Insights and feedback day1

Here are my insights and feedback for day1

Radio in Lewis Girls' School

YR11 Radio Project

As part of the launch of our radio station, YR11 students were asked to prepare a show that would be broadcast on the European Day of Languages.  Each student was given a country and they had to carry out some research, script their set, find appropriate music, record their set, edit their set and ensure that it was transferred (in the correct format) for transmission.  Two of the students broadcasted live, on the day itself, using the material created by the class.
Usually, the evaluative part of the project would have been written by the students.  Some of the students find this a challenge so, in the spirit of this audio project, we asked the students to create audio evaluations.
Whilst the results vary in quality, every student participated enthusiastically  (with very little help from staff). They used Audioboo/m, set up and populated their own blog, added my introduction and embedded their audio evaluations. They sent their blog address to the group who funded the project and plan to add to it in the near future - their next task is a radio interview.
Feel free to listen to some of their comments (keep in mind that they are a mixed ability group).

lgsparadio.blogspot.co.uk

Software and apps used:
Audacity (PC)/ Hokusai (iPads)  Word (PC)/ Pages (iPads)  Google Drive
Excel (PC)/ Numbers (iPads)   iTunes   GarageBand   Dropbox
Radio Zara  Radio streaming software (sorry, I can't remember the name)
Audioboo/m  Blogger  - not too shabby for one project

Freaked Out - part 1, apps

The course was an interesting day, and gave me plenty of hands-on experience with apps that I'd either had on my own personal iPad for ages and hadn;t found time to use, or completely new stuff. It was also valuable to be the only secondary teacher there, and I was treated as a guest of honour at times, which was cute.

So, as promised here's a list of the apps we looked at, and most were self-evidently useful in a classroom. I apologise if this information is absurdly behind the curve, but not having used the iPad in an educational context means I am forever playing catchup!

Simon recommended that schools have a core body of apps, rather that too many.
i can see the wisdom behind this at it allows teachers to be more focused and allows for better sharing of good practice. not to mention it is more cost effective.

All iPad apps (well, duh).
Explain everything - creates interactive and fun slideshows and screencasts.
iFiles - manages and transfers content on iPads, and allows easy downaloading of clips from youtube.
Book Creator - pulls in assets created in all manner of iPad apps to create an interactive story book. Really fun.
Aurasma - Creating interactive assets using augmented reality. I really liked the idea behind this app, and definitely intend to use this in my classroom. Learners take an image of a poster, for example, and it triggers an event such as a video or audio clip. A great idea and a good gateway towards acceptance of mobile phones in and around school.
Hyperlapse- creating time lapse video clips
8MM - a video recording tool with a variety of in-built filters to create authentic looking clips (e.g. for a history lesson)
WordFoto - generating word clouds from a customisable word list and mapping it onto an image.
Vemory - will search a user's social media account to automatgically create a memory book of images that have been tagged in a particular way
Skitch - annotating on an acquired image
Audioboom (formerly Audioboo)
iTubeList - creating safe playlists of youtube content matching a given criteria
Tagcloud - creating word clouds
Showbie - a student work manager
Post-it Plus - allows you to take a photo of a grid of post-it notes, and will scan them in and allow your to rearrange them on the ipad. Sounds crap, seemed cool.
Xnsketch - a pretty standard drawing app with some nice filters.
Tellegami - create a digital avatar that can be used to give presentations and such. I can imagine the pupils will love abusing the hell out of this...

Tomorrow, I'll discuss the key issues that Simon spoke about regarding 21st Century Learners, and some very interesting ideas on how we can help create a culture of digital leaders and learners in our classrooms.