Group items tagged

"This course will give you a solid introduction to Adobe Illustrator and walk you through the fundamentals of it. At the end of the course you will be comfortable with how to use the program and hopefully inspired to learn more about it."

"I have a confession to make.  I hate meetings. Maybe that is not entirely true. I hate bad meetings. You know the ones where you spend a lot of time going round and round in circles, yet seem to accomplish little at the end of the day.  One of those main staples of these meetings has been "brainstorming".  This process is one that has been heralded in not only meetings, but also for "Design Thinking" (here is a document on the techniques os brainstorming in design thinking from Stanford University, Institute of Design). So out of sheer curiosity, I googled "brainstorming is bad" to see what I found (not biased at all I know).  Here are a few of the articles that I read with little snippets from each."

"Research shows that reflection is an essential part of learning. That means that we need time to think about -- and talk about -- the ways we have processed and applied new information, concepts, and ideas. Unfortunately, including routine reflection time and activities in our curriculum can be an afterthought for many of us teachers. Here's one reason why student reflection definitely deserves more attention: When students reflect on what they have learned, ownership of that new knowledge increases -- and with ownership comes more application and use of that new skill or knowledge."

"So, even if you have no experience with video editing hopefully by the end of this article you'll be able to edit like a pro. If you haven't bought the app yet I would suggest getting it so you can follow along. Let's get started!"

"For schools that are about to deploy the iPad as their main mobile learning device, there's wisdom to be learned from others who've gone down that road. At Marin Country Day School in Corte Madera, Calif., the first year of a pilot iPad program for sixth-graders has just ended, and some clear lessons have emerged. Here are some tips to help smooth the transition."

"So it's time to look at the feedback from 177 of our students who responded on our brief end-of-the-year survey asking about some of their impressions after a year of 1:1 with iPads. For today, I would like to focus on the responses to the three questions below:"

"Here at St. Matthew's, in addition to a 6th through 8th grade 1:1 iPad program (where students take the iPads home), we have a 5th grade 1:1 iPad "stay at school" program. These students use the iPads during school hours, then turn them in at the end of the day."

"This weekend I was excited to see that an iPad SMART Board app has been released, at the end of August. I was flipping through my iPad reader on Zite when the title: SMART Boards and the Notebook for iPad App hit my eye"

"Marianapolis Prep Training Videos: Nearpod is a jaw-dropping presentation app that allows all your class to watch your presentation, answer multiple choice questions, draw, or answer open-ended questions."

"Having worked closely all year with David Andrews in Year 6, particularly on the introduction of iPads to promote creative and effective teaching, we agreed several months ago that we wanted to apply some of the changes and developments to the traditional end of summer term Year 6 Leavers' Assembly. This blog post describes the approach we took and explores the outcomes."

"t's prelim week at Cedars. In Scotland, pupils with additional needs can use a "Digital Question Paper" to complete their exam. A DQP is a PDF with embedded forms. The pupil sits at a computer and fills in the form to answer the questions. For exams involving graphs, equations or other hard-to-do-on-the-computer things, they can also switch to working on paper. At the end of the exam, the PDF is printed out and the exam goes away on paper with the rest to be marked. So this week it's been my job to get this going. I thought it would be useful to write down the process and considerations for doing this on our computer infrastructure. Can you do this on an iPad? Of course you can."

"Having a compass with you when you are spending time in the outdoors is a wise idea. You never know when you are going to end up lost. With a compass, you always have a way to find your way. You could always carry a physical compass with you. These 6 apps turn your iPad into a digital compass:"

"In the past, coding was a pretty niche affair, those of us with our Acorns, Spectrums and Commodore 64s experimenting with lines and lines of code. I remember as an 8 year old, spending ages typing out lines of code on my beige Acorn Electron to draw….a line on the screen. To add insult to injury there was no way to save it unless I wanted to erase my tape of "Ice Ice Baby" and replace it with my code. Needless to say because we were put into the deep end in those days, like millions of others I was put off a bit by coding and just played computer games instead. Fast forward to the iPad era and coding is coming back in a big way. Some very talented developers with a love for coding have produced some spectacular apps, turning the iPad into a coding studio in your hand. There are some great iPad apps which take the pain out of coding for the layman and can teach your children (and you) some excellent skills."

"Gold mining has been an integral part of world conquest from the time of the explorers. Gold and silver drove the explorers and Conquistadores to decimate world populations and colonize foreign lands, bringing home vast amounts of wealth to nations during what became known as the Age of Imperialism. Europeans colonized all parts of the globe in search of gold, silver, and cash crops. Although the colonization of America started as a result of turbulence in Europe and the search for religious freedom, it wasn't long before people struck out in search of riches here, too. The fever started with the California Gold Rush at the end of the 1840's. Ten years later, gold was discovered in Colorado, and silver at Pike's Peak and Nevada. Now, everyone wants a piece of Alaska."

"Today, I'm going to tell you a fairy tale: Once upon a time, my mother in law (a third grade teacher) was in her classroom at school when her principal walked in and gave her an iPad for her class to use. Well, technically it was supposed to be for the entire third grade to share, but that's almost beside the point. After some initial excitement, she discussed how the entire third grade was supposed to share a single iPad with her fellow third grade teachers, and the iPad was promptly banished into a drawer, never to see the light of day again. The end."

"For subjects like math and foreign language, which are traditionally taught in a linear and highly structured context, using more open-ended inquiry-based models can be challenging. Teachers of these subjects may find it hard to break out of linear teaching style because the assumption is that students can't move to more complicated skills before mastering basic ones. But inquiry learning is based on the premise that, with a little bit of structure and guidance, teachers can support students to ask questions that lead them to learn those same important skills - in ways that are meaningful to them."

"Taking pictures on handheld devices and blasting them to everyone you know, has become the norm of today's social generation. Snaps of our pets, our dinner, and even ourselves ("selfies") can be found stored in the library of most people's iPads. With all the work that has been done on the technology end of things, to enhance the megapixels and quality of the camera, it's no wonder the App world is keeping up by enabling user's to have fun with and perfect, their digital masterpiece's. "

"Our weekly picks for Best iPad App of the Week are published here every Saturday. Check out all our picks via the link at the end of this post and you'll soon have a collection of stellar apps for your favorite tablet. This week's pick is Curious, and app that's touted as being 'designed for the lifelong learner in each of us'. It's full of video lessons and courses covering a broad array of topics. "