Giving Students a Voice with iPads and iMovies

This summer, I worked with high school migrant students in a summer camp using iPads to give them a voice through videos and writing.  This posts builds on the one prior to it, Giving Students iPads vs Pens, but focuses on the instructional aspects.  Here's a fun video that two students created on the first day in about 20 min.  Watch others from this Shout Out page.

Prep and a platform are important!  A lot of prep work goes into setting something like this up.  I had 15 iPads, 4 staff, and around 25 students at one time.  I chose Blogger as the platform in part because it has a super easy to use app.  We used iMovies as the movie making app and You Tube Capture to quickly upload the movies to You Tube.  In weeks 2-3, when staff became more comfortable, we added Animoto (using an Educator’s account) and Explain Everything. The resources and handouts and general plans were posted prior to beginning each week.  It is handy to have videos, links, general purpose explanation, etc. set up ahead of time on a site to aid in the flow of instruction during a project.

Student choice: In week one, I began with a structured format that was “school like” the staff politely told me later. Staff were learning the apps, there were a lot of unknowns, and it seemed the safe bet. Students created Where I am From poems and turned them into videos.  I had my handouts, model examples videos and how-to videos ready to go on the site.  It was exciting the first day when one of the participants quickly created an incredible rap during a pre-write session.  But for what could be a variety of reasons—not wanting to share publically, or perhaps feeling the need to follow my “school like” directions, his rap didn’t make it to video.  Students in week 1 did a great job!   They followed my directions, but I was a bit disappointed in my directions and how it pigeon holed everyone into creating a similar looking video. 

In weeks 2-3, staff were more comfortable, and they opened topics up to students.  Wow, do kids have ideas and voices worth listening to!  They chose topics of importance to them such as bullying, language choice, goal setting, etc.  

Process and experience: If this is presented with a focus on the process and learning, not only the final product, it helps meet the needs of a wider range of learners, differentiating and even individualizing.

Learn together as you go:  Tablets truly give teachers the opportunity to take the seat of a facilitator and learner with the students.  Students asked each other, problem solved, worked together, naturally became the experts and taught me! I did do a lot of the leg work in managing the site and creating You Tube playlists, looking at privacy issues, etc, but some of this can be delegated to students as well.

Celebrate!  This type of learning differentiates and allows learners of varying levels to contribute.  We popped popcorn and watched their videos and related videos along the way.

Overview: This experience shows how mobile devices can be used quickly to create videos and give students a voice.  This is the tip of the iceberg when we have access to such devices and begin to rethink assignments and how technologies can support content and language learning. This experience also cements the importance of a platform (such as a blog) for workflow and instructional purposes, to share student work, and to communicate.

Happy movie watching!

iBooks 2, Textbooks, iBooks Author, and iTunes U Initial Impressions

At the Apple Education Event on Thursday, January 19^th in New York, Apple announced iBooks 2 and textbooks, iBooks Author, and iTunes U app.  Watch the keynote video below to see them in action.

My first impression was that this links into what we’ve talked about since the beginning of this blog.  It connects to several of our earlier posts such as our Digital Curriculum Discussion and What’s A Book? Is This A Book?  We have talked about the possibilities of digital curriculum as a disruptive force in education to help differentiate instruction since we met, so this caught our attention.  We don't believe technology such as digital curriculum should replace the teacher or that one should be swept away with the flashiness of new gadgets, but we think it has potential to make some positive changes in education. Does Apple's announcement contain the solution or does it have hints of movement in the right direction?

Here’s a breakdown of our initial thoughts on Apples new educational releases.

iBooks 2  and Textbooks (On the video, iBooks 2 runs through minute 23.  Textbooks runs from minute 33 to minute 43.): The textbooks can be accessed through iBooks 2.  We’ve read various perspectives but have come to the conclusion that this is a move in the right direction in terms of textbooks. We both love the interactivity shown in the keynote. There will be no going back from this type of interactive textbook format!  Will all of the textbooks be this interactive?

The note taking feature is great. Also, having the dictionary as part of the book is a nice concept.  It would be good to see this linked into various online dictionaries, including bilingual ones.  As an ESOL teacher, I’d like to see a feature for subtitles to be turned on/off in the videos. Is this asking too much?  From the perspective of an online instructor at the university level, I hope quality texts become available for higher ed. as well.  Although it would be nice, it’s hard to imagine the price of $14.99 sticking for a university text. While I’m dreaming, I’ll place a request for a way to collaborate and discuss the content as an extension of the text.  What if it were a worldwide discussion and collaboration with public and private chat rooms or wiki spaces built into the text?

