March 29th

As I have mentioned previously, the wisdom that comes with experience has played a great role in the introduction of iPods to 8A this year. I hope that by sharing the minutae of our teaching and learning practice that others to follow (as surely they must) will benefit.

The wireless internet infrastructure in our school is of a hit and miss nature when it comes to iPod connectivity. I am tempted, if the moment takes me, to set forward with my iPod in one hand and a school map in the other, and to map all the black spots. Some places it’s lightning fast and impressive, others it is…….not. In their endeavours to fix this, the kids are sometimes tempted to fiddle further with their network settings, making it worse. There are still some students who haven’t managed to get online at all in week one. I am going to make up a document with our technician this week with a series of screen shots so kids are able to check against this that the details are entered correctly. I will laminate this and make it available when necessary, saving both myself and our technician a lot of time. (more…)

Cool Things…

I have spent a fair proportion of my weekend finding cool things to do with my iPod so I can impress the kids this week. Did you know you can make a link directly to iTunes by generating some html code at this site.

This links directly to Tony Vincent’s “Learning in Hand” podcasts!

There are some great iPod tips there.

How about some Flash Cards? Try the gFlash application from the Apps store. (more…)

March 20th 2009

I sit here in the peace and tranquility of a Friday evening, knowing that a very satisfying week of iPodding lies behind and at last I have a chance to tell you all we have been busily engaged in over the last few weeks.
Embarking on the deployment of a class of iPods for a second time brings with it a new sense of experience and gathered wisdom on which to base your plans. From a practical point of view, restoring the iPods and establishing new EDUPass certificates took little time and effort this year.

With our research focus based on literacy and collaboration with schools in the US and UK, I look forward to extending the learning capability built into the iPods. I decided to pre-load all of the iPods with a selection of free literacy based apps from the iTunes Apps store. There were more than enough to satisfy my needs and I had to draw a line and stop searching for more. I have used my notebook as the iTunes mothership to sync these Apps for all students. So I have 22 iPods Apps synced to my notebook. I know this will cause issues when students add their own Apps at home, as my lovely collection will be lost, but last year, it was impossible to get the whole class to download the Apps I wanted to use with them. (more…)

VITTA Conference

Our journey down to the VITTA Conference in Melbourne was memorable. Ella, Kaiden and I were warmly welcomed to the Studywiz stand. It was great to meet Jeff Mao from Maine in the USA and hear more about their 1-to-1 laptop program.

Our presentation was delivered to a small but appreciative group. We discussed our experiences with the iPods and the Studywiz Mobile Interface. It was also great to meet Jeremy who is working with Mobile Studywiz. He was able to answer my questions and write down my wish list. We look forward to returning to Shepparton now to try out some new features shortly which include the mobile eLocker and mobile games! (more…)

Interim Report, Phase 2, ABC & Awards

In January the interim report on the Global Mobile Research project was released by Cecilie at Delphian eLearning. The report focuses on factors that promote improved learning and teaching when students interact via Studywiz using a mobile handheld device, such as the iPod Touch.

It was identified that mobile learning and mobile devices like the iPod Touch engage and motivate students and improve their engagement. This has been demonstrated by improved attendance, more active participation in class, better preparation and organisation for class, more regular completion of school work and homework and enjoying learning as a ‘fun’ activity. It has been agreed that for the soon to commence phase two of the project, the following goals should be considered:

• a common area of learning for the curriculum outcomes to feature eg Science, English, Creative Arts etc
• a theme or topic that will enable students to collaborate across the world (ie natural disasters, the theory of networks etc)
• other curriculum teacher to implement the project in their classroom with me to act as an ICT mentor
• student-student interaction online including the sharing of resources, podcasts etc. (more…)