Video: Student iPad iBand rehearsal week 3
#ipaded #mlearning #edtech
Here are my 5th grade students after only two rehearsals working on their songs. We are an 80′s cover band if you can’t guess it from the video…
iBand Rehearsal 1 from Brad Flickinger on Vimeo.
Colorado TechFair this Saturday
#edtech
I am getting ready to attend the Colorado TechFair this Saturday where I will be showing off the animations my students make during the animation breakout session. I have been testing the new animation software Frames 5 by Tech4Learning and I have some new techniques demonstrate.
Colorado TechFair is a one-day event that will be held on Saturday, May 12, 2012 from 10am to 2:30pm at the University of Denver’s Fritz Knoebel School of Hospitality Management. The TechFair will feature approximately 40 projects created by 1st-8th grade students from Colorado as well as other fun activities, such as a Lego-robotics lab, a Scratch computer software lab, a graphic design work exhibit, and an animation breakout session. Admission is free.
It will be a fantastic day for students of all ages to engage in hands-on, minds-on activities, such as Robotics, Game Design, Computer Programming, Graphic Design, Animation and much, much more.
Categories for competition include: programming, robotics, graphic design, animation, game design. By challenging each student to excel within this competition we are creating new and exciting opportunities that can benefit them for years to come.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
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Differentiated Tech Instruction by Flipping My Classroom
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How could I "flip" my U.S. Constitution podcasting lesson?
In the past, trying to differentiate instruction in a tech class was almost impossible.
Take for example, teaching my fourth grade students how to edit their newly recorded podcasts in Audacity. I could only go as fast as the slowest student, because I didn’t want to leave anyone behind. “Okay everyone, let’s add music to our podcast. Under “Project” select “Add Track.” I would say. Then I would have to go around the room and help those students that were now lost. Meanwhile my tech-whiz students would just sit there bored out of their minds. This kind of instruction was not working, two or three students were holding up the entire class.
Then the idea of a flipped classroom came along, where the students learn content on their own and get help from the teacher later when they are working on their skills. But the thought of making all those screencasts of the steps involved made my great idea fade. I just do not have the extras hours that doing something like this would take.
If only I had some screencasts…
Students learning from screencasts about Audacity.
I chewed on that for a few days when it suddenly hit me — I use screencasts all the time to learn new tech skills. My school has a subscription to Atomic Learning for our teachers, but I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t use it for my students. So I had the guys at Atomic Learning set up a generic log-in for my students and then assigned them the Audacity lessons that they would need to do their U.S. Constitution podcasts.
Boom baby! Instant differentiated instruction by flipping my classroom with Atomic Learning screencasts. Besides, there screencasts are way more professional than I would have done. Now my students can go as fast or as slow as they want when it comes to building new skills. My tech-whiz students now just pick and choose any video tutorials that they might need while other students will watch the same tutorial three times until they get what it is talking about.
Now I can spend my time “working the room,” helping students one on one without slowing down the whole class.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
Below is one of the U.S. Constitution podcasts that my students made.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Read MoreUsing the iPad in Schools and Classrooms
#elemchat #edchat #edtech #elearning
Last Friday I hosted a local TV show that featured seventh grade students talking about how they use their iPads for school work. We started to show each other apps and such that we could do with our iPads (both the original iPad and the iPad 2) and before we knew it the hour was up and I was freaking out.
The first thing that amazed me was how natural it was for these young students to use this device. The actual iPad became invisible as they used it like a toolbox to look for different tools to help them with their school projects.
I would like to share a few of those ideas here:
Research: Hands down, you can’t beat every student having the Internet on their desks. These students could not be stumped, within seconds they could find out everything about anything. They also had other apps that were specific to an area of research. (World Atlas, Google Earth, CongressPro and This Day to name a few.)
Science: We had a great time showing off the amazing apps like SkyView, Star Walk and Solar Walk, but then we started to use SPARKvue to see how you could data log the actions of the iPad using it’s built in sensors. And finally, of course, we looked at the amazing “The Elements” app to take a peek of what textbooks are gong to be like in the future.
Books: Okay, there are the standard e-book type of books that you can read using iBooks, Kindle or Google Books apps on the iPad, but then there are the books that are apps. We looked at Dr. Seuss, and other titles that are unbelievably cool – interactive and fun to read.
Holy Crud! Apps: We edited a movie in iMovie – on an iPad 2. Then we recorded a podcast using Garageband, took and edited a few photos and then placed them in a report using the word processing app Pages.
My mind was spinning at the end. I am so jealous of these students and the opportunities they have sitting right in front of them and from what I have now seen – I think that most of them are going to take full advantage of it.
But now what do we do as teachers for this upcoming iPad generation?
iPad training tutorials (60+ videos) at Atomic Learning.
Read MoreIt’s a Wrap! Another Student Made Movie Done
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Just in the nick of time we finished the 3rd Quarter Movie Making Club’s movie called “The Bethke Gnome.” Each time we make a movie with these 4th and 5th grade students we look to do a movie with a message.
This quarter we drew the message of “resilience.” And then during brainstorming we came up with the “Ground Hog Day” type of movie that would keep repeating until the hero gets what he or she wants.
The movie is about a 5th grade girl who wants to play Juliet in the upcoming Romeo and Juliet play — she uses a gnome to grant her wish but her day keeps repeating until she does the work for herself and earns the role. We use the Video Storytelling Guide on Atomic Learning to help the kids with filmmaking.
Check it out on our SchoolTube account to watch “The Bethke Gnome”:
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