The video below gives a brief overview of how it works and more information can be found on the Nearpod website.

I am not in a position to try this with a class as we are not a 1:1 iPad school and we are only in the midst of a small scale iPad trial with a small group of staff to look at the potential; however, I can already envisage how this could be put to use if students had access to devices which could link to the presentation and I look forward to trying this out further and keeping an eye on how it develops. I am intending to try it out with a small group of staff at our next iPad trial meeting. One of the pitfalls is that all students have to work through the presentation at the same pace as the teacher controls the change of slides / activity so it doesn’t enable personalised learning for students who prefer working at different pace or want to return to content for consolidation. Nevertheless this certainly has potential for use with certain groups of students.

To try and draw together thoughts and ideas there are a number of questions we are going to discuss as a group and as we continue with the trial we need to think about potential next steps and how we could move things forward.

The questions we are going to be considering are:

EVALUATING THE iPAD TRIAL – The story so far….
(a) Teaching using the iPad

1. How has the iPad helped fulfil general admin tasks as a teacher, has it made everyday life easier?
2. How have iPads enhanced the learning experience of your students? Have they? Could they?
3. Is there anything that has held you back in getting the most out of using the iPad as a Teaching and Learning tool?
4. Is there anything that you can do with the iPad that is not possible or is more difficult to achieve without it?

(b) Potential for student use?
5. What further potential does the iPad have for transforming learning opportunities for students in the way we teach?
6. Do you feel students could make good use of iPads in your subject area? If so in what kinds of ways?
7. In what ways does the iPad have potential to support students? SEN? Gifted and Talented? A’level students etc..?

MOVING FORWARD
8. What technical issues / problems have arisen when using the iPad which need addressing?
9. Are there any particular concerns over e-safety and use of the iPads by students that need to be considered?
10. What would be the main goals of any future iPad implementation? Engagement, access to digital textbooks, access to digital environments, watching videos / listening to audio; media production (editing of photos / video), or a mixture?
11. What do would be the main challenges in increasing use of iPads / implementing use with students?
12. Will iPad use always require forward planning? Or have you found tools which you would be able to naturally integrate into lessons when needed (adding to the teachers everyday toolkit)?

… and so the next stage in the trial commences!

Simply download the widget here. Go to the Gallery in SMART notebook and click on the arrow next to My Content. Select add new content and browse to where you have downloaded the widget. This should then add it to your Gallery ready to use. Then simply create your Voki and grab the embed code.

I have just been playing around with a very handy little widget for embedding YouTube clips straight into Notebook. It plays from the internet so still requires internet access but it is very handy having the video embedded straight into the page and although I have only tried a couple it seems to work very well. You can download the widget from Smart Exchange here and Danny Nicholson has given a quick and easy to follow tutorial of how to install the widget on his excellent Whiteboard Blog.

One local school in Cambridge (The Perse School) has already rolled out a 1-1 iPad project, and examples of how the iPads are being used are summarised in the video below.

Another example where significant research has already been carried out is at Longfield Academy in Kent where the impact of iPads in the school has been measured over a couple of terms and research carried out on behalf of NAACE has been summarised as a report “The iPad – A Tool for Education”

Our trial is very small scale in comparison, with only a small number of teachers involved and only one iPad being available in the classroom, but I am looking forward to seeing how the iPads can be put to good use. We are already beginning to see benefits and I am hoping to record our ‘iPad journey’ and thoughts through fairly regular posts on here.

This useful scoop it page “How schools are using iPads in education in the UK” is a particularly interesting and uptodate set of links with regards to the use of iPads in education and one which is well worth keeping an eye on and I am also tweeting any particularly useful links I find on my @RobGeog account.

We have used stop-motion animation in the Geography Department for a couple of years to encourage students to apply knowledge and understanding in the formation and development of coastal landforms and also in documenting the processes and features created at different plate boundaries in the study of plate tectonics. We have used plasticine for students to create and manipulate models and used flip cams to record stills which have then been stitched together in moviemaker. The results have been variable, there have been some great films produced, whilst others have been less successful. The method we have used in the past has been quite time consuming which has meant that some have been started and not finished, some have also been quite ‘stop start’ and lack the smooth look of some animations. I am therefore keen to look at how we can rationalise the process and what other software could be used. I am therefore going to have a look at MonkeyJam, a free stop-motion animation programme.

