going straight to Flipboard!  You can see everything article-style.  It gives the first few paragraphs of each link, then you go online to the actual website if you want to read further. It also shows who has re-tweeted, and gives you a link to reply, if you want.

The layout is positively elegant, with the app doing a brilliant job of choosing which images to display for eye-grabbing appeal. Here's a shot of my Twitter feed on Flipboard.

Bottom line:  If you have an iPad, you NEED Flipboard!

I Think I'm in Love

I finally started a "serious" reading of a book on my iPad.  Previously, I'd looked at a couple pages to get a sense of what it would feel like, but hadn't sat down for a serious, concentrated effort.  A die-hard physical book lover, my previous readings showed me that the experience wasn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be, but I still didn't think I'd relish the experience.

I must say, I love it.  I'm reading Tony Wagner's The Global Achievement Gap--not exactly a light read--using the Kindle App for the iPad.  With the iPad, the pages are large enough that you're not having to turn them every 3rd sentence, and it's easy to highlight and add notes. (Though I'm still having issues typing.  I keep hitting the n key instead of the space bar, so I end up with sentencesnlikenthis).

I also like that my notes sync to my Amazon account, which makes it easy to check them when I'm on the computer and writing, say, an article.  I would love to see the notes on my iBooks app sync with my .Mac account.

Right now it's a bit cumbersome to switch back and forth between the Kindle App and Evernote (for example), but once the iPad has the same multi-tasking feature as the iPhone4, that will be much easier, and make this a no-brainer for schools as an alternative to handing out textbooks, novels, etc.

Google Docs on iPad: They're Working On It

I posted in the GCT forum the other day about DocsPortal, an app that syncs your Google Docs with the iPad (but doesn't allow editing).  Lo and behold, one of the Google Gurus responded with, and I quote

 While we aren't yet promising a date - we are working on getting
document editing working on iPad.

 Remember, you heard it here first!  I hope.

iPads: Camera Connection Kit Has Multiple Uses

I was just reading Andy Ihnatko's blog and he pointed out that the $29 Camera Connection Kit (so you can load photos directly onto your iPad without having to sync with your computer) allows multiple other USB devices to work with your iPad. Basically, it's just an attachable USB port.

For example, I plugged in my headset,  loaded on a free voice recording app and recorded audio content.

What other ideas do you have?

I should also point out, I was online with an Apple tech guy yesterday, and asked if the iPad would have printing capability anytime soon.  While it's not native, he did tell me there are several apps you can buy that allow you to print from the iPad (or iPhone).

iPads in the Classroom

I'm sure you've all been anxiously awaiting my promised iPad review (she said, tongue in cheek). This will not be so much a review--there are thousands of those out therenas any quick Google search will show--as my ideas for possible classroom applications.

My initial gut response after reading about the iPad was pretty negative. Of course, I hadn't actually seen one at that point, let alone used it--but when did that ever stop me from having an opinion?! It's time to eat crow.

I love my iPad (though not as much as I love my MacBook Pro); moreover, with certain caveats, I do think it could be a useful classroom tool.

First let's address the elephant in the room:  The iPad is only a media consumption device.

That's true in a sense, but I think it ignores that there are legitimate times when that's what we ask students to do.  Research projects spring to mind here. Not only do iPads excel here,  imminent software upgrades and additional apps allow students to become the truly active readers we want them to be.

The Apple eReader is a dream--I even enjoy reading on it, and I'm a luddite when it comes to ebooks. Its biggest drawback was the inability to annotate, but Apple is adding sticky-note capability with the new software update this month.

You can also use it, and online material, with the iPad version of Evernote, my go-to source for organizing digital reading. Students can copy and paste content for notes, organize them,  then share them with others.  Add Instapaper, and teacher or students can easily share (or save for later reading) online articles or websites.  You can either link to the original, or click on the text option, which removes distracting hyperlinks and graphics.  (If you're interested, here's the RSS feed to my Instapaper page.)

This month's issue of Wired magazine, the first publication truly designed to take advantage of the iPad, rocked my world. If textbooks could start creating content like this, they may have a future.


With these abilities, and with students' preference for digital media, it's easy to envision schools issuing iPads instead of textbooks.  Indeed, a school in Florida has already given its students Kindles to replace textbooks. Most makers of eBook reader also make an app for the iPad. It's annoying to use different readers, but at least it gives you wide access.

Right now it can be time consuming using all these apps, as the iPad only allows one app to be open at a time.  That will change with the new upgrade, however, and it should be easy to switch back and forth between the apps without having to shut them down.

So much for consuming.  What about producing?

