I found out recently that our campus has been approved for a grant to wifi the entire campus. Also, our Principal has ordered 10 iPads for other teachers on our campus to utilize. One of the main reasons he gave for this purchase came out of his conversations with me about using Zangle on my iPad. So now not only will I have Internet To use Zangle and other applications in my room, but maybe even out to football field for marching band events??? We can hope!
Another update to my previous post. I tried it this past week and the Read It Later app does not project through VGA. That is unfortunate. If you just want to show content of a website I have found a work around, but if you want to interact with the site (click links, watch movies, etc.) this does not work. So what you can do is on a regular computer, take a screenshot of the page you want to view and save it as an image. Email the image to yourself and then download it into saved images on your iPad. Then place that image on a slide in a keynote presentation, and it will project. Not the best, but if you lack wifi and want to show something from the web, it's a way around.
I don't know about you, but this week we got YouTube unblocked in our rooms. I was able to access some great musical examples for my students (check out these bands). I also had a somewhat lighthearted opportunity to use YouTube to help students understand diatonic chord functions and notation with Capt Broccoli, Musicologist. All fun aside, there is SO much educational media on YouTube, I really hope that the district continues to allow access to it.
Over our break, the one work related thing I did work on was updating the band's website and incorporating social media. I decided to migrate the page away from school notes.com (which I've been using since 2005- my students were 10 then!) and use the blogger platform for our website instead. Upsides: easy to design, easy to add information (including by email!). Use of google gadgets on the page (check my calendar- it's linked to my iPad calendar), sleek look. One major downside: blocked at school. But I send my updates during the day via email and it updates right away. I'm happy with it so far. Check it out: www.mhsband.info
Along with that, I started a band facebook page, as well as a band twitter account. My reasoning for this was one simple conversation with a kid at a formal concert who was wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt. It went like this: Me "why don't you have your dress clothes on?". Student: " I didn't know there was a concert until today and my dress clothes are dirty.". Me: "the concert was on the calendar you've had since august, plus I emailed a reminder to you last week.". Student: "I threw the calendar away and I never check my email, I just have that to get a facebook. Email is too slow". So that was it. Notes home end up on the floor and email is too slow. So all my announcements now go on the website, on facebook, and on twitter.
The interesting thing is that I don't need the iPad at all to do this. Blogger and facebook both had direct email updating, and you can update twitter on email via a service called Tweetymail. So you can do all this stuff, even from school, pretty easily. I still send the "slow" email reminders to students and parents, but I also BCC the addresses for facebook, the website, and Tweetymail, and then they are there too!
I also have an iPad app called HootSuite that is useful if I want to post something quickly. It's blocked at school, but it has a schedule feature, so you can do the updates at home (or star bucks... Wherever) and have them send when you want. For example, the first day of class this week I sent a message at 5:00 am "Welcome back! Don't forget your instrument!". I was in bed at 5:00 am, but that message was there when the kids woke up and logged on, and at least two kids admitted to me that they remembered their instrument only because they saw that post.
Check out the MhS Band Facebook Page here and follow us on Twitter too (@mantecaband)
The next project I'm working on is mass-text reminders, because even more than facebook, the kids are ALWAYS on their phones!
I also have that promised best music apps blog in the works. So many new music apps have come on the market in the past couple of weeks, I'm going to take some time to try some things out before I get to that post...
Friday, January 7, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
iPad even withOut wifi
I've had my iPad in the classroom for about a month now. Some of the things that I had planned to do with it really didn't work, and I've also discovered some pretty cool things to do with it that I hadn't considered when I wrote my original grant.
Since I am the only music teacher in the grant group (I'm guessing that's where most of my readers will come from) I'll start with some of the non-musical applications that I've found for the iPad.
One frustration for me has been the lack of wifi in my classroom. This has really limited some of the most important things that I've wanted to do with the iPad. One thing I have found though is if I download my email (either at home or as I walk through the library on my way to class) I can respond to them as I have time, then the next time I have Internet, they will all send automatically. Handy yes, saves me some time for sure, but not revolutionizing my classroom.
Zangle was one of the main reasons I wanted an iPad. Zangle is our student attendance and grade program and is Internet based. In my classroom (and I would guess any non traditional set-ups- P.E., shop, theatre, etc.) having our roll and especially the grade book tied to the computer is difficult to navigate. I find myself walking around the room to give assessments, keeping records or grades on a piece of paper, which I then have to put into my computer later. Basically this means I have to input the grades twice: once on paper and once in the computer. When I have wifi, I will be able to put grades directly into Zangle from the iPad. This will be a HUGE help to me!
In the mean time, for those whom have wifi now, I've discovered that Safari can't always load Zangle. I downloaded the "Perfect Browser" which works with Zangle well. As a side-note, perfect browser will also project webpages through VGA, which Safari will not.
Briefly, here are some other apps I've found some interesting uses for:
Keynote- I broke down and bought this one. I've started a presentation for band recruitment with 8th graders. Even though it is not finished, the kids I have shown it too are pretty impressed by it.
Wifi Finder by JiWire- This is a good app for finding free wifi to use your iPad. I picked this one over the others out there because it has an offline database. So when I'm out and about town and get the urge to do school work (this happens to us all, right?) I can open it up and find the closest hotspot to me.
