Be sure to visit our student work page to see how our written work has changed since we began this writing project  (January 2012) using the iPads.

 Idea Sketch

Austin’s Thoughts:

Zack’s thoughts:   

Max’s thoughts:     

Link to a great article in MAC LIFE…

http://www.maclife.com/article/features/ipads_classroom_are_changing_face_education

One of the ways that our project team chose to focus their iPad use was to create multimedia presentations for our district Heritage Fair.  Below are some images from that very exciting 2 day event.

  A short video interview with Riley about his Heritage Fair project (which he created using Apps on his iPad). 2:06min

Positives

http://eraccommons.ca/mobileapps/

“Welcome to ERAC’s mobile apps collection. ERAC teacher evaluators have reviewed almost 200 mobile apps focused for education and for various platforms. Each review contains a product description, pricing information, any social considerations and more.  These apps have also been rated out of 5. This rating was based on the content, instructional and technical design.

You will also be able to rate any apps in this collection. Your rating will be averaged with all other user ratings for that app. You will also be able to post comments, suggested uses and any other feedback. To make this an even more valuable collection for teachers, your expertise and user experience is very important.

Please submit any apps you’d like ERAC to review and include in this collection. Although we need more apps for non- MAC devices, all suggestions are welcome.

Here are some featured apps that are new to the collection. Each month we add new apps to increase the collection and address any gaps. We will also be checking for any upgrades or similar apps that may be better than ones in our collection.  Please post any feedback to help make our collection current and robust.”

http://eraccommons.ca/mobileapps/

A Project Message from our Principal…

I am in awe of the skills coming from the iPad project going on at Miracle Beach school.  District Special Education technology team Paul Hamilton and Karen West brought this project and 6 iPads to our school, and started first by building an adult team including a classroom teacher, the learning support teacher, the resource EA, a low  incidence EA and the Principal.

All of us had to take turns with an iPad by taking it home to familiarize ourselves with the apps and the operating system.  Most of us experienced varying levels of frustration as we struggled with tasks as simple as charging the unit or connecting to the internet, but we were very fortunate to have accessible helpers to work through our many questions.  Karen and Paul learned along with us and had a wonderful manner for moving us adult students through the roadblocks so we would be able to answer our students’ questions once it was their turn to discover the iPad.

Initially I thought the strategy of familiarizing the adults before the students was brilliant.  I thought we adults were well prepared to help our students have a wonderful first impression of this new technology tool that we hoped would assist them with written output.  Boy were we wrong.  The kids lapped our abilities and comfort levels within the first five minutes of their initial exposure.  They were confident with the tool, comfortable toggling between many apps, and many made connections to how similar it was to an iPod.

I observed a working session a week ago, where the adult team set goals for the output expected for an upcoming project.  Many different apps were loaded on so the students would have choice as to which best served their needs.  The new app to be featured during the mentoring session observed was called Side-by-side and the conversation  around the app sounded like it might be complex.  Looking at the clock, I realized that much of the mentoring session had been spent with the adults that week, and the students would not have a long time to learn this new app.  I figured they would go back to it the following week.

Being impressed with how quickly our iPad students were picking up this new skill, I requested them to speak to our district team at the upcoming School Review meeting the following Tuesday.  I asked them to talk about what they enjoy about using an iPad, and share with the team how it helps them with their writing.  Our six, shy students wowed the team.  They had no time to prepare, very little time to use their iPad prior to the presentation,  and were put before our Senior Management team to talk about this new tool.  The students spoke about all the  different apps with which they had experimented, including the newly taught side-by-side.  Wow!  Talk about quick learners.  Each of them preferred a different app for generating output; Dragon, side-by-side, and Typ-o to name a few.  The senior management team requested the kids to split up and sit beside each of them so they could each speak about their personal experiences and preferences.  Our team had a chance to bend the ear of the Superintendent Sherry Elwood, Assistant Superintendent Sheila Shanahan, Director of Elementary Instruction Allan Douglas, Director of Special Education Esther Shatz, Principal of Navigate Jeff Stewart, and PAC Secretary Gail Herman.

