Archiv der Kategorie: Allgemein

[iPad in School] TeacherPal – We get ourselves organised!

Allgemein, Schule, ,

What’s the best way for teachers to get organised on the iPad? A tool to track students’ grades, cooperation, attendance and behaviour is needed.

I discovered a free app called TeacherPal that enables all those functions. It has a very straightforward user interface and a great deal of options to organise classes and students.

Even if you are terrible at remembering names this app will help you to improve quickly. I took a photo of each student, added names and the respective number of the iPad so students always got the same device.

If you have a special seating plan you can arrange the pictures according to it. Further, you can send emails to all students (and/or parents), make general notes, access and modify files in your Dropbox and add gradable items. The latter automatically calculates grades (if you add a max. grad and its weight).

TeacherPal by ITWorx in the App Store

[iPad in School] Annotating PDFs

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neu.Annotate PDF

Since I think handwriting should not be underestimated and encourages hand-eye coordination, I downloaded a free app called neu.Annotate PDF. It allows handwritten annotations as well as typed text. Further, pages can be mailed as PNG, JPG and PDF, saved to photos and opened in Dropbox, iBooks, Adobe Reader etc. Shapes and highlighters, wrist protection, the ability to delete pages, insert pictures or new pages leaves little to be desired. Only the button to increase the width (of lines, fill or text) and change the colour was difficult to find for students (it appears when you click on one of the pens).

Link to app
 by neu.Pen LLC

[iPad in School] File sharing with Dropbox

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Dropbox – synchronised file sharing across many operating systems


I used one Dropbox account for both classes. The free 2GB account was enough to share pictures, slides, audio files and documents. However, I encountered two problems:

1) You can’t upload your files from apps like Pages, Numbers or Keynote without WebDAV, which provides a framework to change and move documents on a server. Here is a short and simple guide that shows you how to use your Dropbox account as a WebDAV: WebDAV guide

2) I had expected Dropbox to be more intuitive for students than it actually was. Very often they did not know where they were because they overlooked the back button in the upper left corner.

When they felt more comfortable with Dropbox, I uploaded instructions for some lessons so students were encouraged to learn at their own pace. I could help those who needed more explanations while others successfully completed one task after another.

[iPad in School] Equipment

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Technical details

 

Is an iPad enough?

The first lessons were taught only with the aid of iPads… no blackboard, no whiteboard, no projector. However, this is not enough since students were unable to cope with all the instructions. Although they had them on their iPads (on their Dropbox-Account, which I will write about later), most of the students had problems finding them. When I started working with a projector, the amount of explanations could be strikingly decreased. I would always make sure to be in a room with a projectoror smart board, especially when something new is explained. Students, particularly the younger ones, need a lot of help when it comes to new applications. Very often symbols in various apps were not intuitive enough for them.

Make sure you have a VGA adapter for your projector.

For individual listening comprehensions you have to provide students with earplugs (those with standard jack plugs are fine), otherwise it gets much too loud in class. Most of the students have MP3-Players so you can tell them to take their own earplugs.

When I did listening comprehensions for the whole class I used my mini-loudspeakers (very flexible). I bought them for my MP3 player once (for about 10 Euros) – again, they have a standard jack plug).

 

1×1 Trainer als netidee-Projekt

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Der von uns entwickelte 1×1-Trainer wurde am Donnerstag in Wien im Rahmen der netidee 2011 präsentiert. Das Projekt ist eines der besten 10 Projekte und wird somit im Rahmen der netidee 2011 gefördert. Durch die Förderung ist die Weiterentwicklung sichergestellt. Der 1×1-Trainer wird um eine Statistikanalyse erweitert und soll allen Schulen zugänglich gemacht werden. Den kompletten Bericht zu den netidee Präsentationen findet ihr auf futurezone.at.