Entrepreneurial Learner

Bumped into this video a few weeks ago (via my PLN, using Twitter).

It's from John Seely Brown, author of The Power of Pull, among others. (Highly recommended)

Some of my favorite take-aways from the video:

How do you constantly look around you all the time for new ways, new resources, to learn new things?

As we move into the 21st Century, we have to completely rethink the workscape into a learningscape.

We have to find ways that each of us get more talented by working. Just being able to learn as individuals is not enough.

You’ve got to be in it, not just above it and learning about it.

We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We nailed the facts and moved on. But in the Internet Age, knowledge has moved onto networks. Topics have no boundaries and nobody agrees on anything.

Play is a permission to fail, fail, fail again and get it right.

In a world of constant change, if you don’t feel comfortable tinkering, you’re going to feel an amazing state of anxiety.

The key part of play is a space of safety and permission. What kind of permission do we give our students today?

Two iPads apps used in HS school

Take a look at this blogpost from UWC in Singapore where they are using a couple of apps for helping students explain their process in writing or learning language.

http://eastech.blogspot.com/

Showme and explain everything

iPad trial in NIST Bangkok

This short video looks at a trial of a iPad in Elementary school at NIST International school in Bangkok.  I will post the follow up once its released.

How do I download a free app (iBooks) without having to fill out my payment details?

About this Space - iPad Group Stuff

About this Space:

The idea is that this blog acts as a place where we can talk with each other, post comments, and post articles to build a learning network in a way that does not limit us by time and place. It also includes members from previous sessions and anyone else who might happen to see it on the 'Net. Feel free to post an article or comment.

We are starting to look at learning networks and how they are essential in an ever-growing, diverging tech environment. I have asked people to watch the video found here and to comment, please.

Previously, I had asked people to watch the videos found here and here and also to contribute to the discussion in comments. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to watch these videos.

In addition, we are using this space as a location to gather, organize, and share links and resources. (Link can be found from blog's homepage.) Anyone who wants can join this Diigo group. Just ask.

Big Picture Stuff

Objectives

1. Help each other learn to use iPads (or similar) as learning/teaching tools
2. Explore what can be done with iPads
3. Explore what the challenges are when using these devices; think of ways to overcome these challenges and design solutions
4. Develop / strengthen personal learning networks
5. Improve ways to “pull”, or acquire, information that is pertinent to you

Metacognition
Important factors affecting learning:
Mindset: Growth vs. Fixed - Test Your Mindset
Ability to persist, deal with frustration
Locus of control (who is ultimately in charge of your learning) External vs. Internal, Dependent vs. Independent
Comfort level with unknown; ambiguity
Comfort level with messy, non-linear learning
Ability (use of tools) to capture information/ideas for later use (“slow hunch” as described in Johnson's video)

Connected Learning

MOOC (Massively Open Online Course)
While our iPad groups may not be massive, or even a course, a lot of what we are trying to do is explained well in the video that follows. Please take a few minutes to watch it.

Some takeaways:

• You can find networks of people with the same interest(s). Participating in these networks is a powerful way to learn. 
• Due to the Internet, access to information and expertise is no longer the problem it used to be.
• Participation is important for any type of learning. Engagement is critical to learning.
• Formal courses offered by schools have significant barriers to entry (time, location, cost...) and thus may not be the easiest way to encourage life-long learning. Open networks have low barriers to entry. Open networks work well in rapidly changing times.
• In a MOOC, the work is accessible. One person's ideas can (should) illuminate others.
• MOOCs promote independent learning.

Why go 1:1 iPad?

Just a quick post on why some schools are using iPads across the school as a 1:1 program

Click on the link  for further information form one school's perpective.

Apple Leadership Tour :iPad Training

Apple Leadership Tour Wednesday 4.4.2012


A group of teachers from AISB ( Elementary, Middle and High) attended the event at the Sofitel yesterday and a had a great day learning with iPads and listening to some great speakers.  The event itself was a very slick and very professional Apple event.  We were each given an iPad 2 for the day with lots of content loaded.  I spent most of my free time writing down the apps I wanted to look and download.  This post will reflect on the many great apps we were shown and I will post about the keynote from Ewan McIntosh


The first speaker focused on a whistle stop tour of the iPad. Here are my highlights:


Why not use your iPad camera as a visualizer; so much cheaper.  You then have a much more powerful tool in the hands of teachers. So instead of buying a $700 visualizer, you could nearly have 2 iPads?


Vital signs A great app that could be used in science classes that uses the camera function to look at your vital signs.  Use it in PE to show the increase in heart rate after an exercise in class.


Power of Minus Ten Cells and Genetics A great app. I'm not a scientist but it may make your science lessons interesting and bring the content alive.


Pocket Body  great look into the human body but maybe not for younger kids.  It's expensive but would be interesting for biology lessons I'm sure and its cheaper than a skeleton.  You would  only need maybe one of these apps on a teachers iPad to demo this. The video below will be give a better demo.

Video physics PE and science lessons mix, or take a video of angry birds and plot the speed of the bird? 


Also use iPhone apps on the iPad why not use story cubes to help with language development or creative writing.  You shake the phone to come up with a range of cubes and then get the students to use these as prompts in story development.  Great fun.


Comic life This a brilliant app that I have used with all ages in secondary and is heavily used in elementary schools.  What I really like about this is that you can use your content you have taken with camera and just add this to your comic as you build your work.


Explain Everything no need for an interactive whiteboard.  A great app for saving what you show in class or record before a lesson to demo some aspect of a lesson. I'm probably not doing this app justice as we need to test this with a Apple TV and projector or a large flat screen TV.  This would open up more possibilities for sharing content from an iPad in classroom. 


