ShowMe an Awesome App

ShowMe

Over the past few months, we have been exploring the what possible uses and value that iPads and iPods could could bring into our building. Apart from the buzz that each and every student had whenever these mobile devices were in the classroom, we have found some amazing Apps that could be so valuable in the classroom.

One of those Apps was one that a colleague found in her personal exploration of iPad resources. That App, called ShowMe (ShowMe on Twitter - @showmeapp), is an amazing way for students to show their understanding of a topic or concept, or share an idea by drawing and talking about it. It works somewhat like Smart Recorder does for a desktop computer. It records whatever you do on the screen as well as your voice. You can also record your voice over the top while playing back.

An account does need to be created in order to share www.showme.com recordings. An account is free and very little personal information is shared. Students under the age of 13 would need to have an account ShowMent made for them (either one that a parent acknowledges or a teacher created account). I would try to make an account for my class to access.

However, a way around creating an account is to playback ShowMe's directly form iPad. With a Apple VGA adaptor cable you can mirror whatever is on your iPad screen through a data projector.

Here is a link to the ShowMe website with some of their ideas for using the App in the classroom - http://www.showme.com/about_classroom

During the City Planning Project students were given a plot of land and a question:

• You are given a piece of land for sustainable and responsible development.  How can we organize this area while meeting the diverse needs of plants, animals and humans?

Groups of students then worked together to plan out their piece of land. Through the discussion of ideas and sharing of opinions each group designed their plan together. Groups then shared their plan to the class using ShowMe. This was an amazing way for students to plan, collaborate, draw and colour their ideas, change and adapt their work and finally present.

Thanks to Laura Hildebrandt and Kate Logan for sharing this App making learning more engaging for our learners.

This video shows the Recording being shared. I speed the video up through the middle to show more progress.

Yawwwwwwwn - Fractions are boring!

Day 5 - #30DayChallenge

Fractions - one of the hardest concepts for elementary kids to get a grasp of.

Today I invited myself into a grade three class that were learning about fractions. The lesson was not deep inquiry or problem based but more of an exploration around understanding 'part of a whole'.

The students had completed some preliminary activities around finding the shaded fractions of shaded areas. I think in most cases students were able find and write or describe fractions of 'pizzas'. I walked in during the class discussion about they'd already done.

I helped out with the lesson and by the end I noticed that some students were yawning, bored and still struggling with what we has been talking about. I know that the understanding of fractions won't happen in one lesson but I also wonder if we could have had the students work on more engaging work.

How could we make this more authentic and engaging for these grade threes. To me, the biggest problem was the timeframe we had to work with. The exam is next week and there is still content to be covered (a typical problem, I'm sure for many gr3, 6, and 9 teachers.

My ideas for making the work more engaging:

• Real Problem - designing a real life problem for students to solve - This would possibly a longer project so not good for this time of year
• Add in some authentic tasks - building, making, cutting, drawing, explaining, and finding fractions from our community/school building
• Using technology:
• Smart Notebook for solving problems and building fractions
• iPads - Finding and taking pictures of fractions
• Using ideas from Marion Small - using "Big Ideas" as building blocks for developing understanding
• Doing a range of different activities to help reach all learners

Have any other ideas? Please share!

Student Choice - Too Much or Too Little?

Day 4 - #30DayChallenge

These days in education we always seem to be talking about giving students more choice.

Today's focus is on a project I have been involved with in a Grade 4 Social Studies class. The teachers wanted to to have their students engaged in Social Studies project where they learned about the past through telling stories about artifacts. The focus of the project was to study artifacts from Alberta's history and then find out what that artifact meant to Alberta and its people. The artifacts came from a variety of sources such as The Glenbow Museum, the CBE Aboriginal collection of artifacts and teachers' personal collection of artifacts.

