Summer Project

One of my summer projects is mentoring a pilot group of teachers exploring the potential of the iPad. It's fun to watch the excitement generated by using a mobile device but the bonus will be if they begin to see new ways of accessing information and modelling learning with their students.

In preparation I've been combing my PLN for mobile learning resources and ideas. Here are a few good ones:

Apptivities - learning activities using apps on mobile devices compiled by an ADE Summer Institute group.

Hottest Apps - another ADE Institute list

Digital Storytelling with the iPad

Presenting your Portfolio on the iPad

ISTE: iPad in Education

Learning Continuity - apps by discipline

iPad's Hidden Keyboard Functions video

@bryanhughes has set up a great introductory page with basic information, links to tutorials and guides and a list of 'starter' apps. for the group to use.

A couple of my own favourite free apps are SoundHound (for identifying music) and Open Culture (mobile access to educational audio and video collections) and this list of free reference apps.

For Socials teachers:

Seadragon - high resolution imagery

Louvre - art works, museum tour

France 24 - International news

HistoryMaps - historical maps

And for the 'Wow' factor, these two videos that demonstrate master artists using the iPad:

Finger Painting on the Apple iPad

lang lang playing Flight of the Bumblebee

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain (For more quotations on risk-taking check out the Awesome Sardine)

Photo credit: Lesley Edwards

Things I Learned This Week

1. Tag first.  My track record for tagging posts is dismal so I am going to try to tag first.  This may help me focus my posts a little better if I write down at the beginning what they are going to be about.
2. Twitter tricks.  If you have an Evernote account you can send your tweets directly to to Evernote.  There's a good explanation with video here.  In a nutshell you simply add @myEN to any tweet.  Or you can direct message a note to @myEN with a private reminder of something.  You can even add a thumbnail photo from Twitpic.  
3. Portable Apps save aggravation.  A common problem for my staff is that our district uses Deep Freeze to reset the desktop image on staff PCs every night.  So, each time a teacher wants to use a tool like delicious or skype they have to download, again and again.  With portable apps you access a browser through a flashdrive and all your settings are saved on the flashdrive.  A plug in and go solution.
4. Posterous used in conjunction with Twitter is a great way to push information out to readers.  My district's Learning Innovation Leadership Team (a fancy name for a group of volunteers interested in technology) is using our posterous account to flag articles of interest.  That account is linked to Twitter so when something new is added it gets Tweeted out through @LAN44.

All this learning thanks to my PLN on Twitter and my own techie guru @bryanhughes.

Image used under a CC licence from dkuropatwa

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dkuropatwa/3746834143/sizes/m/