Flipping my Class

I took the first baby step toward flipping my classroom today by posting my lecture on Supply online on my Moodle site.

My plan is to have my students in my general economics sections watch the video as well. It took a lot of work, however. Much more work than I had planned.  I don't know what went wrong, but PowerPoint wouldn't turn my presentation into a movie with sound.

Thanks to Dann, I was able to use a work around by having a site host the video and could put the link into my site. But this is not ideal. I think next time, I will use Keynote as that seems easier to turn into Quicktime movies. I even created a Youtube account so that I can post them there, but I haven't taken that step yet.

All of this takes time, and at the moment, papers are sitting ungraded.

Goals for the Year

It's taken me some time to identify the goals for this year, but I have a few that I plan to work on in using the iPads:
1. to use the iPads to create content, not just fancy search engines
2. to go paperless in my classroom
3. to reduce dependence on physical textbooks
4. to use the inquiry method
5. to increase the amount of writing my students do
6. to improve my students' reading skills
7. to flip my classroom

I can already evaluate my ability to meet these goals so far:
1. Students are creating content--using Keynote, Pages, Storykit, and through blogging. It's not always as easy as I'd like and I need to work on ways to have them send me their material through email.
2. I'm using a lot less paper, but haven't' eliminated it all together.
3. Haven't had the time to create my own e-textbooks, but that may be something for summer. There is a lot of content out there, but not all of it works on iPads, and not all of it suits my needs. Finding it is time consuming.
4. Increasing the use of the inquiry method, but want to do it more. Finding ways to do this in econ will be key.
5. Writing quantity has gone up with the blogging. Critical thinking still needs work.
6. Using the flashcard creator and socrative, but have not tested to see improvements yet
7. Still working on learning how to screencast and make podcasts of my lectures. That will take a bit of time. Wish I had more of!

Learning technology along with my students

Today was another learning experience with the iPads. Every day it seems there is something that I want to do but cannot do quite the way I want. Sometimes, it is because the features on the iPad are different than on a computer, sometimes it is because of the decisions made by people in the technology department.

Learning about email: because the Pages app and the Keynote app are linked to the mail program, the mail program needed to be installed in order for my students to be able to email me their presentations or documents.

This was not immediately obvious--especially to those in the tech department who are not thinking about the iPads as a creation tool or as a multi-user tool. After some discussion, it was decided that they would create one account for all the ipads to use from the cart. This worked great in theory, and horrible in practice. Google did not like that there were multiple devices with the same email address, and so kept saying that the email address was invalid or the password was incorrect. Both of which were not true. This led to my students not being able to send an email to me even though I had spent hours over the past couple days putting in the email addresses to each iPad.

When I went to tell them about it in technology, they said, "Well, yeah! That would be a problem!"
Hmm. Maybe you might have taken the time to think this all the way through before giving me the one email address for 40 devices.

So, now I need to have new email addresses made and install them on each iPad. Again.

What really frustrates me is the fact that the tech department makes decisions about things that seem to make things harder for me and my students. For example, with the Google apps for education, there are many free things we should be able to access, but they decide to not activate something arbitrarily without checking to see if any teachers would be using it.

The first instance of this was with the blogger function. I had to ask to have my students access this. They didn't see why teachers would use it! Then, today, I wanted my students to be able to comment on each others' blogs, but that function had been disabled. I feel exhausted having to run to technology ever other day to ask for something especially something that is free and should be available.

Trials and tribulations of technology

I'm learning about the problems of using the iPads as a class set instead of one to one use.

One problem was students having the ability to delete programs and documents that one student or group has created.

Posting from the iPad app.

Just downloaded the app for blogging on
The iPad. This should make things a bit easier.

I am able to add photos, but the keyboard does not go sideways.

Welcome Back to School!

I'm excited to be back in the classroom and ready to make use of the new iPads!

I have several fun activities planned for the first week.

We will be doing a survival activity, learning the note-taking program, and creating and sharing blogs.

iPads!

I got the iPads yesterday, and am so excited to begin working with them. I wish I had more time to organize before school starts. It's going to be a very busy couple weeks!