It was such an honor to be able to travel to Austin with my DLC team for a week this month to learn from other forward thinking educators at the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) Conference. It is hard to be away from my campuses for a week, but the conference allowed me to deepen my learning and bring back some ideas for educators to use in their classroom. Over the next 5 weeks I will be sharing my top 5 takeaways from TCEA! If there is something you find useful and want to chat about it, let me know! #1: Accessibility features in ios 11Apple offered so many good sessions to highlight some of their education features. One of my favorite sessions was titled "Learning with iPad: It's Personal". This session focused on accessibility features on the iPad that can help ALL students feel successful in learning.
After the simulations we were given time to explore some of the accessibility features on the iPad. My two favorite features are Typing Feedback and Speak Selection. Both of these features help struggling or beginning readers be more independent while writing or reading on the iPad. Check out the instructions and videos below to see how they work. A couple more features worth mentioning are Screen recording with iOS 11 and Scanning a QR code with the Camera App. These features save you so many taps, allow you to use less apps, and you do not get those annoying advertisements in the QR reader apps! You can read about all of the accessibility features from the session in the presentation below.
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Last week our DLC team had the chance to attend the TCEA (Texas Computer Education Association) conference in Austin. We attended many great sessions and also had the chance to facilitate a few. My teammates, Alli, Sam, Brian and Monica, facilitated “Apple in Education, We Say Yes!” to encourage others to see the amazing educational value of Keynote, Pages, Numbers and Everyone Can Code. Even if you were not at TCEA, you still have the chance to learn from their amazing resources. All you have to do is go to www.flipgrid.com/AppleEDUyes, select a learning topic and click on the attached resource to begin exploring. I would love to see or hear your ideas for how these tools can be used in your classrooms! This year the question that drives my work as a Digital Learning Coach is I recently began reading Learning First, Technology Second: The Educator’s Guide to Designing Authentic Lessons by Liz Kolb and participating in a weekly #ETCoaches Twitter slow chat to discuss each chapter of the book. As I reflect on my reading each week I always come back to this same question. In chapter three Kolb states “...Technology should be helping students meet learning goals in ways that they could not easily do without the tools.” If we are selecting tools that are adding value to extend how learning goals are met then we are increasing rigor and deepening learning. But how do we do this? Insert the Triple E Framework.The Triple E Framework helps to expand upon current frameworks (TPACK, TIM, SAMR) that educators already use to guide their technology use in the classroom.
How can the Triple E Framework help you design technology integrated lessons that increase rigor and deepen learning?
This week's blog post comes from Sam Neal, the digital learning coach at Mockingbird and Pinkerton. Sam and I are participating in a book study/ Twitter slow Chat with other #ETCoaches over the book Learning First, Technology Second: The Educator’s Guide to Designing Authentic Lessons by Liz Kolb. Sam does an amazing job taking her learning from this book and reflecting on how Apple products and applications are easy to use, which means our learners can focus on sharing what they know. Missed a week? You can access all of the posts below.
1/23/2018 0 Comments An apple a week: Numbers This week on the winter blog series An Apple a Week Alli focuses on Numbers. New to Numbers? Think Excel or Google Sheets, but with whiteboard capabilities, easy to use charts and more. Missed a week? You can access all of the weekly posts below.
1/16/2018 0 Comments An Apple a Week: Pages
Near the end of the commercial (before she asks her neighbor the silly question “what’s a computer?”) the girl is sitting in a tree putting together a journal/report titled Bugs in the City. When I saw her screen my techy teacher brain kicked on and thought “Pages for the iPad would be PERFECT for a project like that!” Pages for the iPad or Mac can be used as more than just a word processor. The features in pages allow the software to become a digital scrapbooking tool that allows you to create beautiful products by easily moving and manipulating features on the page. Here are a few of my favorite features in Pages: Formatting made simpleOn both the iPad and Mac version of Pages, the formatting tools can be found by clicking the paintbrush in the top right hand corner of the screen. All of your tools being housed in one place makes it easy to edit the style, text, and arrangement of your features. Text Wrapping tipsSometimes, while arranging object on the page, the objects do not "play nice". They do not allow you to move them next to/over/under each other easily. To fix this all you need to do is change your text wrapping features. Changing your text wrap option for the object or text box to none will allow you to move objects freely near/over/behind other objects. If you would like your text to wrap neatly around your pictures select the around option. enhancing the look of your picturesPhoto editing tools such as background removal, shadows, and reflection can be very challenging and time consuming in other editing programs, but Pages makes them happen in a snap! Instant alphaOne of the best features Apple has created for Pages (and Keynote) is Instant Alpha. This tool can be used to get rid of distracting backgrounds in photos (think of the white backgrounds around many clipart pictures). Once you have chosen the picture you would like to use and placed it in your document select the image, tap the format button, then tap image. Tap Instant Alpha, then tap anywhere on the background color and drag your finger to remove the background. Tap done to complete the instant alpha effect. maskThe mask tools allows you to move a picture into any shape and "take over" the background (Mac). It also allows you to crop the original picture within the space you have made for it (Mac or iPad).