Below is a list of apps that I would like to explore further and if we were to have  a 1:1 iPad  program or BYOD program then these should be recommended for students to have.  


iFiles way to share your files in the cloud using WebDAV


iHomework 


pages keynote iBrainstorm wolfram Alpha  i a writer word wit algebra touch math board 


statsmate HD Soulver Sketchbook Pro bookcreator creative book builder solar system 

instacast HD penultimate quickoffice HD  






Part 2 will look at iBooks author and Ewan McIntosh's keynote about problem finding and design thinking.


We had a quick tour of iBooks author and how we could set up a book.  This is main aim for now until the end of the school year is to set up a book with a teacher and get this published on the book store.  Unfortunately we cannot set up a course on iTunes U yet as we cannot set up accounts for this region.  Watch this space I will want to keep bugging apple until we can do this.  Please check out this course.  ( Open this link on your ipad in safari). We could potentially use this as a way of delivering our curriculum; an end to moodle :).




The great thing about iBooks author is the ability to create multimedia widgets.  This site is  allows you to make more of your own widgets classwidgets.com 


Another way of making e-publishing information is using the following site dotepub.com 

The final Keynote of the day was presented by Ewan McIntosh @ewanmcintosh.

I will try to give a brief summary of his excellent and really thought provoking keynote.


Ewan focused on his work that he is doing with problem finding and design learning.  His website has many examples of the work he is doing all over the world.  Some of his ideas where very similar to my thinking when I taught MYP technology in my last school in Vienna.  


To try and make learning focused on the three R's; Responsibility, Respect, Real things and the three C's Choice, Challenge and Collaboration.  To try and make the learning have a STAR ( Something They'll Always Remember ) moment.  This can be very difficult to achieve as there is certain content that you have to deliver to cover the IB curriculum.  So the real challenge for the teachers is to try and cover the content but then make sure you have real and challenging work that shows the whole picture to the student.  How to do this will be a continued discussion which we started on the way home on the metro, tram and in the car :)


I think Ewan can explain it all better here or below.

A great day and lots of great food as well. Thanks to Apple.

Nabit App

Any chance of this being useful for phys ed class? Dance?

More on PLNs

Some more on personal learning networks (or professional learning networks, if you prefer).

And some links from today's meeting:

Find people on Twitter:  wefollow.com  and twazzup.com

Blogs by category: alltop.com , NYTimes Blog Directory

Easily read your Twitter feed: Flipboard App

Only One iPad in the Class

Jake had an interesting question today: How would you use an iPad in the classroom if you only had one? That is,  students don't have one in class,  just the teacher.

Grant mentioned it could be used as a giant, mobile trackpad, allowing students to point, draw, annotate items which are being projected. He also mentioned that they are useful for giving immediate video feedback to students.

To find out: What software makes it easy to inexpensively and wirelessly connect to our overhead projectors? (Please add suggestions/info in comments below.)

So, how might you use an iPad in class even if the students didn't have one?

Personal Learning, Networks and Connectivism

One of our goals is to develop and strengthen our personal learning networks (PLNs). One of the things our new iPads can really help us with is connecting---to people, data, knowledge, expertise...

Please watch the videos below. What did you find interesting about them? What did you agree with or disagree with?






"Chance favors the connected mind." Steven Johnson




"The network is the learning." George Siemens

Interesting Article / Podcast

I just bumped into an interesting article about schools abandoning textbooks in order to go with iPads only.

While the article is short, the accompanying podcast is 15 minutes long and worth a listen.

A couple  parts of the podcast which I found interesting: At 3:38 interviewer asks, "How do you trust the source of that?" referring to students going online to find information that they would have previously found in textbooks.

Sounds like she's assuming that textbooks are superior in that they have been vetted, edited, and thus their content is of higher quality. While it's true that textbooks have been edited, they are not free of bias. They tell one point of view--usually the popular one. Being a product of committees, they are mostly free of anything controversial, provocative and interesting. They do not make good reading.
But more importantly, learning how to "trust the source of that" is a critical skill students (and adults) need to acquire in the age of self-publication. Staying within the confines of textbooks will not help students acquire these new media literacies.

At 8:10, talking to a teacher about Khan Academy, the interviewer asks with much concern, "If you sent your kids to that site doesn't it take teaching out of your hands?"
Why is this a concern? Shouldn't it be one of our goals as educators to help people learn how teach themselves whatever they want? In an age of abundant information, courses, experts, data...being able to learn without the need for a teacher may be one of the most important skills we can acquire.
 
As is often the case, the comments of the article can be quite informative.

IPADS in the Middle School!

 We have been lucky enough to purchase 10 IPADS for the Middle School!  A big thanks to Ray and Phil for the support make this happen.  We are going to spend the final quarter exploring their applications to create their own personal learning community and for our classrooms, the implications for teaching and learning.  Our intention is to have ten teachers at a time pilot the IPAD for four weeks, taking it home with them each day and on the weekends. The intention will be for you to experience what an IPAD has to offer for you in developing your own personal learning community and to discover what are some classroom applications.

Throughout your four week trial with the IPAD. Bill  will be offering a thirty minutes workshop from 12:00-12:30 each Monday.  The MS office will provide lunch on these days and we ask those of you with the IPAD come to each workshop to engage in guided discovery of sites, tools and experiences that Bill will provide.  The intention is for a portion of this time to instructional and then for the rest to be exploratory and sharing as we are all going to be learning together.  Bill has already started with some folks who already have an IPAD exploring IPAD applications and sharing lists, applications and the like, so this will be an excellent starting point for the rest of us.  


Paul D., MS Principal

Photo credit:  yto at Flickr.com   CC BY