Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Setting Up Our iPads

I found that setting up our iPads was a bit of a one step forwards, two steps back proposition, in that some things I had read should be done for safety are not practical for a class set.  Below are the steps I used to set up our iPads.

1. I created a hotmail e-mail account for each classroom teacher.

example:  unitypublicschoolgrade6@hotmail.com

2. I set-up an AppleID for each classroom teacher using the above accounts.  You can set-up an account without a a credit card if you download one free app and when asked for credit card information you choose the none option.  It is fully explained at the How-To Geek blog. The students will not be given the information for this account just the homeroom teacher.

3. Each class has a cart with a mini Mac for syncing at school so I (or the classroom teacher) downloaded our recommended apps (see my previous post) and then I synced the teacher's iPad with the cart.

4. I added all the student's school pictures to the syncing station in the iPhotos section and added them to the classroom teacher's iPad.

5.  Next I synced all the student iPads.

6.  On each student iPad I:
           a) set-up the student's e-mail account (we have school division accounts provided for each student) 
           b) set-up iCloud using the classroom AppleID and password (I found it works more often if you click sign-in and not return) and okayed Find my iPhone
           c) I added the students' pictures as their screen backgrounds by going to Brightness & Wallpaper in settings and clicking on the wallpaper arrow and then going to Photo stream and choosing the picture and finally setting to Both (in the upper right corner)
           d) In General I went to Restrictions and I did the following:  -->
                   i) enabled restrictions by adding a four digit code – I used the same one for all the school iPads
                   ii) in ALLOW: I turned off the bottom 5 FaceTime, iTunes, Ping, Installing Apps, and Deleting Apps
* I realized later I shouldn't have turned off Installing Apps because you can't sync new apps with that turned off so I ended up turning it back on.
                   iii) in Allow Changes we set LOCATION to Don’t Allow Changes
 * I originally turned this off for safety reasons but I realized later I shouldn't have done this because you need the location turned on for a variety of apps to work, so I ended up allowing changes. As all of our iPads are for students in a school I don't really think it is a security problem as anyone can find our school without too much difficulty.
                   iv) in RATINGS Allowed Content I made the following changes to the settings:
                         Ratings For:  Canada
                         Music & Podcasts:  Clean
                         Movies:  G
                         TV Shows:  G
                         Apps:  All

At this point the iPads were more or less ready for the students.


iPad Apps - Kid in a Candy Store

        In June 2012 my staff decided to become a one-to-one school using iPads as our device as choice.  My next step was to decide what apps we should put on each iPad.  I spent many hours pouring over lists of recommended apps and curriculum topics and outcomes to arrive at the following lists:

The Basics for Everyone in Grades One to Six  
Pages (Inkpot with pen) $9.99 - word processing
Keynote (Podium with papers and mic)  $9.99 - slide presentations
Book Creator (book with scissors on tiedye background) $4.99 - can create a book with text, illustrations and audio which may be uploaded to iBooks
Accelerated Reader (blue with white stripes) FREE - allows students to take book quizzes but not to do Star Reading tests (yet)
Show Me Interactive Whiteboard (Show Me on screen) FREE - can create slideshows/video like presentations
Google Earth (blue and white earth) FREE - reference
Rover (skateboarding dog) FREE - allows iPad to play Flash sites
i-nigma (iphone - orange and red pattern) FREE - QR code reader
NearPod Teacher & Student  (orange/blue nearpod) FREE (2 apps)  - a student response systemwith limited storage - extended storage expensive and has an annual fee
Teacher Kit (t on green chalk board)  FREE  - attendance, grades, behavior recorder and tracker
Evernote  ( elephant on green) FREE - bookmarking system
DropBox  (blue box icon) FREE - storage of documents 
Typing Fingers (student and keyboard) FREE - keyboarding
iPaint (paint can) $0.99 - drawing app
DrawFree for iPad (paint pallet and brush on black)  FREE - drawing app
Stop Motion Studio (colorful camera on clapboard) $0.99 - digital storytelling
Animations Express (name on clapboard) FREE - digital storytelling
Puppet Pals (clouds in front of curtains) FREE - digital storytelling

Apps for Grades K – 3
BrainPOP Jr. Movie of the Week (Moby & Annie)   FREE - reference
Audiboo  (iphone purple microphone) FREE - audio recording
Chicktionary (three chickens)  FREE - word game
Dinosaurs:  The American Museum of Natural History Collections (T-Rex skull skeleton) FREE - dinosaur reference
Fotobabble  (f in red speech bubble) FREE - record audio for a photo
Four in a Row (2 orange and 2 blue circles) FREE - strategy game
Math Tappers:  Find Sums  (iphone symbol on green) FREE - Math
Math Tappers:  Numberline  (iphone symbol on green) FREE - Math
LinguPingu  – English French/Francais Anglais (penguin) $1.99 - French
NFB PixStop  (words) FREE - digital storytelling/video creator
NG Word Builders  (abc blocks) FREE - phonics and spelling
Phonics Genius (words) FREE - phonics
Scribble Press  (scribble on orange) FREE - book creator
Sock Puppets (sock puppet on green background) FREE - lip-sync video creator
Story Wheel (student with book and grad cap) FREE - story game
Virtuoso  Piano Free 3 (piano keyboard) FREE - piano
Word Wall HD (card and title) $1.99 - reading
Learning A-Z (Rooster)  FREE - reading
Rocket Speller  (rocket ship) FREE - spelling game
Doodlecast  (cat) $1.99 - drawing with audio recording
Image Chef (typewriter and flower) FREE - photo and video fun
Sentence Builder (green with name) $5.99 - helps build grammatically correct sentences
Language Builder (yellowish green with name) $9.99 - helps build grammatically correct language with auditory playback and audio clips
Audiobooks (book with earbuds) FREE - over 5000 free audio books

