Apple Learning Tour 2012 - Engage students. Explore apps, interactive books, and Multi‑Touch textbooks

Today, I had the opportunity to spend a day at the Apple Learning Tour 2012 in Regina.

The first workshop I attended was all about apps and multi-touch textbooks. The description of the morning session was:

Engage students. Explore apps, interactive books, and Multi‑Touch textbooks.

9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Discover amazing interactive iBooks. Immerse yourself in the world’s largest online catalog of free education content in iTunes U. And experience some of the thousands of education apps for iPad. Learn how to create your own interactive Multi-Touch books with Mac and iBooks Author. Discover how a course is built with iTunes U Course Manager using interactive learning materials. Then see how it all comes together with an overview of ownership and deployment models for content.

The second session I attended was all about creating my own course for the iPad using iTunes U. The description of the afternoon session was:

Learn by doing. Create courses with iTunes U Course Manager.1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to build a course by exploring all the capabilities iTunes U Course Manager has to offer. Experience the ease of pulling together content such as audio, video, iBooks textbooks, and over 500,000 resources in iTunes U into an organized syllabus. Make available all the assignments, quizzes, and materials for your students or anyone who’s interested in the topic — whether in your class or anywhere in the world.

Resources that teachers might want to check out can be found on the Apple website for education: Resources

My notes from the session:

Demonstration of products:

• Apple TV to turn your projector into a sharing screen where students can use airplay to share what they are working on from wherever they are working in the classroom.
• Exploration of accessibility features on an iPad such as speaking, guided access, mono audio to make the device meet the needs of students and their different learning requirements.

Apps we explored on iPad and Mac:

• Explain Everything: (iPad) Allows students to record a voice over, edit photos, write text. Project idea is to give the students a slide deck (or have them create a slide deck) and each record their understanding of a concept or explanation in 60 seconds or less. Interesting demonstrating of learning idea.
• Doceri: (iPad) Allows you to use an interactive whiteboard similar to Explain Everything recommended by another participant.
• Book Creator: (iPad) Allows you to create your own book with photos, text, voice over and drawings. Students could even create their own book for their demonstration of learning.
• iBook Author (Mac) We then spent some time exploring how to create books on iBooks Author which is a Mac app that allows you to create your own book using video, links and interactive features. For more detailed instructions, I encourage you to visit the education resource section of the Apple website as it has instructions to help you create your own iBooks. Apple Education Resources
• CloudOn: (iPad) (Thanks to Jim Swan for this one) Awesome app that allows you to use the Office Suite of products to create and use documents but save them to your Google Drive or Dropbox. 

iBooks we explored:

• Life on Earth (Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University)- Saw features like including video and interactive maps and materials. Also saw how highlight parts of the text and allow students to create their own study notes and cards based on their highlighted information. There are also accessibility features that allow the student to have content read to them.

iTunesU:

You can create your own account (using Safari browser on Mac or PC) in the iTunesU. Once your school or division signs up, then you can be linked to an institution, which I understand has extra features or benefits. Using their course management system, you can design your own courses to be delivered through the iTunesU app. More resources and instructions are included in the Apple Education Resources

Incorporating Video into the Classroom

Since becoming a YouTube Star Teacher in 2011, I have worked to incorporate more video into my classroom and I use my YouTube Channel to share and organize videos that I use in my classroom through playlists.

I use a lot of videos to help my students discover and better understand the content they need to know. My favourite way to engage my students is to allow them to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or topic that we are studying by making a video. Working at a new school with new students can be a challenge and I have experienced mixed success with this tool in my classroom. Most students have embraced the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding through video rather than simply writing a paper or a test. But there are always students who don't put as much effort into their projects as others and that is something we are working on. I find that they haven't had much opportunity to create masterpiece videos and we are all working together to become better videographers. Here are some of the projects my students and I have been working on over the past few months based on small or large inquiry group projects:

Francophonie 30 - Qu'est-ce que c'est la Francophonie?


Sciences Humaines 9 - Explorateurs vs Premiers Nations (Our understanding of World View)


Sciences 10 - Explorer 3 cycles en Biologie - l'azote, carbone ou nutritif

B.Y.O.D. - Yes or No?

At Thom Collegitate, students are allowed to bring their own devices to use in the classroom. These powerful tools allow students to extend their learning beyond the classroom. Planning to use these devices as learning tools can be challenging as not all students have a device, or it may not be a device that enables students to browse the web, etc. Exploring how to best make use of these devices is one of my goals this year, as the fact that most students in my classroom are carrying some sort of smart device in their pocket, it is a tool I can't ignore.

This class is one of a kind in Canada...Find out why tomorrow on #skcbc twitter.com/JamieCBCweathe…
— Jamie Mauracher (@JamieCBCweather) September 19, 2012

Recently I was asked by CBC English and French TV if they could come into my classroom and see how I integrate technology into my classroom to engage and extend student learning. I decided to demonstrate one way to use student devices to engage students in a class discussion by using Poll Everywhere. During this class, my Grade 9 students were working on their understanding of world view and were responding to and discussing a number of questions of self-reflection that I needed them to consider before we could explore other civilizations around the world.

Here are the two videos (first one with English CBC TV reporter Jamie Mauracher, second one with French CBC TV reporter Genvieve Tardif):