PIAR

Technology Implementation: Ipads

Over the past couple of weeks, John Muir Middle has been in the process of implementing Ipads for each student into the classroom. Growing up in a world of ever evolving world of technology, I have been able to take advantage of utilizing the Ipads in my lessons. There are countless teaching apps available today and navigating through them all can be very tedious. Below is a list with description of teacher-friendly apps that I have used thus far with my students in the classroom. As I progress and explore further the possibilities of these Ipad apps, I will update this list continuously.

Ipad Apps:

Popplet     -Graphic organizer capable of creating flow charts and bubble maps 

Notability -Interactive workplace where the students can write, draw, paint, and answer questions on document created by the teacher 

Nearpod   -Teacher led powerpoint presenter with the capabilities of allowing students to take quizzes and receive instant feedback on their answers. Great for both formal and informal assessments

Pages       -Template that allows students to write prompts and easily submit to teacher through email or dropbox

Too Noisy-App that presents a scale and monitors the noise level within a class. Great for classroom management.

Science Task

As my student's prepare to finish a unit, I enjoy giving the students the opportunity to show their classmates what they've learned in a heated battle in the game "Jeopardy". By providing students with this opportunity, I have found that their confidence in speaking and ability to recall information grows. This strategy for review, I believe is beneficial in helping students find answer to any un-answered questions about the topic and further, prepares them for the quiz they will have the next day. In this exercise, I place the students in teams of 4 and allow them to share information with each other and they have to decide what the best response will be to the questions asked. I will typically provide the team with the most points at the end of class with bonus points. In this picture however, I decided to do something different and actually made a mini-quiz which was class-wide. The jeopardy game was still used in this assessment but the students were given the opportunity to debate and agree on the answers to the questions asked. I listed all the class grades on the board and made it a class wide competition and the students loved that. In this picture we see my 4th period honors students winning the competition and getting a 100% on the quiz. Gran Tabajo!!