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.
An example of Tricia Fuglestad's face/vase illusion lesson on sketchbookX from her website.
So like I mentioned in my first time warp entry, I was eager to try a lesson I had seen on Tricia Fuglestad's website. It was a symmetrical face/vase illusion lesson using the SketchbookX app. I really recommend going with a tried and true lesson the first time you use the iPads if you are nervous. She had everything laid out and there was even a video of all the steps.
The first thing I did was bring in some students to school over a holiday break to try out the lesson. This was easy for me since I was babysitting students from a nearby school at the time. They each invited a friend over and we rode our bikes to the school (they loved parking their bikes in the hallway). We walked the students through the lesson but before we could even get started I caught the 5th grader trying to set a password to the iPad! So we decided to make "Do Not Touch" folders on the iPads to hold the settings, iMessage, and a few other apps we did not want students accessing. Anyway, the trial lesson went well and we felt ready to teach.
I co-taught this lesson with Erin, the Library Media Specialist. She had the students first and presented a lesson in the Media Center on caring for the iPads. In this lesson she also taught them how to use the cases, open and close apps, use the camera, and switch between apps.
For the next lesson students were with both of us in the art room. I had been teaching them about symmetry so it was a very smooth transition to this lesson. During this lesson, the Instructional Technology Coordinator for the district came in to watch the students. We presented via our document camera, which worked out fine. It would have been nice to have Apple TV so that we could walk around while presenting but with two of us in the room it wasn't a big deal.
As I mentioned in a previous post, we only had 10 iPads at this point. So Erin and I sat down before hand to plan out partners. We did a pretty good job of pairing the students because there were no issues during the lesson, behavioral or otherwise. I gave advice from an art/fine motor standpoint and Erin from a technology perspective. The plan for us was that one student would make the vase during this lesson while the other partner would help them out along the way. During the next class, the second partner would create the vase. The Coordinator advised that we might want to consider having A-B partners the next time we try it. For example, "A partners, I would like you to add a new layer". "B partners, I would like you to choose a color for the paint brush". What a great tip!
All in the all, the lesson was very successful. We only ran into one small problem that we had not anticipated. In this lesson, the students had to import a picture of themselves in profile, add a layer, turn on the symmetry function, and then trace their face. Tracing the face took much longer than expected because the students kept retracing their face to get it perfect. For a while we couldn't figure out why it was taking so long. This was a good lesson to learn. Now when I teach with the iPads in a new app I always start by telling students that I'm not looking for perfection. I tell them that it is their first time and I'm more concerned that we have fun, try it out, and we can work on improving our skills the next time we use the app because, "You weren't skipping around gracefully the first time you learned to walk. It was pretty ugly". And the students laugh.
The first thing I did was bring in some students to school over a holiday break to try out the lesson. This was easy for me since I was babysitting students from a nearby school at the time. They each invited a friend over and we rode our bikes to the school (they loved parking their bikes in the hallway). We walked the students through the lesson but before we could even get started I caught the 5th grader trying to set a password to the iPad! So we decided to make "Do Not Touch" folders on the iPads to hold the settings, iMessage, and a few other apps we did not want students accessing. Anyway, the trial lesson went well and we felt ready to teach.
I co-taught this lesson with Erin, the Library Media Specialist. She had the students first and presented a lesson in the Media Center on caring for the iPads. In this lesson she also taught them how to use the cases, open and close apps, use the camera, and switch between apps.
For the next lesson students were with both of us in the art room. I had been teaching them about symmetry so it was a very smooth transition to this lesson. During this lesson, the Instructional Technology Coordinator for the district came in to watch the students. We presented via our document camera, which worked out fine. It would have been nice to have Apple TV so that we could walk around while presenting but with two of us in the room it wasn't a big deal.
As I mentioned in a previous post, we only had 10 iPads at this point. So Erin and I sat down before hand to plan out partners. We did a pretty good job of pairing the students because there were no issues during the lesson, behavioral or otherwise. I gave advice from an art/fine motor standpoint and Erin from a technology perspective. The plan for us was that one student would make the vase during this lesson while the other partner would help them out along the way. During the next class, the second partner would create the vase. The Coordinator advised that we might want to consider having A-B partners the next time we try it. For example, "A partners, I would like you to add a new layer". "B partners, I would like you to choose a color for the paint brush". What a great tip!
All in the all, the lesson was very successful. We only ran into one small problem that we had not anticipated. In this lesson, the students had to import a picture of themselves in profile, add a layer, turn on the symmetry function, and then trace their face. Tracing the face took much longer than expected because the students kept retracing their face to get it perfect. For a while we couldn't figure out why it was taking so long. This was a good lesson to learn. Now when I teach with the iPads in a new app I always start by telling students that I'm not looking for perfection. I tell them that it is their first time and I'm more concerned that we have fun, try it out, and we can work on improving our skills the next time we use the app because, "You weren't skipping around gracefully the first time you learned to walk. It was pretty ugly". And the students laugh.
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