Bitsboard is an app allowing a student to practice their understanding of basic words associated to images.
There are five different games for each board, a board consisting of a set of words in one category. For example a board could contain words associated with different foods, and each word has a paired image and audio pronunciation.
You have the ability to create your own board using your own pictures. Better yet, have students create their own board.
Also, you can download other boards created from the online shared Bitsboard community, or modify existing boards.
Finally, thinking outside the box use this app like flashcards for learning vocabulary in higher level courses, like science, social studies, and math.
Given five integers, and the four basic arithmetic operations, with parenthesis available, try to determine an expression that equates to a target number.
This is the premise for the app "This = That". The player can create an expression using any number of digits, the more digits they use the higher score that is received.
For each missed guess, or re-deal, it will cost the player a few points from their accumulated total. The correct value of your incorrect guess is displayed to help you refine your thinking.
Along with the thought involved in determining a correct expression, try out this evaluation exercise. Give the students 5 minutes to accumulate as many points as possible. What route do you take? Does one provide many shorter 2-3 digit expressions for fewer points each, or go for the bigger 5 digit expressions and obtain a larger amount of points?
It takes one frustrating class period with students to cause the idea of using devices in the classroom to go to the back burner. They were distracted! They wanted to play games, take pictures of themselves, text their buddies.....
Here are some ways to make the experience easier on the teacher and at the same time teach students how to be better users of the devices they have in their pockets.
Establish Clear Expectations
As with any new activity of course! When can they use them, how to handle them, what accounts to use, etc... With older students, especially classrooms using BYOD or iPod touch labs, require that the devices stay on top of the desk (no in the lap texting/game playing), and when not in use “turtle” them or “apples up” meaning the screen is asleep and facedown. Post your expectations and have consequences for not following them. The more you use the devices, the easier establishing a routine will become.
Finding Your Workflow
I know what app, I know what I want them to do, but they know more than me! Please remember, you don’t have to be an expert. Allow the students to explore the app before using it for an assignment or let them figure it out on the way. We had a post last fall from a classroom teacher on this very topic: Let Them Explore.
If it is a creation app, make sure to do a quick sample and figure out the workflow to turn in the assignment. Will you view it on their device, can it save to their photo album, will they email it to me? Everyones workflow may be a little different, but make sure you decided on that before hand.
How to Use the Device for Learning
Students need to be exposed to the tools loaded on the devices. If its BYOD, have them download tools on to their own devices that will teach them to use their device beyond games and their social networks.
What about how to search for good sites for references or teaching them about copyright issues? Common Sense Media is a great place to look for lessons pertaining to researching, copyrights, as well as how to be a responsible digital citizen for grades K - 12.
But They are Still Distracted!
There have been discussions on the distractibility of all the new technologies we use in our everyday life. It’s not just our students, we too are more distracted than ever (look around at the next staff meeting!) With iPads there are settings options, like Guided Access, to lock a student in an app, but with high schoolers with their own devices, it’s not that easy.
In the blog post “Teaching a Distracted Generation to Focus” on Technapex the author discusses the findings of a study on just how distracted we all are. A great suggestion in the post on taking “Tech Breaks” caught my attention. It’s the opposite of what it sounds, when teaching class, stop and take a couple minutes to allow students to check their devices, then put them back on the desk and get back to work at the task at hand. Rather than fighting students throughout the lesson, set a “tech break” in the middle of a lesson, then focus back to the lesson... turn it off/asleep and turtle on the desk. Remember, there will always be and always have been distractions in classrooms....note passing, comic books inside the textbook, even the cool mechanical pencil! Do you have any tips and tricks for helping deal with the "distractions" with students? Please feel free to share what has worked for you!
BaiBoard is a free multi-page collaborative virtual whiteboard available for the iPad. Like many apps designed for businesses, educators have thought outside the box and are using it as a viable resource for their classrooms.
One high school teacher uses BaiBoard and his iPad as his slate. BaiBoard gives you the ability to share the virtual whiteboard with an IP address. He opens a browser on his computer connected to a projector and is able to present material to students while using a stylus on the iPad, walking around the room as you would a slate.
BaiBoard tools consist of several pens, up to four pages, and the ability to bring in images or documents. For instance teaching math you could bring in a xy coordinate plane and for creating graphs, or take a picture of a students solution and annotate over the top. The board contents remained saved associated to the board number for future reference until the board owner clears it.
A second pair of elementary teachers use BaiBoard's collaboration piece to have students work together to solve math problems. Once you create a new board, you can return to that board providing you remember the board number. You can also have multiple authors joining one board. Thus, students in two different schools join the same board on iPad's at each school, and collaboratively work on math problems.
Here is a video of one 3rd grade classroom using BaiBoard. Students would post problems from classroom A, and students in classroom B would solve them.
In rolling out the app to this 3rd grade class, the two teachers agreed to have their students join specific board numbers at the same time, with some students in each class on the same board. It took under 5 minutes for students to find the chat feature inside BaiBoard and thus communicate with each other.
BaiBoard is a nice collaborative virtual whiteboard available free for the iPad. Give it a try.
iPads can bring a shift in the way teachers facilitate the classroom. From a teacher directed setting there are many more opportunities to shift into student directed environments. Here is a guest writers thoughts on how his students view short video clips, rather than show the one video to all students.
"I'm
finding that the iPads are a very useful tool for
showing video clips as part of a lesson. In my health class, I
wanted the kids to view some video clips from Discovery Education as part
of a lesson Using
my account with Discovery, I created a "lesson" that accessed several
short clips. This process in Discovery creates a student access
code and a private URL link for each video clip that I can share with
my students through an Edmodo assignment. The students all have
headsets (or they can bring their own) that allow them to quietly watch
the videos on the iPads without disturbing others plus they can work
at their own pace. They can review the video as many times as
necessary to complete an accompanying assignment, either on paper or on
Edmodo. It has been quite interesting observing a class of 30
students doing their lesson this way. When
using the iPads in this manner I have found it is more
effective to use several short clips (1 to 3 minutes) instead one long
video. This makes it easier for the student to replay the parts they missed.
Another great thing is that the students can access the Discovery material
through Edmodo outside of school if they missed class. Discovery
allows for student accounts, but this isn't necessary with the private URL that
can be shared on Edmodo. The "old
way" would have been to show the full video to the entire class at
once. They would see the video only once, there would be the
usual classroom distractions, and some students wouldn't be able to see
the classroom screen from the back of the room. They also wouldn't be
able to rewind the video for review." - Rob Doherty, Science Teacher at Armand Larive Middle School in Hermiston OR.
Are you searching for a free middle school app to assist with teaching math, or possible a primary app to assist with teaching reading? TechChef4You, an app, offers a great data base where you might find some valuable resources including apps and Pinterest boards to integrate into your curriculum.
When looking at the app, click on different places off the picture to obtain various information. For starters, click on the bowl full of apps to bring up a query tool.
Select your device, grade level, and a category to bring up results based upon your inquiry. Then find the app you desire and use the link to install it onto your device.
Select the social media icons off the wooden spoon and read through different social media posts. For example, choose Pinterest, and then be sure to scroll down to find different Pinterest boards for ideas.
Pinterest boards available
from techchef4you
You can also select the RSS pot on the stove and read through the TechChef4You blog.
Instead of searching Google, try looking through TechChef4You for great ideas and apps to help you with integrating iPads into your curriculum.