There are a number of basic tutorials available on YouTube for how to use MonkeyJam (see below) and by all accounts it seems very user friendly.

MonkeyJam seems to work well with a web cam as shown in the video, however this tutorial video from the BBC show how to use a digital camera and simply then import the images into Monkeyjam to carry out 2D animation; the beauty of the webcam however is the ability to capture straight into the Monkeyjam software.

There are some great examples of stop-motion animations on YouTube using lego figures – for example this short one on Free Running

I am looking forward to seeing what our students might be able to produce!

The Google World Wonders project is based on bringing world heritage sites of the modern and ancient world online. The project uses Google’s Street View technology, 3D modelling, photos, videos and in-depth information, to enable exploration of the world’s treasures from the classroom.

There are useful separate primary and secondary teacher guides with ideas for using the Google World Wonders project in the classroom. There are also more in-depth lesson plans which can be downloaded from the education section. These include ideas for both Geography and History lessons, for example the Jurrasic Coastline (Dorset & East Devon) and Pompeii / Herculaneum and I am looking forward to exploring these – particularly the Geography ones for potential use with my Key Stage 4 Geographers studying coasts next year.

O2 Learn has conducted three surveys with parents, pupils and teachers about revision patterns and also some desk research into revision best practice, memory and learning styles. Some of the main findings include:

- Students generally are falling short of teachers recommended time spent on revision.  The teachers surveyed, suggested starting on average six weeks in advance and studying on average 8 hours per week (7.7) totalling 46.2 hours. This is 7 hours more than is currently being achieved by students.

- Parents play a far greater role in their children’s revision today with well over three quarters of parents (86%) actively involved. This compares with more than half of adults (58%) who had no involvement at all from their parents in their revision.

- Teachers receive very little formal guidance in relation to how to support students with revision.

Young people are developing different learning styles from previous generations due to a greater use of technology. Despite this, just one in three (32%) young people use online study guides and only one in ten (12%) is turning to online video to support their study.

- Teachers also identified a number of benefits that resources such as online videos and video clips deliver including:

• The ability to watch them more than once (82%)
• Seeing things being explained (68%)
• Being able to pause, rewind, fast forward (68%)
• The fact that they’re free (59%)

- Video resources, such as O2 Learn, that combine verbal and visual information could be ideally suited to young peoples’ learning styles. Research suggests that multisensory learning brings particular advantages for memory.

Experts believe that the parental support that students receive now needs to be matched by adopting a more varied mix of revision methods to be truly effective.

Sir Mark Grundy, the Executive Principal of Shireland Collegiate Academy, said: “There has been research for a number of years highlighting how people learn in a multi-faceted way.  The multiple intelligences models have existed for some time, but the resources to support this blend of styles have not been available – until now!
“In the last few years Learning Platforms have evolved and are now capable of acting as the glue to stick resources together and as importantly to present them at precisely the right time.  Most students need a framework to support their revision and resources which present the same ideas in many different ways.
“By putting the O2Learn resources in your learning platform and delivering them to students this has to help our students to achieve at higher levels.”

Gav Thompson, creator of O2 Learn, said: “As we reach the heart of the revision period, at O2 Learn we want to make sure that young people and their parents are taking advantage of the unprecedented range of online tools and resources now available to make learning easier and more efficient.
“Teachers and experts are agreed on the value of online learning to complement more traditional methods.  Whether its pupils wanting to tackle a tough question in an accessible way at all hours, or a parent looking for an easy way to help their child revise interactively, the value of digital learning is clear.  Our research today shows that we are in danger of missing an opportunity to bring revision to the next level and I want O2 Learn to play as big a part as possible in helping that happen.”

Remember O2 learn holds a competition for teaching awarding £1000 each week for the best lesson uploaded. See this previous post for more details.

The video below outlines what we can look forward to!