Teaching and Learning with Technology May 2012

I enjoyed seeing what other teachers in the board are doing with mobile tech in their classrooms and promised to share what I learned. Feel free to come and chat if you want to know more, and I'm sure the folks I'm listing below will welcome questions (they're all on TDSB Webmail).
NOTE: these are just a few of the many wonderful presentations I saw today. I focused on just a few that our secondary school might enjoy most.

1) Katherine Parrish @ Vic Park showed how they use iPads with gr. 9 Applied English: students played and reviewed games for particular criteria (values), then wrote review essays. They used an app called SmartNote (free) which helped them collect notes as well as write the essay.

http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/smartnote/id362165952?mt=8

2) I got to see a Rover Smartboard all-in-one stand in action. The projector is attached and swings away for mobility. http://www.i-rover.info/irovers/ir100_685.html Just add laptop.

3) Colin McAuley of Grenoble PS uses iPads for "virtual field trips". Students brought the iPads on a field trip to a local mall to take images that they later combined with music and voice over in iMovie to demonstrate their learning. The idea of Virtual Field Trips opens a whole lot of possibilities in my mind, even if we don't end up with iPads, we will certainly have some notebooks in the school next year. Think ahead!

4) several demonstrators used a flat screen TV directly as a monitor from their laptops, easy peasy:

5) gee, there were an awful lot of Apple products around! (many of them teachers' personal laptops)

6) This little portable speaker the Tritton Sound Bite was superb for sound:

http://www.amazon.com/Tritton-Sound-Bite-Portable-TRIUA211/dp/B00112BKT6

7) Velitchka Apostolova-Gilbert at D&M Thompson library has gr. 9 English Applied classes come for 5 periods to work on "reading non-fiction text" using pre-fab comprehension lessons on the Promethean board (similar to SmartBoards).

8) There were elearning and blended learning examples using Moodle and AdobeConnect. Several of them commented that AER GAINS (part of EduGains from the Min. of Ed.) is a great source of assessment strategies and tools http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/aer2/index.html. So these are people actually using the resources, not just promoting them.

9) My Teacher Tech in Classroom Support Brainwave idea while I was there: if every school purchased ONE iPad, we could instantly connect with other "expert" teachers and classes via FaceTime, for sharing, for help with new tools. I'm considering 2 iPads for the Library: one could be borrowed in the classroom: Students and teachers could connect with the Library for resources and support. 

All in all a fun and creative spark inducing morning.