I was so proud of the huge risk our young learners undertook and even more thankful for our Senior Management team investing the time in listening to our shy students share their shining moments.  I see so much potential in this project since we have a significant cohort of students who have up to two more years to invest working with the iPad at Miracle Beach, and can only hope that I can keep the key staff members assigned to Miracle Beach to further this work with the students.  Ideally, I would love to increase our collection of iPads so these student leaders could start training another group of students while still benefitting from the adaptive technology themselves.

Erica Black

Principal , Miracle Beach Elementary school

We have just published our pre-study written attitude survey responses.  Our original online survey (made with Google Docs) can be found here… https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFNSUFhsUy1qa09tMnJ1QUsyOElnVHc6MQ#gid=0

Please go to this page of our blog to view all the survey responses… http://ipadsaswritingtool.edublogs.org/written-attitude-pre-study-survey-student-responses/

I was working yesterday with two of our project students and a new student to my class on their Canadian Heritage Fair project, trying to develop guiding questions and smaller questions to guide their research. 

 They played around with using the Dragon Dictate and Typo apps.  When they were on their own they came up with some questions using either program.  Then I had them use the iPads to go on Safari to do a bit of research - two students used the skills of highlighting and Speak This! part of the iPad to listen to the websites.  My other student was reading on her own.  Once they learned a bit about their topic I worked individually with each one to develop one good guiding question. 

 We first discussed their topic briefly and found out what was the overall message they were trying to pass on to the eventual reader.  Once we came up with a good question they practiced saying it orally to me so that they could put it on the Ipad using the Dragon Dictate app.  Even with practice verbalizing the correct pronunciation the program still picked up wrong words.  So the students showed me how to delete the one word and then re-say it to make it correct.  This, I told them was brilliant, and they said that it was just easy.  One student could not get one of his words to work no matter how hard we practiced, I thought this would frustrate him but he said it didn’t really matter if it picks up wrong words on Dragon because he can just type the word in.  This was a bit more difficult as he did not know how to spell it but I helped him with that.  I asked what would he do if I was not there.  He figured he would just write it how he thought and then would ask someone later.  HMMM!  Again he seems to have figured that out. :)  

Now came my other student’s turn.  I asked her if she wanted to put her question on, using Dragon but she said no.  When I asked her why, she said she doesn’t like to speak to the computer.  This I figured out later was because she does have a speech issue (ESL)and can’t get the words out clearly.  So we went into the Typo app and started to use it.  Her spelling is much better than the others so did not need the prompts as much, but again was able to write her question out flawlessly.  She then proceeded to write out a few more research questions and then went back to using Safari to research her topic.  She is a girl who had had almost no computer experience up until she arrived at our school a few months ago.  She went into Google and searched up her topic with ease and then went back into the writing program to start taking notes.  The bell rang before much was written but she knew how to go back and forth between the applications after showing her just once.  Her comment was that this is way easier than a computer.

 Today I also worked with the other three boys on their iPads for a shorter amount of time and they all jumped between applications to write their questions and research their topics.  One student, who I thought was going to find Dragon difficult because of his speech issues, managed very well.  His first attempt was not good at all but when we talked about the speed he was saying the words he realized that slowing his talk down to a snails pace worked.  Again he could not get one word to work so I showed him how to delete the word (thanks to another student showing me!) and type the word in.  I asked him if this was quicker than having to type each word or having to write it out by hand – his response was a big smile and a nod.

The experience of working with these kids over the past two days has not only made my job seem easier but mostly has made them really eager to spend time working on their projects and by the looks of them have found it much easier to deal with the daunting task of working on the heritage fair class project.  They didn’t even groan (which I am hoping is in the past for them) when I said it was time to move to working on the project; instead 4 out of the 6 hopped up and said ,”do we go get our iPads?” The other two are usually just happy to be told what to do and happily comply with what is asked.

Also today was an inside day and a day that I ventured to leave the iPads in the class for most of the day.  At lunch a few of the other students wanted to know if they could play with the iPads.  I was a bit nervous as the real users of the iPads had done some good work and I did not want it to be touched.  So the few kids that were not part of the project were told specifically that the only app they were aloud to use was the math games folder apps.  One of my EA’s, stayed in the room and monitored them.  When I came back they all looked very focused on the rocket math fact app.  Thought that was a good use of the technology through an inside day.