Lesson Learned

If you read my last post, you know my students were in the middle of a cool app-smashing project involving Desmos, Skitch, and Showbie. At the end of class, they saved their work to the camera roll to finish up the next day.

In our building, we have three iPad carts with 30 iPads each. The iPads are numbered in the settings, and at one time they had numbers on the lock screen and home screen. Unfortunately, many students feel the need to change the photos on the screens, making it difficult to quickly and easily identify the iPad. Also, when students are done using the iPads, they don't get returned to the correct slot in the cart either, so it's like finding a needle in a hay stack to find the exact iPad you need. I always remind my students to check the number in settings and record it on the sign out sheet in case we need to use the same one the next day (as in this case). Some did, others didn't. 

Our wonderful technology teacher Ruth Davis just happened to be in my classroom at the start of class because she was bringing the iPad cart to me. She and I spent a good 10 to 15 minutes going through all the iPads trying to find the iPad that each student had saved their work on the day before. It was a disaster! I finally gave up and scrapped the idea of finishing the project.

Lesson learned: don't save work to the device, save it to the cloud!

The project was supposed to include the student saving their completed project to Showbie. I had lost track of time towards the end of class and in my haste, I told them to just save it to the camera roll instead of signing into Showbie and adding it to today's assignment folder. I will never do that again. Showbie is such a great app, and every project we have ever done could be saved to Showbie for safe keeping. Then it wouldn't matter which iPad, or which cart for that matter, the student ended up with the next day -- they would always have access to their work. Lesson learned.

App-smashing with Desmos

Click on the image above to open the PDF

On Friday, we learned the basics of slope - how to find slope from a table or a graph. Today, I wanted to reinforce the concepts and help them make the connection between the table and the graph, so I designed an app-smashing activity for my students using Desmos, Skitch, and Showbie. 

First, I walked the class through completing the worksheet (see left). They were basically picking random numbers to help them build their own personalized input-output table. Their choices for boxes A and B became their first ordered pair. Then their choice for C and E became their rate of change for the x-coordinates, and their choices for D and F became their rate of change for the y-coordinates. They completed their input-output table and found the slope. They then completed the same thing on the opposite side of the worksheet so they had two input-output tables to work with. The only stipulation I gave them was that if they chose the same signs for E and F on one side, they had to choose different signs for the other side (so they ended up with one positive slope and one negative slope).


Next, they opened up Desmos and I walked them through how to recreate their two tables that they had just created on paper. I had them change the graph to be a connected line with points instead of the default of just the points being displayed. They needed to make sure the axes were labeled in increments of 5 so it was easier to count the rise and run. When both tables were set up, they took a screen shot to save it to the camera roll.

The next step was to open up Skitch, import the screen shot, and label the following things: the change in the x and y values in the tables, the rise and run of each line, the slope of each line, and whether the slope is positive or negative. I asked them to color code the labeling so the color they used for the table and the line matched.Then they tapped share and saved the image to the camera roll again.

The final step was to go into Showbie, open today's assignment, and tap the + sign at the top right to add the photo from the Photo Library. They just had to tap done, and it was submitted to me.

It sounds like a lot of steps, but everyone did well with the process. A few students actually finished the whole project by the very end of class. Most of them will finish it up in the first few minutes of class tomorrow. They really liked working with Desmos, so I will be definitely planning some other app-tivities with it in the future.

My Observation

Today, my supervisor came in to observe me. My lesson was focused on practicing converting between scientific notation and standard form. I introduced this concept to my classes on Friday, but with a snowday on Monday, most of the students forgot what they had learned after the three-day weekend. I had my work cut out for me!

I started by having everyone sign into Showbie and look at the comments I made on their classwork from Friday. Many of them still needed a lot of practice to get close to mastering this concept. Next, they completed the Do Now, also in Showbie, which asked them what type of exponent a really, really small and a really, really large number would have, positive or negative. Then they had two problems to complete and submit.

The next part of the lesson was where the fun came in! I had 12 stations set up around the room for the students to visit. At each station, they used Aurasma to view a Tellagami video (Gami) that I created, with the avatar reading a word problem to them, asking them to convert a number from scientific notation to standard form, or vice versa. I tried to make each word problem something that would be interesting to them, like the number of burgers sold at McDonald's, the amount of the national debt, the age of the Earth, or the speed of the fastest computer. The room was filled with the sounds of the various accents of the avatars reading the problems, and students moving around the room solving the problems. My supervisor walked around the room too, looking over the student's shoulders to see the Gamis. 

