Q&A session 3 - apps for English

A few teachers got together at Reservoir Neighbourhood House in May, to explore iPad apps for teaching and learning. This was the second session we had at the RNH.

Apps worth looking at:

• Spell better, 
• Dragon dictate, 
• Google translate - lets you add words by handwriting, 
• Park stories (Link??)

Apps we’re not so sure about:

A few apps got the vote of displeasure because of their hidden cost. There might be a free basic version, but if you want the full app, you could be looking at over $150 for a class set. 

• Sound English (.com) is $13 per app. 
• PB phonics is $7.50 for the full 1-7 activities. 
• obook Library (oxford) has only one free book (“Jack and his Jeep”?)
• speak & translate is $13 
• Farmer’s lunch - he won’t speak

Issues here: 

“You get excited because of the novelty”, but once you’ve tested them out, many apps aren’t that suitable."

Copy a presentation file from iPad to laptop

Faye, one of the amazing teachers at PRACE, got her students to make slide presentations using Keynote on the iPads.

• The students showed their presentations on the big screen with Airplay, 
• and then sent their files to Faye via Airdrop. 

Then we wondered how to get all those presentation files from Faye's iPad to her laptop.

One way to do this is to share the Keynote file with google drive.. you can then get to the files on your laptop or desktop, at drive.google.com in the web browser.

This is the first video screencast I've attempted with only visual cues, no voiceover. What do you think?

• Too fast, too slow? 
• Is it clear, or too obvious?

Many apps on the iPad allow you to share your files somehow, eg:

• via email
• via a cloud storage thing like dropbox, google drive or skydrive (microsoft)
• between different apps.

How could you extend this knowledge to different apps? 

How would you use presentations in class with your students? 

Great session at RNH - many iPad questions!!

We had a terrific session down at the Reservoir Neighbourhood House the other week (21 April).

Four teachers, 4 iPads, 1 windows laptop and one projector.

Here are the questions & topics we started with. So many questions, some still unanswered.

PD register on the google drive, and other forms

• People were having trouble with the PD register, but we found out that Peter has put iPad-friendly link on the intranet. Thanks Peter!! *

The TV and the iPad 

Yes, we do need the appleTV to broadcast to the TV. We're not sure if people at the RNH will have access to an appleTV. So, what are the alternatives?

• A long HDMi cable and an iPad-to-Hdmi adaptor
• or plug the iPad into a data projector using this cable / adaptor option
• Let's find out more about the appleTV option.. Fraser? 

Looking for some teaching suggestions for very low level language and literacy

Pairing remote control with classroom television

Recently teachers at PRACE have relied more and more on the big classroom televisions to broadcast what's on their iPad or laptop screen.

Unfortunately we've had a weird situation at Spring St where the remote control for the TV doesn't work. Last week I visited Jan down at the new campus, and this was one of the issues arising.

So we called Fraser and discovered the solution. 





Here's what you need to do if this happens to you:

1. Find the small USB dongle marked "RF" - attached to a cable - hanging off the back of the TV
2. Unplug it from the cable
3. On your remote control, find the RF button on the back (the horizontal keyboard side)
4. Push that RF button on the remote, and watch the red light on the remote
5. When the red light stops flashing, and goes constant red, plug in the USB dongle where it came from. 

If it doesn't stop flashing, you may need to power off/on the remote control first. 

Let us know how you go, in the comments below. Did this work for you? 

BTW, Fraser is also looking into ways to make sure this doesn't happen. 

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Photo by User:FA2010 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

What's the deal with copyright photos?

..or: "learning to love the Creative Commons license".

Photos can be so useful in class - images get people talking and writing, and can help to find common ground quickly.

These days, teachers are expected to reference and cite every image, especially if used in an assessment task.

However, photos on the internet are copyright the photographer - unless otherwise marked. Probably.


To use an image legally, you either need to

• get permission from the photographer or author (if "All Rights Reserved"), or
• find an image that is licensed under "Creative Commons"(you must credit the author), or
• find an image that is in the Public Domain (totally free, no need to cite source - usually very old works)
• find images from a place like Morgue File, where photographers have donated photos from previous projects (copyright-free!!).

You can search several places for creative commons licensed images: for example:

Students and teachers embrace the new iPad experiment

This year has been full of technological excitement at PRACE, as teachers and students have embraced the new iPad gadgets.

VCAL students began the experiment, being the most likely to explore new things. They are now sharing files via a combination of google drive and showbie, submitting their work via airdrop, and more. Teachers broadcast polls and surveys straight to the big screen wirelessly, and any student can also share their work with others via the big screen.

Thanks to the heart-warming success of the initial iPad explorations in the VCAL classroom, ESL and literacy teachers have also begun to explore new territory.

• Yvonne pushed the innovation at one teacher moderation session, when she shared documents for validation via the airdrop technology (files travel directly from one iPad to the others, in the air). 
• Barb has been making stop-motion animation videos with her "Making Connections" group, as they work with images and vocabulary relating to food - particularly pizza. She has also found that her students respond much more positively to the challenge of taking photos on excursion, when an iPad is involved. 
• Rohan has been challenging students to discover apps that would suit their interests and working lives. 

What have you been doing with your iPad in the classroom? Leave a comment and let us know, thanks. 

Video interview with Sia Gazis

Fiona introduced Sia and Michael, and suggested they create an interview-style promotion together for the introductory massage course. Using some footage and photography shot by Lauren, Michael shot and edited 15-20 minutes of additional footage down to 4 minutes.

The editing was done in a free, professional-grade software called Lightworks (free for a mildly limited version). There’s a learning curve, of course, but michael would definitely recommend this software to anyone who doesn’t have access to iMovie.

If you have iMovie.. use that instead. 

Future suggestions:

Any teachers who are interested in creating video with their students, to suit any kind of language or literacy learning activity, please come and talk with Michael.

“I would love to work with teachers & students to make video,” he says. This could suit genres such as explanation, instruction, personal narrative or recount, or even conversation.