One thing we are discovering when we plan lessons that incorporate the iPads, is that we need a clear vision for the teacher's plans for the future of the projects. We need to understand how we plan to share this project, with whom, and why.
No longer is it assumed that every final project will be shared on paper, or using glue, tape, or paint. We are even trying to think beyond the printer as the final resting place for student work. Thus far, printer access is only available at Lower School if a document is sent to a teacher and then printed from a faculty laptop. The challenge is to understand how we want to share the projects before they are created, so that we are having students work with apps that interact well with each other, or apps that allow us to upload, embed, and share our work online.
Once again, it starts to sound as if this article is going to be "all about the apps". But while it seems that you can't discuss teaching and work flow with iPads and not include apps in the conversation, this is another case where, at base, it's all about the planning, the teaching, and ultimately, the learning. What it really requires is understanding the apps you have available - how they function, how they interact with each other, and how they are shared. You combine this understanding with a clear vision of what the end goal for the project is. With that in mind, you must use reverse engineering to walk backwards through the steps to the starting place. Most importantly, the lesson we learned with technology years ago still stands - try it first! It's not the iPad's or the app's design at fault if the project doesn't end up where you hoped, that fault lies with a lack of planning and careful, step-by-step testing to see if the goal can be met in the least complicated, most satisfying way possible.
I say all this in response to several projects we have launched this fall that have taken us by surprise, and in the end required compromises and work-arounds.
First, there were the research papers that the fourth graders wrote so comfortably in IA Writer which has an expanded keyboard that includes arrow keys and punctuation. However, the teacher planned to print these projects and IA Writer does not include formatting capabilities, so she was unhappy with the look of the final piece. Our work-around was to copy and paste the completed writing into Google Drive, format the document there, and share it with the teacher. This saved her inbox from a flood of documents to download, and since it is in the cloud, it preserves the project for the student as a portfolio piece. Was the teacher annoyed by these extra steps? Yes, but we also clarified her goals too late in the project. We will be prepared to streamline the process the next time.
Next, a fourth grade teacher wanted to give feedback on student work using a screencast. She chose Explain Everything, uploaded each student's writing project to her iPad, and talked about the writing as she circled corrections, etc. 24 students later she came to me asking how she could share these files. Uploading each as a video to YouTube was too arduous a process, and this is not a product for the ages, just editing and writing suggestions. Explain Everything doesn't easily embed at this point, so there wasn't an obvious way to share them with students. Our solution was to email them to herself, and upload each file onto her Haiku (LMS) page. Students were able to open these on their iPads in Explain Everything and hear her thoughts. Another decent work around - but next time she may use a different app e.g. Educreations, which would upload directly to the Web.
Most recently we had the challenge of the First Grade Book Creator project. The teachers wanted to share books that the students had already made on paper by photographing the illustrations and having the first grader read his story into the audio files in Book Creator. After long and careful recording sessions, the books were done. Then the teacher asked me if we could create QR codes to put on the real books so parents could access the recordings. Unfortunately, while Book Creator projects can be exported as .pdfs, the audio isn't supported. The only solution was to upload the .epub file to Haiku for parents who own devices that can read .epubs. Not the best work around. In future we may use Explain Everything for this project and upload them to YouTube.
With hindsight being 20/20 we can see all we have learned through these experiences. What this doesn't solve is the hours of teacher time and anguish when we realized the plans they had didn't match their methods. I am proud of my bold teachers who venture forth to try something new, and want them to be successful every time. Therefore, the planning process will now include a clear, thoughtful discussion of the end goals, and include clarity about the limitations of the apps we are considering.
No comments:
Post a Comment