Options here are limited, but not non-existant.  I've used the Pages app, which is Apple's version of MS Word.  (Personally, I like it even better; it does all the basics, and makes it easier to be creative and visually appealing.)  Pages worked well, though it would be painful to try to create or edit a 10 page research paper on it.  It would be fine for shorter assignments, however.

I haven't used Keynote yet (Apple's Power Point), but our Ed Tech director did, and it has a HUGE flaw:  not only won't it work with video, you don't realize the video won't play until you're actually running through the presentation, even if the file is stored on the iPad.    What were you thinking, Apple?

As far as editing images, there are apps for that (I use Photogene), and the video editing capabilities  for the new iPhone suggest that will be available for the iPad eventually as well, however basic. Animoto makes an iPhone app, which is usable on the iPad.  With a $29 camera connection kit, students can upload stills or video to add to presentations.

I've also posted already about one possible use in the library (or classroom)  as a learning center.

While the iPad obviously lacks the full power of a laptop computer, it is definitely more than a book reader.   I find it especially impressive considering this is the first iteration of the device--future developments should add improved functionality.

Depending on your point of view, its current inability to print is either a drawback or visionary. iWork apps allow you to upload documents to iWork.com, or you can sync the iPad with your computer and print from there. Of course, it could also be an incentive to go completely paperless.

Overall grade?  With the software improvements next week, I give the iPad a solid B.

Ipad Listening Centers @ Your Library!

Here's an interesting idea from Tom Barrett's slide presentation on Twelve Interesting Wasy to Use an iPhone. For library purposes, especially with younger students,  I think it would work better with an iPad.

Create a series of book reviews/trailers, have "guest readers" of stories or poems, or any other audio/video cast you'd like.  Load them on the iPad (on several iPads, if you're lucky enough!) with an eye-catching graphic icon. (I'll post a mini tutorial below on how to change the icon for those who don't know.)

Now comes the cool part:  Belkin makes a nifty little gadget called  "Rock Star," which allows users to hook up to five headphone sets to the same device--be it an iPod, iPad, or other MP3 player.

Groups of students can listen to a story, podcast or watch a video if the screen is large enough.  What a great way to have an ongoing story time, give mini-tutorials, etc.

Any ideas for other uses?

How to Change an Icon:

On a PC:   Right click on the folder (this only works with folders) and select "properties."

 






From the Properties menu, choose Customize. You can either just add an image onto the folder itself, or change the icon altogether.


















Assuming you've made your own icon, you can browse to it onto your computer, or choose one of the pre-made options.  You can also find plenty of free icon collections online.   Choose your icon, click OK and voila!  You now have a new, far more visually interesting icon for the folder.  


ON A MAC: 1. select the new icon you want to use and go to File>Get Info (or Command-I).


This opens up a large panel, scroll down, to "preview," select the image and copy it (command-C).


2.  For the icon you want to change, repeat the File>Get Info step.  Once the panel opens, instead of copying the image, click on it and paste (command-V).  You now have a snazzy new icon for your folder).

Is it just me?

I must be in a mood today or something.

Is anyone else out there disturbed by all the buzz that districts are jumping on the iPad bandwagon as a cheap alternative to computers? That would be a disaster.  And it strikes me as just more evidence that the powers that be are clueless about technology.  The iPad is the latest glitzy toy that screams "Hey, we use technology!  We're 21st Century!"  It's also (at least at this early stage in its career) the complete antithesis of what education is--or should be--all about.

Ed. tech is all about empowering students to interact with their learning, to aggregate sources, mash them up and create something totally new and personal. They become active participants in the conversation, integrating their learning in ways meaningful to them, then producing real content that adds to the ongoing dialogue.

Educationally speaking, the iPad is sooo19th century. It's about passive learning.  Bells and whistles and flashy videos, but it's student as sponge.  Forgive my bluntness, but it's for teachers who refuse to change old habits;  flashing an iPad in the class allows them to imply they're current, without actually having to transform their pedagogy.  Gradgrind would love them.

I had high hopes that adding the iWork suite, which I love, would allow for basic productivity.  But I had a tweet from Wes Fryer in my feed the other day, and Keynote wouldn't work with links, wouldn't play video he had on the iPad, was basically worthless as a presentation tool.  One hopes Apple will improve this, but I doubt it's going to add much more productivity to the iPad, if only to avoid cutting into its computer market.

Do I want one?  You bet!  It's going to be great for taking books to Mongolia. If I had to choose between that and my laptop, however, the laptop would win hands down because of everything it allows me to do.

If you're district is even considering this, start protesting frequently and vociferously!