Grades 4 to 6
iMovie (Star on brown background)
Garage Band (Guitar)  $4.99
BrainPOP Featured Movie (Moby) FREE - free educational videos
The Star Phoenix (Black SP on blue) FREE - Local Newspaper
SaskTel Rider App (Green Rider Logo and SaskTel) FREE - Provincial CFL team
Tourism Saskatchewan HD (camping scene) FREE - Provincial information
Tap Quiz Map World Ed (map and words The World) FREE - Quiz of place names
Podcasts (white microphone on purple) FREE - a podcast player
Stack The Countries Lite (happy face on a globe) FREE - a geography game
Wordventure! (Red W and !) FREE - a MadLib type game
SimpleMind+ (teardrop) FREE - mind mapping
FunWithWords (green name on black) FREE - MadLibs type game
NASA App (White NASA on blue circle) FREE - official NASA app
Unblock Me (orange and red rectangles on brown) FREE - logic game
Dictionary.Com (white D in circle with rays) FREE - dictionary
Evernote (elephant on green) FREE - bookmarking system
Atlas for iPad (white atlas over map) FREE - atlas
Voicethread (black vt in white circle on black) FREE - collaborative recorder
Sudoko Finger Arts (S on scrabble tile 2) FREE - daily sudoko puzzles
Image Chef (typewriter with pink flower) FREE - photo editor and picture creator
Draw Something (yellow pencil on blue) FREE - Pictionary type game
Angry Birds HD (red angry bird) FREE - game using physics and math skills
Words With Friends HD (W on yellow tile) FREE - word game

      Out iPads are going to travel with the students up through the grades so I had teachers install the first apps above on all the iPads and then I had the bottom two lists specific to each division.  Teachers were also encouraged to add any apps they thought might be useful.  Each teacher was given a $50 iTunes card, paid for by the school, to purchase those apps that came at a cost. 

 

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

iPads vs Netbooks: The Journey Towards One-to-One

        I teach at Unity Public School, which is a pre-kindergarten to grade six school of approximately 175 students. At the start of the 2011-12 school year we had one computer lab of 22 Dell desktop computers and 1 data projector, one cart of 26 older Dell laptops, one cart of 19 newer Dell laptops, 4 Smart Boards (3 in the grade one, two, and three classrooms and 2 in open classrooms), 2-5 desktop computers in the grade three to six classes, 1 document camera, and 3 black & white printer/copiers, and 1 colour printer. Our teachers also all had a Dell laptop of varying vintages. Our students in grades one and two received a computer class for one (half hour) class in a six day cycle while grade three to six received two (half hour) classes in a six day cycle.

      Then we started our journey of becoming a one-to-one school, one device for every student, by getting iPads for most staff members and Netbooks for those who already had a personal iPad. All devices were provided by the Living Sky School Division. Over the course of the 2011-12 school year our teachers did a series of investigations and projects centered around technology, pedagogy and the intertwining of the two. This allowed staff to become familiar with a device and we also had enough iPads to do small group projects within our classes. In June we had to make two decisions. Firstly, if we wanted to become a one-to-one school and secondly, if so what device would we choose for our students' use.

       Our teachers decided we would like to become a one-to-one school but choosing the device took a little more thought. Here were some of the pros of each device . .
 
Netbooks 
*great keyboard size for small hands
*our tech support people were familiar with them and could fix problems
*able to print from the device
*familiar programs such as word, power point, photo story
*right click feature

 iPads
 *variety of apps available
 *superior battery life over the course of a school day
 *student & staff engagement

and here were some of the cons:

Netbooks
*battery life did not last a whole school day
*screen was small and difficult to read

 iPads 
*could not print to school network
*no right click feature
*keyboards could be purchased but would be an extra cost
*cost of apps
*no trained tech people for fixing problems

        After some debate we decided to go with iPads and starting in September 2012 the Living Sky School Division is providing each student in grade one to six with an iPad for in-school use. Pre-K and kindergarten decided to go with a mix of 1/3 iPods and 2/3 iPads, also provided by the division.  It will be an exciting journey that I look forward to starting.

Photos from www.flickr.com by myracing221 and sucelloleiloes.