Kindle and whispercast

Ebooks are increasing the amount people are reading. Adults read 8 more books on average.

Advantages:
1. Carry all books in one location
2.More cool factor for students
3. Can buy/get books where and whenever you want
4. Can easily look up words
5. Portability
6. Student engagement
7. Encourages young readers--related to sped or students who struggle with reading
8. Personalized learning experience-- options (font size, colors, etc)
9. Narration
10. Build advanced study features-- highlighting, make notes

Distributing content 
Whisper cast--free online tool that helps your school manage its kindles and distribute books
Admin activity: invite users
(Whispercast.amazon.com)

Student activity: opt-in

Then send books just like in amazon. Select users to send to.
--no limit to number of books but must pay for each one.

Any questions: kindle-education@amazon.com
Presentation questions: Jamie Prins jprins@amazon.com

Kindle app

Whispercast

Kindle app

10 top reasons 

1-portability

2-student engagement - increased stamina

3- encourages young readers

4- personalized reading experience - change font size

5-  bookmarks and annotations

6- acces to content

7- free ebooks- project Gutenberg, open library, many books.net, Internet archive,

8- built in reference - dictionary

9- narration

10- advanced study features - X-ray feature on iPad, high light, notebook feature

Kindle apps for byod 

Tinyurl.com/freekindleapps

Whisper sync

Distributing content

     Whisper cast.  Free online tool to distribute content and manage kindle devices, can set up profiles, block content, etc

Must have amazon account

Implementing the Common Core State Standards: Educurious (Blended Learning)

Next Generation High School Curriculum

This presentation was largely a sales pitch for educurious, a program that was funded by a grant from the Bill Gates Foundation to support the common core and bridge technology, common core and other demands being put on teachers. Educurious focused on Biology and English courses and creating project and problem based learning. They encourage educators to adapt their curriculum to your resources.

Goals: 

1. Learn to apply the Educurious learning process

2. Explore 

3. Analyze student learning 

According to common core students should be reading approximately 70-80% non-fiction

http://educurious.org

Two trials available: Hunger Games and Mining Personal Histories

10 iPad Projects

Presenter Website: Http://goo.gl/huodp

A mix of apps for elementary and secondary schools divided into 10 project type categories.

Some Essential iPad skills: spot light search (to find unorganized apps), saving images to the camera roll, taking video, action arrow button.

Options for turning in assignments made on the iPad:

Dongle- plug iPad into the PC to pull off file

Email

Cloud storage- drop box, google drive, sky drive

Edmodo- social interaction and can turn in projects through camera roll app

Show me- can create folder for students to turn work in

download "Apps gone free": app that shows high quality free apps. Gives alert every day. Not necessarily education

Project Apps

1. Skitch- works with Evernote account. Saves to every device

2. Post cards- turbo collage lite, postino, red stamp

3. Movies 

-Story boarding apps: sticky board and grafio lite

-Movies: Puppet shows: sock puppets free and puppet pals, toontastic, iMovie, cute cut (free), stop motion apps: Osnap, imotion HD

 

4. Interactive whiteboard: educreation and doodle cast

5. Voice threads: voice thread app, 

6. Write and illustrate: outline, drawing pad, strip designer (comic strips with pictures), comic lite, scribble press, book creator, iBooks.  Can use some of these (like book creator to create a textbook. Can open it in iBooks or PDF without the audio).

7. Witness and report: Evernote- record and report on a student who is gaming (like pocket BMX) 

8. Build a talking museum: croak.it! And QR scan.  Students posted art work with QR scan codes next to it for audio recording done through croak it. Or use Drop Vox- voice recording that saves to drop box. Webbased- recordmp3.org, qrstuff.com.

9. Connect to your community: FaceTime, Skype, sign up genius, 

10. Get social: Edmodo, twitter, blogger

Learning Jams (BYOD session) 6/25

Learning Jams

 

website: http://istejam.wiki.pisd.edu/  *take some time to look around this website for great links to helpful sites, and examples of learning jams

 

Learning Jam Purpose: do not have too directed of an activity, let students take it. Present a question or query for students, allow for unstructured time for them to use devices in appropriate way to use devices for deeper understanding.

 

Some Web tools:http://istejam.wiki.pisd.edu/Tools 

1. polling:
1. socrative and poll everywhere polling
2. back channeling
1.  today's meet or simple meet or oneliner
2. coarkboad (now padlet)
3. wikis
4. collaborative writing
1. ether pad, google docs, scribbler, mypad (ether open source, can use paint tools and images like smart notebook, embedded apps like wolfram alpha), titan pad
5. This link will self destruct

these tools can be great for brainstorming ideas and answering questions with students as a class. works great with 1:1 in the classroom or iPad or netbook cart checked out.