Joe's+Journaling+Page

As we wrap up the year, I have considered this grant to be the best grant I have ever been associated with in the 13 years I have been teaching. Besides having the chance to get to know a great piece of technology, it has allowed me to take chances with my students and has enlivened my teaching in many ways. I am looking forward to seeing devices like these grow in the classroom and cannot wait to see how my colleges incorporate these into their lessons. Thanks for inviting me to be part of a wonderful educational experience! I feel like I could no longer live in my classroom with a tablet!
 * 6/7**

Just got done teaching a lesson that I HAD to use the laptops for because the iPads do not allow the studenst to use PowerPoint correctly the way it was set up. For the iPads, you cannot hope around a PowerPoint presentation the way you can on a laptop - that is you cannot click on a link in the presentation and have that slide to go another slide within the same presentation the way you can on a PC. SO...we had to use laptops. And what a pain in the neck they were! I am reminded why I will NEVER use these again. Lots of problems logging on and getting online. Many computers were locked due to students not logging off properly. However, this says it all - by the time EVERYONE was logged on and moving, we were about 20 minutes into the period. Another way of saying this is that we wasted 33% of our time in class today dealing with the laptops and their problems. Can't wait until Apple gets their kinks worked out so that we can exclusively move to iPads or some other sort of flash drive tablet! If they could perform this task, we would have all been moving within 2 minutes!
 * 2/9**

We have continued to use the iPads in a variety of ways - most recently with another rotation that I had going around the room which many teachers and administrators visited and several commented upon. What made this lesson unique is that my daughter became sick on the night before I was to teach it but yet it went super smoothly anyway. I would have never attempted to have that same lesson conducted with the laptops but I figured that this would be a wonderful opportunity to see what these things can do without a teacher leading the lesson and I must say that thigns went terrific! Absolutely no problems at all and the teacher who was here had very little expereince with technology in general and NO experience with the iPads yet there were absolutely no problems. AND we decided to do a little test run with the batteries - these iPads were used for 8 lessons without a charge (and additionally for home base and study halls) and after all of the lessons were conducted, the LOWEST one had a charge of 47% left. So 8-10 hours of use only used about 50% of the battery. We could not get through 3 PERIODS with the laptops while using the same lesson. Hope we order more for next year!
 * 1/31**

The latest:
 * 12/8**

If we ever buy a laptop again for the students to use it will be a complete waste of money because these things are incredible. I now have students coming into my room to use the Ipads DURING my classes because I know that I will not need to help them if something is not working. They just sit in a corner to do their internet research, complete Castle Learning, do their Current Event assignments online, watch posted video, etc... Super stuff!

Now we are going to begin to use the Flip Camera. The students are going to do a project where they pretend to do a newscast from Ancient China and then we are going to take their presentations and watch it on the projector. The Ipads however allow us to also view them using Dropbox so after watching the movie once for enjoyment, the students are going to use the Ipads to watch the movie again on their own and complete a series of questions posted either online using the Ipad or on paper. I think though they will have no problem switching screens and pausing the movie in order to answer the questions presented. It does take FOREVER for the movie to load into dropbox and then again a long time to save it to your favorites and therefore making it easy to view at any time but it is TOTALLY worth it. Maybe I'll have the students do a walk around and view the info in stations...stay tuned. Not sure how this is going to work out yet so I am going to stop writing... :)
 * 11/22**

Apoligies for not entering a journal response in nearly 3 weeks but things have been quite hectic around here! We have been continuing to use the Ipads in lessons and their performance has not dropped off one bit. Our latest adventure led us to India where we have used them for Google earth as well as for internet usage when we explored the religions of India and China. Students have begun to use the Ipads with remarakble effeicincy and they are extremely comfortable with using the touch screen and the bookmarks to get to desired places easily. My study hall has used them nearly every time for their required Current Event article. One of the best site that we have continued to use is the Discovery Channel and movies that go along with our topic for the day/week/month. The Ipads do a wonderful job showing these movies and they are completely reliable which is obviously not true of other devices - like laptops. Also - we went two weeks without plugging them in to see what kind of battery life we could get - the lowest I found was at 17%. So awesome and useful. Now we need to start to see what other apps we can purchase to take these devices to their full capacity.


 * 10/29**

Lots of new things going on with these awesome devices. We juste finished with a great rotation that incorporated the use of websites, discovery channel, PowerPoint and the speak it app all while learning about egypt. The students have become so familiar with the ipads that they easily navigate all over the place with little to no help. Watching this lesson really impressed upon me how great these things are and how "old" laptops are. Had them on all day and only 8% of the battery was used! That solves the number two problem with the laptops (number one was that they could NEVER get on the internet successfully the first time). TThis lesson did take a TON of time to plan for and then implement but that is usually true with most first lessons. Overall - looking forwrad to using these whenever possible throughout the year!


 * 10/18**

Real quick one here - got out the ipads today so that the students could "Play" a bit and become familiar with the device before we do a full lesson in the upcoming weeks ahead. They used a link on our website to check out the Rosetta stone and this was terrific with the ipads because they could really zoom in to check out the Greek, Demonic and Hieroglyphics on the stone. Perfect use of the ipad. They were also allowed to go on Google Earth to check out the Nile River which is what we have been studying in class. They were blown away by both and this lesson offered a great into to the ipad. We still have several ipads - 25,28 and 32 which are not able to access the internet but here is hoping that that gets solved soon so we have a full set at our disposal.


 * 10/13**

We received the ipads the other day and have been randomly testing them out and they appear teo be in good working order. The kids in my. Setudy hall have been the ones who have been using them the most since they are serving as my test students. We have explored goodle earth which is always amazing but can really reach its full potential with the i pads because they are so quick and can zoom and adjust so quickly. Personally, i have taken one home quite often and have loved the ease of use and the apps that we have downloaded. My daughter has used the apps for math quite often which invovle mutlipication facts while my 4 year old has enjoyed tracing the letters of the ABC and using the phonic programs. The ease of use and the battery life are what really seperates this from a laptop. Just incredible but I hope that it obtains the ability to use flash soon because many of the websites that can be used normally do not work here.


 * 10/05**

I have begun to notice some really cool things on this i pad. First i must note that any spelling errors incurred while typing will not be corrected as I am seeing how able i am to type on this new style keyboard so i hope that you will at least be able to make out what is written. So far so good!

I certainly plan on using the pictures function of this ipad and the speak it app as i think that those two will provide a god creative opportunity for our students to use the iPad. After that, I really see this as more of a glorified browser but i am growing more optimistic as to the functions this machine can do as the days progress. One thing I would love to see is flash working but i know that right now that is probably not going to happen anytime soon.

Iwell after typing two paragraphs, I must say that i am retry impressed with this keyboard. You just have to have confidence in what you are typing but it will be great after a while of getting used to. Now all se have toe do is just it for those i pads to arrive! Very excited!!!!