Group items tagged

"There's No App for Good teaching"

A recent lesson with my Year Six class reminded me of the fear teachers face when confronted by the unknown. I thought the lesson would go quite smoothly, I have taught it before but this time things went in an unexpected and frightening direction.

"The Tech Timeout Academic Challenge was taken by boys and girls in grades 4 through 12 at Stuart Hall and Convent of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco - along with some teachers and parents - as part of this private school's attempt to implement its one-to-one iPad program. The idea is to recognize that technology is often a distraction from other important things, like connecting with classmates and family, enjoying the moment or being creative. 'It was almost a wake-up call for how dependent we are on technology.' "This is going to be really hard for me. I think I'm going to have some pretty intense feelings of anxiety after about an hour," said sophomore Eli Horowitz as he sealed up his phone. Other students were also apprehensive about the timeout, citing their desire to be connected to friends through social media as one of the main temptations, but some were glad for the excuse to try putting the phone away for a while."

"You can use an adapter and a cable to mirror exactly what's on your iPad's display onto a projector or television screen. When picking out an adapter, you need to know if your device has a Lightning or 30-pin Dock connector. New iPads and iPad minis have a Lightning connector. iPad 2 has a Dock connector."

"When you begin a new iMovie project, you have a choice of creating a movie or a trailer. A trailer follows a template to create a Hollywood-style movie advertisement. iMovie for iOS has 14 trailer templates, and each has its own musical score and graphics. To make your own trailer, choose a template, insert your text, and fill each shot with a video or photo."

iMovie Trailers PDFs. Great for organizing trailer.

Yes, students learn how to work together to approach open-ended problems I agree with this but... gain confidence to work with complex problems, and develop grit to continue to work on the problem until a viable solution is found not agree an the same time. Now the younger students have many mini tattoos in their bodies and have more problems to fing jobs in the future.

I'm going to keep gushing about Glitch some more, and not only because it allows me to finallyt play in the band with Jim and Brian and others. First, try this drum machine, then, have a look at the code, and then, realize that you could clone it and make your own in about as long as it took me to type these words. Upload it to GitHub and share with your friends. Making apps is becoming as simple as making websites was in the 1990s. It took a bit for the idea to catch on, but when it did... (p.s. remember the 'blink' tag and Geocities websites? This home page might be the 21st century equivalent.) Text copied from Stephen Downes OLDaily

"Coding is, apparently, the new language we all need to learn. It's billed as essential by the likes of Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking. General Motors CEO Mary Barra calls coding a "core skill" that you need to learn if you want a high-paying job. But what if this emphasis on coding is distracting us from teaching kids about other, more important things that they'll actually need for the jobs of the future? Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future, sees this obsession with coding as the equivalent of putting all our eggs into one basket."

"We rely on expensive computer programs to edit photos and video, deal with office work, and protect our computers from malware. But they're not our only options. Often, commercial studios will offer the most basic versions of their products free of charge. In other cases, volunteers who believe that software should be free will develop open-source alternatives. Between them, you can find free programs to cover just about any computing task. However, not all free apps are created equal. We've narrowed down the plethora of options to highlight 10 of the finest free alternatives to pricey computer programs."