Friday, November 8, 2013

Blogging our First Year with 1:1 iPads Week Ten

This post could also be titled mix it up week. I mixed it up with parents and conferences, my brain is mixed up from exhaustion, and the kiddos mixed it up by combining more traditional work with work done on their iPads.

To start with we used counters in combination our Flash to Pass app to solidify our knowledge of facts. They really liked using the counters along side their iPads!



We also took the publishing plunge and spent a lot of time turning the rough drafts of our personal narratives into typed final copies on Primary Writer. About half have finished their final copies, and they were so excited and proud of their finished product. They look so grown up glancing between their iPads and writer's notebooks as they typed! We don't have an air printer or e-mail so they had to go through quite a process to get the job done...
1. Type their piece
2. Take a screen shot
3. Upload it to Google docs
4. Share it with me
5. Wait for me to print it
6. Add an illustrated border that matched their story

It may not seem like a lot, but when you're six or seven this is HUGE!! Here are some of my sweeties hard at work.




Stay tuned next week for the finished products ... and a really cool bulletin board if I do say so myself!


Yes it's a giant iPad, their writing will be displayed like apps!


P.S. First graders get very crabby when you teach their parents how to use guided access mwahaha!!

See ya next week!







Sunday, November 3, 2013

Blogging our First Year with 1:1 iPads Week Nine

The big news this week is that we have finally conquered sharing in Google Docs!! I didn't think we could do it, but we did. My little first graders can share with me without e-mail. I taught my mini geek squad how to do it and set them loose to teach other people.
Here they are in the act...


Soon they will all be able to do it alone!!!

This week was also Halloween! Did you know that Spiderman loves to read books on his iPad with his Raz-kids app!?! Well he does...



We also found some fun Halloween literacy apps, but they are freebies, and we learned that they really are not blog worthy...just free, Haloweenish, and good for one day use. Next year we will do better! The kids did look really cute in their costumes using them though.

Super girl and Snow White enjoyed reading a book called Tilly Witch.




The butterfly fairy loved her hidden picture spelling game!


I have also been rocking Splashtop this week, Splashtop is a remote desktop app that lets you control your laptop with your iPad. I've been using it for shared reading! My kids do so much better when the text is NOT on the document camera, or in a big book, and I'm behind them "turning" the pages with my iPad!



They also get a kick out of me starting their brain breaks from random places in the room :)


On Fridays we always have a few guests join us for math. Several of the dual immersion students come to play math games. In the past they have just played card games like 10s go fish, make 10, and garbage. Recently however I decided to add our favorite slide math games, and they love them just as much as we do!


Yes they are sitting under the counter, but I'm not a very sit at your desk type teacher. This may be why I love the iPads so much... they can go anywhere.

For those of you that are not from my district the iPads really do go anywhere, they even go home with the kids. Some people don't like it, but I'm not one of them. I love that they have this resource at home as well as at school. Because of this I have two homework calendars, one for those who have internet, and one for those who don't. I made the decision to do this because I want my kids to beyond the use of apps. Apps are great, but I want them to be able do more than the apps allow. They can all still spend time on their regular apps if they choose, but the use of apps that are, in reality connected to really amazing online programs like Lexia, Raz-kids, and Spelling City provide so much more. This was a big revelation for me, and I have found some really great websites to use for literacy. Now on to math...