Suzanne's Ed Tech Reflections

I spent some time this weekend playing with my iPad, Apple TV, laptop, and both the Splashtop Whiteboard app and Doceri Remote app. Pretty exciting to be able to pair my iPad and laptop and then mirror the action on my Apple TV through AirPlay.  It will be just amazing to be able to use these tools for classroom instruction and training. Who needs an interactive whiteboard!

It's always exciting to enter a classroom and see students actively engaged in creating their oral reading fluency recordings on the iPods. But, it is even more exciting when they are also using our district fluency rubric to evaluate themselves and set goals for their next recording. Creating an oral reading fluency recording on the iPod Evaluating an oral reading fluency recording using a rubric

During one of the recent Balanced Math trainings in the district, there was an interesting discussion about math fluency and students skip counting and seeing patterns. There is a great way to use the iPods to do this using DoodleBuddy and a hundred chart located in the Photo app.       In Photos on the iPod, you will find an album entitled "Math" which contains a Hundred Chart (Board) image. After opening DoodleBuddy, select the icon on the toolbar that looks like 2 pictures. Tap on Photos at the top and scroll until you locate the Math album. Tap to open the album then tap the Hundred Chart to insert into DoodleBuddy. You can now use the drawing tools to mark the hundred chart. Students can save their skip counting by tapping the wrench icon and selecting "Save to Photo Album."   Here is the Hundred Chart image by itself:  

Apple recently issued their IOS 5 Education Deployment Guide. It is a great tool for helping schools and districts deploy and management iPads and iPod touches. The guide walks you through all aspects of putting together a project, from planning to purchasing to actually rolling out the devices. Click here to download the guide.

Happy Digital Learning Day! How is Creighton School District celebrating? By implementing our 780 iPods and iPads in classrooms across the district. I think Digital Learning Day is everyday in Creighton!

Creighton School District recently hosted a group of educators from the Safford Unified School District in southeastern Arizona. Safford has recently purchased iPods and iPads for student use and wanted to meet with us to talk about the process we have used to effectively implement mobile devices. In addition to some great discussions, we were able to visit several classrooms while they were using their iPods. Our visitors were able to see students creating fluency recordings, practicing math skills, and creating their own book using the StoryKit app. We look forward to working with our Safford friends again!

Saturday, January 28, was the official dedication and ribbon cutting of the newly re-built Papago School in Creighton School District. It's a beautiful and very modern campus. The school opened to students on January 4th and they are getting well settled in their new digs. The dedication ceremony was attended by students, parents, teachers, school and district staff, and Phoenix Mayor, Greg Stanton. The third grade chorus sang for the audience. It was a nice ceremony and great way to officially dedicate the new school! Dr. Boyle, Superintendent Mayor Greg Stanton