Just for fun, download the free The Beatle’s Yellow Submarine from iBooks 2.

iBooks Author (On the video, iBooks Author begins at minute 23 and ends at minute 33.): iBook Author allows you to make your own books and to integrate them with iBooks 2 and potentially iTunes U.  I’d love to try it, but I will have to borrow a Mac computer in order to.  There are some obvious large accessibility issues on several levels for education with Apple’s roll-outs.  Kacey was able to play around with the iBook Author software for a few minutes and thought it seems very easy to use.  She could easily drag documents, etc from Word. However, she felt there were only a few templates and hopes Apple will be adding more to keep it interesting.

We both think the concept of  iBooks Author seems like it has enormous potential in education! We could see using it in some manner in any of the classes we teach-- both in the hands of the student and teacher.  As an online instructor, it would be ideal to be able to easily make some of my lectures more interactive by using this type of tool if all my students could access the end product.

           

iTunes U (On the video, iTunes U runs from minute 47 to minute 57.): I’ve been using iTunes U for awhile now, but they have made improvements and made it easily accessible for K-12 and higher ed. in this app.  It is possible to create courses and apply to have them uploaded to iTunes U and/or access existing ones.  Courses are available for download from universities including Duke, Stanford, and Yale to name a few. OSU has some content out there too. 

It’s interesting how fluid this seems.  It appears that it can be organized in a way that the texts, lectures, and notes for example are all connected and accessible with a click on the app.  We are also for the concept of open courseware which empowers us to take learning in our own hands.  Maybe with the new layout more schools will post content.  It will be interesting to see how things unfold and how much of it will be free and useful.    

Conclusions:

All of this is not completely new. As we’ve discussed in the previous posts accessible above, digital texts have been emerging.  There are ways to publish ebooks similar to iBooks.  We’ve used concepts resembling iTunes U on various platforms over the past few years.  Nonetheless, these all seem like another step in the right direction.  It makes us ask questions such as what other competition and possibilities will this stir up?  It reminds us of the potential of some form of flipped classroom instruction.  It makes us wonder what possibility all of this opens up for hybrid classes.

Of course Apple’s news comes with various view points and some fine print.  Here are some interesting additional links for further exploration.  

• Listen to Leo LaPorte and Sarah Lane on iPad Today (81) 
• Johathan Wylie of The Education Technology Blog gives a nice brief overview of Apple's announcement 
• Ronnie Burt of Edubloggers voices his opinion in 3 Major Problems With Apple's Education Announcement
• Read Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis’s review 
• Read Jose Picardo on Box of Tricks review and see his first attempt to use iBooks
• Apple vs. The Textbook: Can Education Go Paperless? is an interesting article that takes a look at various aspects

No doubt, we will hear more on this topic and continue to explore it ourselves.  Happy exploring!

What's A Book? Is This A Book?

I was excited when I found this TED Talk (see below) where software developer Mike Matas demos Al Gore’s book “Our Choice”. This is the first full-length interactive book for the iPad.   It made me recall numerous discussions Kacey and I have had about the need for publishers to catch up with technology integration in education.  I've taught online classes for the last few years and have felt this need for awhile.  In addition, listening to podcasts such as Seedlings and reading articles in ISTE have opened my eyes to the future possibilities of augmented reality.  So when I saw this TED Talk, I was excited but not too surprised.

What follows next is how this video clip played out in my ESOL class.  (It reflects the dogme 2.0 teaching in collaboration with critical pedagogy that I've been exploring.)  In the larger scope of a unit, I showed it to one of my classes comprising of adult students from around the world.  It sparked an interesting discussion about how technology and learning environments are changing.  As a natural part of this discussion as I was writing new vocabulary words from the TED Talk video on the board, one student asked, "Is that book available to purchase now?"  A second later, another student held up her smart phone and exclaimed, "Yup... It's here on iTunes available for $4.99.  I looked it up while we were watching the TED Talk."

A third student jumped out of his seat and asked for permission to pull up a related video clip for us to discuss.  Within seconds, we viewed this two minute clip. (See below.) It was followed by a related discussion about how books were once viewed as new technology, and I recorded more new vocabulary words from the discussion on the board.

We rounded out the discussion with a review of the new vocabulary words and a short discussion relating back to our previous day's lesson on how online dictionaries and games are shaping our learning.  In addition, students made connections to an earlier discussion about the disparity of technology in the hands of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds.  They then related the video back to a previous lesson in the term on second language acquisition.  With promises from them to continue to think about ways that technology helps them and limits their language learning and promises from me to listen to them-- really try to listen, we concluded class.

What do you see happening with technology and literacy?  Where does all of this fit into the classroom?  What’s a book?  It’s A Book.

“We live in an exciting time of human history and tech integration,” she said as she tucked away a hard covered book and an e-book reader in a bag for a weekend camping trip.  “I’m turning off all electronics with the exception of the books.  Don’t try reaching me!”