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Creating live padlet pages in iBook author ADEHow to guides April 3, 2014 - 2 comments 0 (0 votes) apple_official_ibooks_author I have been playing around with iBook author for a while and love its potential for engaging students in the classroom. I am currently creating a book to support our upcoming PE conference and wanted to use the book to support everything from signimg up to sessions to giving feedback. Padlet sprung to mind as a great way to share the feedback live and to use as a promise wall for delegates to show what they were going to do as a result of the conference. To keep things neat and tidy i wanted this process to be linked up into the book. Here is the process i used.

"From a wall of photos to celebrate your students to using photos as an organizational tool (for example, a photo of art supplies on the canisters where they're stored), photos can be incredible classroom tools. Here are 21 ideas for using photos in the classroom, from the first day of school to the last."

"Rachel Langenhorst helps teachers in her district find solutions for those issues. She used to teach social studies, but is now the K-12 Technology Integrationist and Instructional Coach at Rock Valley Community Schools in Iowa. "Really be cognizant of the digital tools you're picking and why you are picking them." She put together a list of favorite digital tools for the social studies classroom and shared them during an edWeb webinar. She emphasizes that, as with any classroom technology, teachers need to be careful not to just substitute a tech tool for an analog one. Instead, technology should be used to enhance classroom learning in ways that wouldn't be possible otherwise, including expanding learning beyond the classroom walls."

"I cringe when people ask me, "Are you handy?" Partly because I don't consider myself to be the best with tools, but also because it is asking me to judge whether or not I'm capable of fixing, making, or crafting something. Here's the thing, I didn't know how to put new shower tiles in and patch up my existing dry wall with cement board when we had a leak last year…but I had a friend help get me started, I watched a few DIY Youtube videos, looked at some articles online, and now I know how to do that (although not too well). The same thing happens in high schools all the time. The "handy" kids go to shop class, the "artsy" kids go to art class, the "business" kids go to business classes, the "techy" kids go to web design classes and so on… It's got to stop. We can't continue labeling kids as one thing or another thing. What we know about the future workforce is that creativity, making, and innovating will be at the center of most jobs…and that will require students to be all of the above: 'Experts predict that 50 per cent of occupations today will no longer exist by 2025 as people will take up more creative professions,' said Martin Chen, Chief Operating Officer of Genesis."

"Now that you have such a good curated list of the best storytelling apps and tools how do you go about teaching your students to create good stories? A good story does have to abide by certain rules and these rules are learned through practice. Andrew Stanton, the Pixar writer and director behind both Toy Story and WALL-E, talks some of these rules in his popular TED Talk, The clues to a great story."

"Students are coming out of school expected to solve 21st-century problems and enter into occupations that haven't even been imagined yet. Schooling is not designed in this manner, so we wanted to give students an opportunity to solve problems in authentic contexts, using 21st-century skills and collaboration techniques. We wanted to break down walls between classrooms and have students use interdisciplinary skills to solve problems with teams of their peers, with mentors, and with industry professionals."

Over time buildings are getting smarter with innovative new material. Traditional partitioning methods like Aluminium, Wooden, Brick or cement are not able to cope up with demanding requirement for new modern spaces. There is a growing need for a new material to create trendy looking partitions with high strength and quick installation time. Pronto's walls and partitions panels is an answer to such demanding material.

"Explore STEM education in settings beyond the classroom walls, and see how opportunities to learn science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are all around us. From science-based internships, to student-run makerspaces, to after-school activities, STEM is everywhere.  The videos in this series were produced by Mobile Digital Arts, and were made possible through generous support from the Noyce Foundation."

"Our foundational belief is that teachers teach how they are taught. If we want teachers to teach from a foundation of learning by doing, then we want to provide professional learning in that same, or a very similar, way. STEAMmaker Camp is intentionally designed to replicate the highs and lows teachers might encounter with students over a year­ long program. Therefore, each camp is best­ designed as a multi-­day event with each day running longer than the typical school day. This causes students to "hit the wall" that typically surfaces in the third quarter of school and teachers can experience how to remain positive and supportive in this type of environment, especially when they are also very tired. A trainer balances the fine line of guiding, role modeling, and directly instructing the participants, based on their individual and unique needs."