BeWorlds Translator- this one is totally cool! It can translate over 30 languages (language to English and English to another language). Once you've translated you can email your translation or in most languages have the iPad speak it for you. It can also translate webpages. I translated my band website into Spanish just to see if it worked. "Bienvenido a la página de banda Manteca de alta escuela!" The uses for this app to improve communication with ELL students and their families are nearly endless.
UYH- this one is "Use Your Handwriting". You can write notes in your own handwriting and turn them into ordered to do lists. I found this a bit easier to use than typing a list on the notepad, and the ability to easily change the order is great. This has replaced the little scraps of paper I used to use for this purpose. It also has the ability to do multiple lists, so I can have one for work and another for home without mixing them up.
Cloud calendar- I downloaded this because I already used google calendar, and this seemed to be the most functional app for that. It cost me a couple dollars, and I found out later that if you add your gmail account to your email list, your google calendar integrates into the default calendar automatically. However, cloud calendar has a lot of the features I like about google calendar (color coding, invites, etc.) so I'm still using it over the default one.
Read it later- This is one that is really good for me since I don't have the wifi in my room yet. You can look at websites when you have internet and save them to read later when you don't. I haven't checked to see if it will project through VGA or not... I hope so!
Drop box- Man, this is what I've been looking for for a long time! Seamlessly shares files between my iPad, home computer, and anywhere else you have internet (work computers). It also has a public file where I can post files for my students and parents to download. Band handbooks, recordings for score study, permission slips, trip itineraries, etc. can all be drop boxed for parents or students to pick up later. I'm trying to figure out if it will work, but I think I'm going to try to submit all of my students' auditions to our all-district honor band via drop box. We'll see how that pans out...
Those are the main apps I am using right now that I think could be pretty generally applicable to teachers in any area. I'm also exploring some apps that utilize social media and mass-texting to better keep my students informed. I'm just starting to look into those, so I will save that for another blog.
Next time, I'll go into some of my favorite music specific apps!
Since I am the only music teacher in the grant group (I'm guessing that's where most of my readers will come from) I'll start with some of the non-musical applications that I've found for the iPad.
One frustration for me has been the lack of wifi in my classroom. This has really limited some of the most important things that I've wanted to do with the iPad. One thing I have found though is if I download my email (either at home or as I walk through the library on my way to class) I can respond to them as I have time, then the next time I have Internet, they will all send automatically. Handy yes, saves me some time for sure, but not revolutionizing my classroom.
Zangle was one of the main reasons I wanted an iPad. Zangle is our student attendance and grade program and is Internet based. In my classroom (and I would guess any non traditional set-ups- P.E., shop, theatre, etc.) having our roll and especially the grade book tied to the computer is difficult to navigate. I find myself walking around the room to give assessments, keeping records or grades on a piece of paper, which I then have to put into my computer later. Basically this means I have to input the grades twice: once on paper and once in the computer. When I have wifi, I will be able to put grades directly into Zangle from the iPad. This will be a HUGE help to me!
In the mean time, for those whom have wifi now, I've discovered that Safari can't always load Zangle. I downloaded the "Perfect Browser" which works with Zangle well. As a side-note, perfect browser will also project webpages through VGA, which Safari will not.
Briefly, here are some other apps I've found some interesting uses for:
Keynote- I broke down and bought this one. I've started a presentation for band recruitment with 8th graders. Even though it is not finished, the kids I have shown it too are pretty impressed by it.
Wifi Finder by JiWire- This is a good app for finding free wifi to use your iPad. I picked this one over the others out there because it has an offline database. So when I'm out and about town and get the urge to do school work (this happens to us all, right?) I can open it up and find the closest hotspot to me.
BeWorlds Translator- this one is totally cool! It can translate over 30 languages (language to English and English to another language). Once you've translated you can email your translation or in most languages have the iPad speak it for you. It can also translate webpages. I translated my band website into Spanish just to see if it worked. "Bienvenido a la página de banda Manteca de alta escuela!" The uses for this app to improve communication with ELL students and their families are nearly endless.
UYH- this one is "Use Your Handwriting". You can write notes in your own handwriting and turn them into ordered to do lists. I found this a bit easier to use than typing a list on the notepad, and the ability to easily change the order is great. This has replaced the little scraps of paper I used to use for this purpose. It also has the ability to do multiple lists, so I can have one for work and another for home without mixing them up.
Cloud calendar- I downloaded this because I already used google calendar, and this seemed to be the most functional app for that. It cost me a couple dollars, and I found out later that if you add your gmail account to your email list, your google calendar integrates into the default calendar automatically. However, cloud calendar has a lot of the features I like about google calendar (color coding, invites, etc.) so I'm still using it over the default one.
Read it later- This is one that is really good for me since I don't have the wifi in my room yet. You can look at websites when you have internet and save them to read later when you don't. I haven't checked to see if it will project through VGA or not... I hope so!
Drop box- Man, this is what I've been looking for for a long time! Seamlessly shares files between my iPad, home computer, and anywhere else you have internet (work computers). It also has a public file where I can post files for my students and parents to download. Band handbooks, recordings for score study, permission slips, trip itineraries, etc. can all be drop boxed for parents or students to pick up later. I'm trying to figure out if it will work, but I think I'm going to try to submit all of my students' auditions to our all-district honor band via drop box. We'll see how that pans out...
Those are the main apps I am using right now that I think could be pretty generally applicable to teachers in any area. I'm also exploring some apps that utilize social media and mass-texting to better keep my students informed. I'm just starting to look into those, so I will save that for another blog.
Next time, I'll go into some of my favorite music specific apps!
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