EdCamp OOB

July 28th was the first Edcamp launched by a team of Old Orchard Beach educators. Over 100 area instructional technology, media/library and classroom teachers gathered to share ideas and learn from each other. The structure of this Edcamp was the usual plan of an open board that becomes a set of sessions when teachers put stickies up and organizers move them around to combine ideas and place sessions.

I attended sessions on "Genius Hour", Makerspaces and apps for early learning. I have a new set of resources to share from each of the sessions. Alice and I both attended the Makerspaces session, the notes on this shared doc.  Mike and I went to the session on implementing the Genius Hour concept. I would like to work with teachers on the possibility of implementing a spring fourth grade unit, Billy Corcoran share his doc that describes what his 4th grade classroom did last year along these lines. He used his literacy block on Friday mornings. 

I spent the 3rd session with Libby Corcoran who is a special educator who is also an app developer. I will be reviewing her app The Reading Train with our Kindergarten team. The app allows for individual logins and is organized into leveled books. Students can hear the books, read on their own or record themselves reading. Libby also has .pdfs of the Level 1 books that can be printed and sent home with students. I was very impressed by her story of becoming an app developer and I think this app may well be just what we have been looking for as a way to support literacy learning with the K iPads. Libby also shared a list of apps that she thinks are of value; this will be helpful as well in getting started with our second year of iPads in K and our third year in first grade.

Year End thoughts about K-1 iPads

Having 20 iPad for the first grades means that they are usually in sets of four in classrooms. The students have become independent on several math apps, spelling apps and others including Kodable and Doodle Buddy. Some of the time that I am in classrooms I have been able to help students work in pairs to access their Kidblogs and add entries (see http://roomonehundrednine.blogspot.com/). We met as a first grade team and winnowed the apps that we are keeping on all the iPads to the ones we agree are most valuable. Every few weeks we collect all of the iPads and use all 20 in table groupings in a classroom. The apps we are using most often are LetterSchool, Teachley: The Addimal Adventure, Word Wizard, Montessori Crosswords, Hungry Fish, Know Your Math Facts, Kodable and TeachMe: 1st grade. Sometimes we are able to access Skoolbo, other times it lags and is too frustrating. While some apps are free we have found that many of them are too limited or have too many ads and we have purchased the full versions.

We were pleased to find Addimal Adventure as it teachers the addition strategies appropriate for first grade and allows us to set up all classes on each iPad. It tracks the individual student’s progress and we had access to a pilot that gives us bi-weekly feedback on the class. The app will remain free next year, but the teacher dashboard will be an online feature by subscription.

We have allocated some time when we return to school in August to map out a plan for apps usage in first grade and look for ways to build more independence by students using the iPads for reading fluency practice and creation apps like PicCollage, KidBlog, Voicethread and Storykit.

The Kindergarten teachers received two iPads for a center in each classroom midyear. They started off with these apps:

• Teach Me Kindergarten-Math and Literacy

• Montessori Numbers- Math

• Skoolbo - Math and Literacy

• abc Pocket Phonics- Literacy

• Storia - Literacy

• Book Creator

• Educreations

• Explain Everything

• Bits Board

• Sight Words

• 100s board

• Word Wizard

• Everyday Math Monster Squeeze

• LetterSchool

The goal for the Kindergarten classrooms this year was to familiarize the students with a small number of apps and have students use them independently at a station with minimal supervision. They have found that "guided access" is helpful as then students didn't accidentally leave an app while they were at the station. We will be meeting in August to plan what else they want to do next year including story writing and recording for reading fluency.

One of the most informative experiences we have had in developing our plans and uses of the iPads was attending the Auburn Leveraging Learning Institute in November, 2013. We were able to send teams of Kindergarten and First Grade teachers to a day of workshops and learning from other teachers. This is link to the spreadsheet of apps that Auburn Schools have selected to fit with their learning targets and the presentation below explains the goals and rationale for the Auburn project.

Leveraging Learning Conference 2013

Leveraging Learning Conference 2013 - Auburn, ME

The Kindergarten teachers at Rowe School are writing a YEF (Yarmouth Education Foundation) grant to have two iPad in each classroom and the first grade teachers are in their second year of using four iPads in each classroom. Given that, we arranged for six registrations for the two and a half day conference with one hundred-fifty primary educators in Auburn, ME. We rotated teachers so that every teacher who was interested was able to attend for at least one day. These are the notes from the conference. We had several big "takeaways" from the conference. One was that we wanted to limit the number of apps we used and focus on using them for creative expression, not just rote learning.