The following is what the students were able to choose:

• Each student chose an artifact they were interested in and research information about it.
• Students chose/found their own source of information - in print and/or Internet
• Each group (that the teacher formed) got to choose a format to present their stories
• As a class, the students help choose (co-created) the criteria of what and how the project would by assessed

Positive takeaways

• From the moment I was involved with these classes they were ENGAGED. They have been so into what they are learning about. The excitement on the faces of these Grade 4's has been a sight for sore eyes! They have been so enthused to share their knowledge about the origin and history of each particular artifact.
• The students acted like archeologists to find out more about their artifacts. They really felt like experts.
• Almost all student have found success with their learning. Some student have needed more coaching than other but all have been able to learn something about their chosen artifact.
• The small amount of information that most students found was enough for most to infer, or guess, the value of that artifact to Albertans and the stories it might tell.

Negative takeaways

• This project has been hard to manage. The students had 7 or more choices of ways to present their information. This made it hard to give enough support/feedback to each and every group.
• The artifacts were hard to research. We did not come up with enough sources to help the students. The information we found was not necessary what we needed to know about the artifact.
• Students who often struggle to access information and pull important and relevant information found it hard to infer a deeper understanding of the artifacts.

What would I repeat what I would change next time?

• I loved the enthusiasm this project brought to Social Studies, a subject I have always found hard to make exciting. I would definitely do a project like this again - Acting like archeologists, and presenting their findings was a powerful way to learn about our history.
• I think the range of choice when it came to presenting the information was too broad. Next time we could suggest everyone presents in a similar way, such as a video for an online museum, a page out of a brochure, an audio recording for a radio show etc
• I would make the research more successful ~ give certain websites to use or narrow down possible research sources. This was hard to do with such a wide range of artifacts the students had to learn about.

Things I wonder?

• I wonder how to find sources of information without making it a HUGE task ~ Is this possible?
• What are some other ways to engage students with artifacts?
• Were there enough choice in this project?
• Were there or to many choices?

I will post some photos of students working on this project soon...

Daydream Regularly to be More Engaged!

Day 2 - #30DayChallange

I wonder how many teachers give their students a chance to daydream every day?

Today I discovered a blog post about the positive effects of daydreaming. Wow! That's awesome!

Why Daydreaming Isn’t a Waste of Time by Annie Murphy Paul - http://goo.gl/QvV4y

In this day and age it seems that we're too busy to stop and relax. I certainly don't just sit down and listen to the sounds around me, or to music, or just stare into space. I know if I did, my brain would probably start spinning with all the things I had to do. I wonder what students would do when asked to daydream. What would they think? How would it benefit their work and their Learning?

Annie Murphy Paul believes, "A lack of time to daydream may even hamper kids" capacity to pay attention when they need to". When in a relaxed state, our brain settles down and actually reflects, remembers, and thinks ahead. When we give it a chance, our brain will do what it does best, think!

This is a great example of another metacognitive skill that may help our learners become more engaged learners. Something I want to try with my learners!

Day1 ~ #30DayChallenge

Engagement Through Inquiry: 

As I was thinking about what to post today, I met with a teacher to talk about our plan for next week. Sitting in the centre of her classroom was a student made city - The City Project - I asked her how about it. It started off as a simple French project and then turned into an integrated inquiry projecting. They integrated Math (Area and Perimeter) , Social (Democracy), Science (Trees and Forests) and French (Places in our city).

WHAT AN AMAZING PROJECT!

Students have been totally engaged in this project throughout the past two weeks. The inquiry question was as follows: You are given a piece of land for sustainable and responsible development. How can we organize this area while meeting the diverse needs of plants, animals and humans?

A lot of city planners decided to incorporate rooftop gardens to their buildings

WHATS MADE STUDENTS WANT TO BE ENGAGED?

I believe that the engagement in this project comes from the fact that the students owned it. They did the planning, they made the decisions, they made the mistakes, and they made adjustments. Through collaboration, students had to plan and decide on a city that met everybody's needs.