Term 2 Week 1

My Goal this part of the year was to get my Activboard, ipads involved in all areas of the day.  How I was going to do this will definitely be trial and error.
I find the VLN a great resource for getting my head around this, but at the moment it is very focussed on the roll out of ipads in schools and the technical side of this.
Things I need to consider
- do I pick the applications that the child do on their own or let them pick?
- how do I monitor this and ensure that its about what they need to focus on?
- are those high needs children engaged and using this tool the way I intended?
- can they do this on their own or do they need more teacher/ aide support?

Findings so far
- all children are engaged
- Mr I able to access all applications independently and use them to practise essestial skills.  I find he is responsible and if I guide him to specific apps then he will work on these without straying.

So far so good!!!

More Conference Apps and Websites

We heard all about the Manaia Kalani project and the 1-1 netbook scheme they have.  What an amazing oppurtunity for those children.
If you get the chance check out their blogs, they are amazing.
http://www.ptengland.school.nz/index.php?mid=6

Some sites we were given
http://ipadeducators.ning.com/
http://slidetolearn.ning.com/
https://ipad.redlands.qld.edu.au/
http://www.ipadsforeducation.vic.edu.au/
http://www.ipodsibilities.com/iPodsibilities/SpEd_Apps.html

Art Apps
 Artrage

Junior Apps
Magnetic Aphabet - This is good, you will need to pay to get the extra scene sets.  Good for motivation, crearing story scenes for writing.

 Can change setting to add vowels, consonants, long vowel sounds, can add sound or turn off.
 Little Speller - You can choose the word length
 Story Patch - Can create stories page by page.  Can change backgrounds, characters etc

Some more useful sites to browse.
NZ wiki quite good - http://ipodsiphonesineducation.wikispaces.com/
More info - http://www.tcgeeks.com/ipad-for-school/
Background info - http://edudemic.com/
All about best apps for kids - http://www.ikidapps.com/
Bit of a guru lots of good stuff - http://delicious.com/halenz

Holiday Conference

I was lucky enough to be able to attend 2 days worth of professional developement in Auckland over the Term One holidays.
Day One was a literacy course with the keynote being Murray Gadd.  As you can imagine this was a motivating day.  Included in the workshops was a tutorial about Google Docs and how to utilise this in the classroom  A great resource for seniors and editing.
Day Two was 'Mobile Devices in the Classroom' I was super excited about this day.  Workshops were run by teachers, as they say some teachers should just teach.  Presenting is a skill and you can see why the good ones get paid the big bucks.  Was a sharing session about how classroom teachers utilise this technology.

I tryed to get around to as many as I could
This is livesketch it is great.  Children can draw with a pen or their finger, teaches them about shading.  The slower you draw the darker it goes.
There are some examples of trees that my class did on my blog
http://room9rockets.blogspot.co.nz/


We looked at Draw free this lets you draw pictures, sketchs etc and then you

link into popplet (lite) you don't need the full version.  Great for big book, reading follow ups or working as a group on presenting information.


There were a number of special needs apps
  This was a very american sounding app, but has a number of screens for those children who can't talk.  They can push an icon and it say " I am Hungry" "Juice please"







 This is an app that lists all the apps that people use that have autism, so gives a bit more focus for this special need.