Group items tagged

"Brainstorming is an important process for any subject and helps improve writing, organizer group ideas, inspires discussion, and provides a roadmap for projects. When brainstorming is combined with sketching, drawing, and graphic organizers it helps learners to organize their thoughts for better flow and organization. Moreover, learners can make connections to previous knowledge and expand on what they already know. This means the brain will process the new information into long-term memory. Our learners can utilize free mobile apps to brainstorm on the go whenever they feel inspired. The following are brainstorming apps for IOS/Android devices. Free Brainstorming Apps"

"Visual recording using your iPad is something you can best do via the help of some powerful apps. The video below will walk you through the process of how to capture your ideas visually on your iPad. It will also show you how to use each of the four apps suggested. These apps are : Adobe Ideas Air Sketch Brushes Sketchbook Pro"

"Here is some behind the scenes footage of my students using iPads to film an anti-bullying movie that the wrote. You will see them refer to their blue sheets which are their storyboard sketches of the movie."

"The opportunities for learning through the use of digital gaming are diverse and massive. The speed and ease in which basic game development can be achieved using apps such as Sketch Nation can provide a platform for outstanding cross-curricular projects and really make an impact on progress, standards and pupil independence. This blog post describes one project (upper KS2) which could easily be adapted to suit Key Stage 1 or expanded to meet the needs of Key Stage 3 pupils, and to support almost any topic/subject. 1:1 use of iPods enabled maximum pupil engagement but fewer devices could have been used if pupils collaborated in groups"

"GoClass is a free iPad application for creating short lessons and delivering them to your students. The lessons can include annotated images, free hand sketches, text, and video. GoClass gives teachers tools for creating class rosters that they can use to keep track of which students are using the lessons when"

"According to Marc-André Lalande,  "a Personal Learning Network is a way of describing the group of people that you connect with to learn their ideas, their questions, their reflections, and their references. Your PLN is not limited to online interactions, but it is that online, global interactive part that really makes it special. It is personal because you choose who's part of that group; you choose if you want to lurk-just check out what people are saying-or if you share; because you choose when to do so, and how to do so." As for this graphic? You can thank Sylvia Duckworth, who always does a great job sharing simple sketch notes to help teachers. (She also took our 12 Rules of Great Teaching and created a predictably wonderful graphic to supplement the text, among others.) We've taken her graphic and provided starting points for each 'reason' a teacher need a PLN."

"Creating great infographics need not be a chore, no matter if you're a teacher or a student. Taking information and presenting it in an artful and visually appealing way has never been easier, thanks to the infographic tools you can use today. Before you dive in, here are some quick tips: Collect your data. If you have been collecting data, compile it all in a spreadsheet. Decide the best way to present your data (flyer-style, bar charts, line charts, Venn diagrams, histogram, scatter plot charts, flow charts, timelines, etc.). Design a rough sketch so you don't end up flying blind. Pick your app and get to work! Now that you've got basic tips on how to get started, it's time to get creative. Here are 9 great infographic tools to help you get started creating great infographics."

"BROOKLYN, New York - I'm sitting on the floor at The Academy of Talented Scholars (PS 682) in Bensonhurst, watching kindergarteners create robots on an iPad. It's one of the cutest things I've ever seen, and I don't even like children. The exercise is part of the curriculum led by co-teachers Stacy Butsikares and Allison Bookbinder, focused on helping the 5- and 6-year-old students come up with ways to solve problems. The first step is to identify a problem happening in the school. The kindergarteners come up with ideas like kids horsing around in the lunch line, or not throwing trash away properly, or making too much noise at recess. Students are instructed to create a robot that could solve the problem, and draw the robot on a piece of paper. Once the robot is sketched out, the real fun begins. Using the app The Robot Factory, these pint-sized problem-solvers bring their robot ideas to life."

"So many classroom activities are only fully realised when your students add their sketches to embellish their work, or to annotate a concept. Sometimes they just need to describe an object. Here are a series of apps that allow the creative little Picasso or Frida in your class to express themselves. Most of these are so intuitive that your students will be drawing before you know it."

I vividly remember how I first learned to take notes. My sixth grade geography teacher lectured in outline style: "Roman Numeral one - China. A - Qin Dynasty. 1 - Rulers . . . " We wrote down precisely what he said, and to this day, I still take notes in outline form. However, consider Sunni Brown's TED Talk, "Doodlers Unite." She argues that engaging in sketching while listening to complex ideas further supports learning.

"For one language arts class project, a middle school teacher in Shelburne, Virginia, Chad Sansing, asks his sixth graders to read Peter Cherches's 1986 poem "Lift Your Right Arm," and then translate it into computer code. The poem occurs in action sequences-for example, "Lift your right arm, she said./I lifted my right arm." Sansing and his class conceive a list of actions, sketch ideas of how to code them, using icons or letters, and then code the poem. In doing so, the students become producers of both a new language and way of seeing poetry. Sansing's students have also translated the poem's code into Scratch, to create animation, and into LEGO Mindstorms EV3, a robot-programming language. This innovative way of engaging students with poetry is just one example of how educators are increasingly integrating transmedia techniques in their teaching and assessments. What is the point of this activity? "To help kids see connections between grammar and code," says Sansing who shares his lessons on his "Classroots" blog."

"The following infographic from dailygenius.com makes sense, then, in that context of being able to sketch out what might be required of a digitally-savvy and competent teacher. (You can give dailygenius a follow on twitter as well.) 7 Characteristics Of A Digitally Competent Teacher"

"There's a very easy way to make better use of the iPad in class. Simply become more aware of what you're using the iPad for when teaching. This is where the SAMR model comes in, something I believe all teachers should be familiar with. The SAMR model is a 4 stage framework, illustrated below by the fantastic Sylvia Duckworth, creator of many great sketch notes."

"Quietly and almost covertly, Apple's iPad has become a common tool in every realm of professional design. Fashion designers sketch on it, designers collect and curate ideas using it, digital artists paint with it in stunning realism, and architects even prepare 3D models before going to production all from the 9.7″ screen. The device is a near ubiquitous sight inside studios, design shops, and most noticeably at trade shows, an ideal compromise when the pocketability of the smartphone is too little and a laptop is just too large. For a demographic regularly relying upon composing, showing, and sharing projects, the iPad is Goldilocks perfect. Here are several of our favorite iPad apps for creatives with content creation and collaboration in mind."

"The premise is simple: start with a quick tour of the facility and very brief show-and-tell of the tools (less than 30 minutes!), follow with a group brainstorming session around project ideas (less than 30 minutes!), then form groups to jump into projects. Even before lunch on the first day, groups were already sketching and tinkering with Hummingbird Robotics kits, MaKeyMaKeys, cardboard and MakeDo's, and more. For two days, I jumped in to help groups, learned new tools myself (LittleBits!), fetched tools and supplies as needed (copper tape! wire strippers!), recommended resources and suppliers (Sparkfun! DigiKey!), and acted as cheerleader for teachers pushing themselves to learn incredible new skills and create amazing artifacts of their learning. The final projects blew ALL of us coaches away! The absolute best part, from my perspective, is that every single project was immediately applicable back in the participant's classroom. Most of them are generally applicable in any learning environment! Serious high school science content, literature and history, elementary grades, even social/emotional learning… This was absolutely the most excellent collection of practical and academically-oriented maker projects I've seen!"