Adding BookmarksAdding bookmarks within your text helps your readers navigate your documents, especially when they are multiple pages. You can use this feature for a table of contents or to help find pieces of a tutorial. One thing to note is that bookmarks have to be created from the text written on the page NOT a text box. To create a bookmark on Pages for iPad: select the text you would like to add a bookmark to then click Bookmark from the option bar. To link your bookmark: select the object you would like to link, highlight the text, select link in the option bar, click Link to, click bookmark, then select the bookmark you would like to link to. Now your link will take you straight to the bookmarked text. Don't be afraid to dive right in and get started with Pages! You can use the pre-made templates or start your own document with a variety of shapes, charts, graphs, text and images to create products such as:
Happy learning! Megan To learn more about Pages visit these resources: Pages for iPad Starter Guide iOS 11 Pages for Mac Starter Guide MacOS Sierra 9 Tips for Pages Software for the Classroom Follow the winter blog series An Apple a Week:
1/9/2018 0 Comments an apple a week: Keynote This week on the winter blog series An Apple a Week, by Alli Pryor, guest blogger Brian Timm explains quick wins and best practices for Keynote. Missed last week? Click below to read.
I do not know if you are a podcast listener, but listening to podcasts is one of my favorite things to do in the car and it is one of my favorite ways to learn. One of my favorite education podcasts is called The Cult of Pedagogy with Jennifer Gonzalez. You can find this podcast on the web or any podcast app. Jennifer Gonzalez covers everything education (behaviors, all content areas, learning strategies, and so much more!) One of my favorite episodes is #79: Retrieval Practice: The Most Powerful Learning Strategy You're Not Using, but I digress. The reason for this blog post is because each year Jennifer Gonzalez puts out a new version of her digital binder called "The Teacher's Guide to Tech". This year she added 60 new tools to the binder. While I find 60 new tools a little overwhelming to sift through, she made a podcast highlighting 6 of those tools. I listened to the episode this morning and LOVE her suggestions. One tool highlights is www.autodraw.com. AutoDraw uses artificial intelligence to guess what you are doodling. You start with a blank screen, begin sketching something, and AutoDraw gives you a strip of professionally illustrated images to choose from. You can click on the link above but I recommend trying this on your iPad and if you like AutoDraw, save the link as a shortcut on your homescreen. I hope you find these tools useful! Let me know what you think in the comments. 1/5/2018 0 Comments An apple a weekI am so excited to be a part of Alli Pryor's winter blog series "An Apple a Week". Each week Alli, or a guest blogger, will be posting about an amazing Apple feature or product. You can Check out the first post on Alli's blog Diary of A Digital Learning Coach.
I hope you follow along to learn more about how Apple products can change and enhance the learning experiences of our students. I blinked, and here we are on the other side of Winter Break. It’s hard to believe that we’ve officially begun the spring semester! I know we have all hit the ground running and are ready to dive into the 3rd nine weeks curriculum.
I’m so excited to get back into classrooms and back into design work with educators and teams. As you start to plan for this nine weeks, I wanted to share a resource that my elementary DLC teammates Amanda Lanicek and Sam Neal put together with the help of Alli Pryor, Lisa Hansen, and myself. We created a menu of digital integration ideas for each grade level K-5 based on the skills of focus for the 3rd nine weeks in the district Scope and Sequence. Each idea is broken into three pieces: Learn, Do, and Reflect. You can use the pieces individually or as a complete series. Some of the integration ideas are more built out than others. If you see something you’d like to implement, please let me know so I can support you in designing and implementing the best possible experience for your learners! |
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