"Today we're joined by TinkerLab reader and friend, Aricha Gilpatrick Drury who's offered to show us how to build with box rivets. Aricha is a mom to four children and has a knack for tinkering. When she shared this uber-tinkering activity on our Facebook wall, we asked Aricha if she'd be so kind to share with us today. Lucky us, she said, "yes!" If you've never built with box rivets before (we haven't), you're in for a treat. They're simple plastic connectors that enable you build almost anything you can think of from cardboard: castles, theater sets, play structures, and more."

""Work that matters" has significance beyond classroom walls; it's work that is created for an authentic audience who might  enjoy it or benefit from it even in a small way. It's work that isn't simply passed to the teacher for a grade, or shared with peers for review. It's work that potentially makes a difference in the world."

"In much the same way that Facebook swept through the dorm rooms of America's college students a decade ago, Yik Yak is now taking their smartphones by storm. Its enormous popularity on campuses has made it the most frequently downloaded anonymous social app in Apple's App Store, easily surpassing competitors like Whisper and Secret. At times, it has been one of the store's 10 most downloaded apps. Like Facebook or Twitter, Yik Yak is a social media network, only without user profiles. It does not sort messages according to friends or followers but by geographic location or, in many cases, by university. Only posts within a 1.5-mile radius appear, making Yik Yak well suited to college campuses. Think of it as a virtual community bulletin board - or maybe a virtual bathroom wall at the student union. It has become the go-to social feed for college students across the country to commiserate about finals, to find a party or to crack a joke about a rival school. Much of the chatter is harmless. Some of it is not."

"Imagine spending every day in a physical space designed for people much bigger than you. To wash your hands or get a drink of water, you'd have to drag a chair over to the sink or ask a friend for a boost. Your feet would dangle in mid-air when you sat down and you'd have to crane your neck and stand on tiptoe to read the bulletin board. After the novelty wore off, it's likely that you'd end up feeling uncomfortable, insignificant, and out of place. Unfortunately, this is how many children feel every day in their classrooms. Whether it's because the chairs are too big or too small, the aisles too narrow, the tables too low, or the displays too high, the message is clear: "This room was not made for you." The sad fact is that most classroom spaces are far from ideal. Perhaps they were originally designed and built with little or no consultation with the teachers who would be working in them. Or maybe they were designed for another purpose, or with tight budgetary restrictions. And while teachers probably won't be able to transform an inadequate classroom space into an ideal one, they can make dramatic improvements. So, where to begin? The most obvious place is by thinking about the students. Before moving a single piece of furniture or clearing a wall for a display, learn as much as you can about the particular needs of the children you'll be teaching by talking with families and former teachers. Below are some general guidelines to help you create a physical environment that makes children feel comfortable and significant and that best serves their needs."

Edistorm takes the metaphor of sticky notes on a boardroom wall and brings it online allowing anyone - anywhere to brainstorm with only a web browser. Each user picks their favorite ideas and Edistorm brings the best ones forward.

Very nice discussion about storyboarding.

"Cloud computing" is a white-hot buzzword these days. It basically means working with files and programs that reside on the Internet, beyond your company's walls - out there in the "cloud."

Edusim is a free opensource 3D multi-user virtual world specifically for your classroom interactive whiteboard (Smartboard, Activeboard, Interwriter, Mimio, eBeam, or WiiBoard). Edusim is extendable allowing multiple classrooms to connect their interactive whiteboards for collaborative learning session. Read more about Edusim and turning your classroom interactive whiteboard into a low cost single walled CAVE based virtual world platform here.

Sugata Mitra talks about his Hole in the Wall project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own -- and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves?