I am so excited to announce that I will be heading to ISTE 2015 at the end of June! ISTE stands for International Society for Technology in Education. Every year they hold a mega tech ed conference and this year it is in Philly. I will be heading down with my partner in crime Lisa who is the Math enrichment specialist for our district. We collaborated on a Google Sheet to plan out which sessions we would be attending (MysterySkype, Minecraft, Robotics, coding, APPS). So be on the look out for a barrage of posts while I am there.
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On May 5th, 2015 KidBlog officially released their new, visually enhanced platform. I was part of the Beta release for the platform so I have been using the new platform since February and had a chance to work out some of the kinks with the people over at KidBlog (so wonderful) and my district. In this post I will walk you through the new features and what to expect when migrating over. How does your school district go about downloading apps to a device? Does each cart have a laptop that is synced to the iPads? Are they managed by a central office? #iPad Time Warp In October, the Instructional Technology Coordinator approached Erin (the Library Media Specialist) and I about creating a course for the teachers of our district. Each school had just received a new iPad cart and teachers needed to be trained in the possibilities. To case, or not to case - that is the question. Today's edition of the "iPad Time Warp" is all about the issue of casing the iPads in our school district. Here is another installment of the "iPad Time Warp"! It can be nerve-racking to think about teaching with the iPads for the first time. As teachers we like to prepare for everything but it is hard to plan for things you can't anticipate. I'm here to say I made it through my first lesson unscathed. And even if problems arise I bet the students will just be so happy to get to hold one that it will all seem swell to them. Every day this February break I am going to post an "iPad Time Warp" post that goes back to some of the events that occurred this year before I began this blog (to help you get caught up) - kind of like a #throwbackthursday (#tbt). Today we will start with the process of the carts arriving at the schools. On February 5th I started new units with my small group enrichment program. My 5th graders are creating their own cultures by researching a time period and an original habitat. From there they must figure out what happened to make their people want to move and set up a community in a new location. How did they get there? What did they bring with them? What sort of government did they set up in their new culture? How will the Kidblog app increase student engagement in this project and reduce my arch nemesis: paper? And so the adventure begins. . .
This year my school district purchased an iPad cart for each school. This year I began my new position as the visual reasoning enrichment teacher (formerly the elementary art teacher). In this new position I move to a new school in the district every 15 days. The first thing I do? Get my hands on the iPad cart. I wanted to be as involved as possible in the iPad deployment so in November I began teaching the 15 hour iPad Institute for my district. Next month I will begin the course again with a whole new group of excited educators. It is been an exciting 4 months but at times it has felt as if I am racing through a dark tunnel towards the light. I decided to create this blog to document the journey in hopes of providing other teachers, still deep in the tunnel, the solace of knowing that you are not alone. This is my way of lighting torches to help you on your way. |
AuthorLauren Berrios is a teacher and iPad enthusiast. Categories
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