When they had completed all 12 stations, they scanned a QR code on the SmartBoard that led them to a Google form survey. The first question asked them how they were doing with this concept, ranging from "I totally get it" to "I'm totally lost" (only one student said they were totally lost). The second question asked them which fact they found the most interesting - not surprisingly, the McDonald's fact won. The third question asked what was their favorite activity that we have done so far this year. QR code scavenger hunts won this one by a landslide! (Guess I'll be doing them more often!)

If the students finished the survey, they could start a Versatiles activity that I created for practicing scientific notation. Since we had a 2-hour delay today, classes were 20 minutes shorter than usual, so only about half of the students actually completed all 12 stations and got to the Versatiles. My supervisor sat down with several of the students to see what they were doing and they explained to him how to use the Versatiles.

When we were just about at the end of the class, I asked them to put their iPads back in the cart and grab the homework from on top of the cart on their way out. As one student looked at the homework, he said, "This'll be a piece of cake!" That was like music to my ears!

As for my observation, my supervisor was impressed with the technology being used in my classroom, and how comfortable the students seemed with using it. He also said he now totally understands why I'm teaching a professional development class on using iPads!

iPads, Start to Finish

I read a discussion somewhere fairly recently (I wish I could remember where so I could give them credit!) of using the iPads not just for one isolated part of a lesson, but for the entire lesson, start to finish. I have actually used the iPads for almost the entire class a handful of times, but never for the entire time. Most of the time, I do just use them for one part of the lesson.

Unintentionally, today I did just that. I didn't think about it until after class was over, but it actually got me excited! (I know...I'm sooo geeky!) I started out class with the students signing in to Showbie to access the Do Now. There were two versions of the Do Now in the assignment folder which they could choose from. Then after a quick review on the Smart Board, I had them open Explain Everything, not to use it as we usually do for screencasting, but just to use as a whiteboard to solve practice problems, instead of passing out the physical personal whiteboards, markers, and erasers. Then I introduced the app-smashing project they were going to do by using Reflector to project my iPad on the Smart Board. 

Our topic today was a review of exponents, but squares and cubes specifically. I wanted them to make a connection between "the little number up in the air" (translation: exponent) and the real-life applications of squares and cubes. The project involved using 3 different apps, then submitting their work to the 4th app, Showbie. With the first app, Hands-On Color Tiles, they created 3 to 4 squares and took a screenshot to save it to the camera roll. With the second app, Think 3D Free, they created 2 different cubes and shared them to the camera roll as well. In the third app, Skitch, they annotated on their photos they had just created to show the dimensions of the figures and express them with exponents, then share it to the camera roll. Then they went into Showbie and added their files to their folders to submit their work to me.

I absolutely love the idea of utilizing the iPads for the entire lesson! Besides the benefit of being paperless, it just seems to flow so much better between activities because everything the students need is right at their fingertips, literally, in the iPads. And to the students, anything you do on the iPads is fun!

Having 1-to-1 iPads would make this concept of iPads start to finish much more of a daily routine in my classroom. Our building has 3 carts of 30 iPads, not 1-to-1, but most days I am able to get one of the carts, so I am going to focus on trying to do this on a regular basis. One drawback of the shared carts and not having 1-to-1 is that when students start a project on one day and need to finish it the next day, we have to ensure that they get the exact same iPad. This is frustrating when the class that has used the iPads before us doesn't put the iPads back in their proper slots in the cart. It becomes a scavenger hunt to find the right iPad for each student, which takes up valuable class time each day. Ugh!

One part of the lesson I haven't attempted on the iPads is notetaking. I would love to hear from someone that is not in a 1-to-1 situation but uses the iPads for students to take notes. Do you use Evernote, Notability, or some other app? Does each student need to have their own account? 

I would also love to hear from others who use the iPads start to finish on a daily basis. How is that working out for you? What types of problems do you encounter? What are the benefits you see from this?

Solving Word Problems with Tellagami and Aurasma

Last Wednesday, I gave my students a preview of our next project, and they were super excited to do it! We were working on two-step equation word problems, so I thought using Tellagami and Aurasma would be a perfect combination for our project. First I had the students write their own word problems. Once I had approved their idea, they typed up the problem and added a picture to go along with it, which would serve as the Aurasma trigger. Then they used Tellagami to create a Gami (movie) with their avatar reading their word problem. Next, they used Aurasma to create their aura, using their photo as the trigger and their Gami as the overlay. They thought it was so cool! On Friday, my two Pre-Algebra classes were supposed to switch problems to solve. Unfortunately, the weather did not know about my plans and kept us from completing our project until the following Wednesday. Finally, on Wednesday the students rotated through the stations, watching/listening to the Gamis read the word problem to them, then writing the two-step equation, solving it, and writing their final answer in a complete sentence. It was a very motivating way to get the students to solve word problems, which is usually one of their least favorite topics. App-smashingly fun!