Tools for eLearning Lessons

There are so many great tools you can use on the iPad to create lessons for students.  You don't have to wait for an eLearning day to start creating awesome digital content.  Here are just a few apps that can really enhance teaching and learning!

1. Doceri is a free whiteboard app for the iPad that lets you record your voice while you annotate on the screen.  It allows you to save to your camera roll, so that is a huge benefit!  Once it is in your camera roll, you can move it to pretty much any other app!  It is a wonderful tool for creating a lesson . . .  and students can watch it again and again if they need to!  Doceri can also be used by students to demonstrate their learning.
2. Book Creator is a free iPad app that will allow you to create a lesson that appears in book format. Each page can be customized with your own text, writing, drawings, images, and more.  You can even record your voice and insert short videos from your camera roll.  The free version only allows a few books to be created, but once you’ve loaded them into eBackpack, you can delete them and create more.  Students can open the book in iBooks, and the book will remain on their shelf for future use!!  Students can also use the free app to create books of their own.  
3. Adobe Voice is a free iPad app that is amazing!  It allows you to quickly and easily create slides that include your voice, photos, text, and more.  The finished product looks very professional! This app also allows you to save your finished product to your camera roll, so that is a bonus, too!
4. Shadow Puppet EDU . . . ok this sounds like an app that would work only for elementary students, but it is great for anyone!  Just like the others mentioned, you can create a lesson that includes video, photos, audio, and more. And it is so easy to use!  
5. Keynote and iMovie are also great ways to create interesting lessons.  Don't forget that you can narrate a keynote presentation and record it so students can watch and listen to it more than once if necessary.

Step by step instructions for all of these tools can be found in our eBackpack group NWCS Tech Tidbits and Training Materials.

elearning Tips

     

     

     It is hard to believe that fall break is already over!  Before we know it, the first semester will be coming to a close.  As second semester begins and bad weather arises, eLearning days could be a possibility. In general, an eLearning lesson has four components:  at least one objective, a period of instruction, time for students to engage in a learning activity, and time to check for understanding.  It is important to remember that these items could change depending on where the learning left off in class, and the lesson should fit into the amount of time that is normally allotted for that class.  Remember, a good lesson is a good lesson.  We wouldn’t have students sit in a classroom for hours upon hours working on worksheets.  So, we wouldn’t do it on an eLearning day, either.  On an eLearning day, technology can allow students to participate in class discussions, watch instructional videos and tutorials, communicate with their teachers, and create presentations, eBooks, blogs, iMovies, and more. Here are a few tips that may help you and your students get ready for these days.

1. Start using your Learning Management System (eBackpack, MBC, iTunes U, etc.) routinely, even if it is just for a couple things you do each day.  The more students are used to using the tool, the less likely they will encounter problems they can’t solve on an eLearning day.
2. Give students opportunities to use the Learning Management system at home.  This way, they can see if they have any problems accessing materials.  Even if students are always successful when using the LMS at school, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be successful at home.  Sometimes families have wifi security settings that prevent eBackpack and other tools from working properly.  It will be important to have multiple opportunities to try things at home before an eLearning day happens.  If a problem with wifi can’t be fixed, students will need to get into the habit of taking items offline (using the wrench icon in eBackpack) or opening them in other apps such as Notability or iMovie, so that the materials will be available without wifi access.
3. Start using the other tools you envision utilizing on an eLearning day now.  For example, if you plan to have students use Shadow Puppet, Book Creator, Discovery Education, iMovie, Padlet, KidBlog, Socrative, etc.  on an eLearning day, they need to practice in class and at home now.  If you’d like to use the discussions feature in eBackpack on an eLearning day, it might be nice to try that out now, too.  Remember, you have to enable the member commenting feature in your class settings in eBackpack in order for this to work.  
4. Practice putting together a lesson in your Learning Management system.  If you envision using a video or white board tutorial to teach a lesson, start working with the tools a little now, so they don’t hold you back and slow you down when you are ready to put together an eLearning lesson.  Putting materials such as PDF’s in eBackpack is a slightly different experience than building a lesson there.  So, it will be good to try out all the things you’d like to do prior to the first eLearning day.  It will also be good practice for the students to see what a full eLearning lesson might look like before that first snow day!
5. Don’t be afraid to ask for help (no matter where you are in this process).  Just give me a call (7172) or send an email!  I’ll be happy to help you put together some digital content and tools!

eBackpack Tips

1. If students need to bring items offline in eBackpack, they can do so by tapping on the wrench while the assignment is open, and selecting offline.  eBackpack is currently working to bring all assignments that are up to 2 weeks old automatically offline. So, you may see some assignments with green thumb tacks next to them.  This does not change how eBackpack and the assignments will work online.  It just makes them available without wifi as well.  However, in order to have access to offline items in eBackpack when students get home, they must keep the app running in the background.  Students can use other apps and work in other places on the iPad, but eBackpack should not be closed.  Do not double tap the home button and flick the app to the top of the screen. 
2. If students need to revise a paper that was submitted in eBackpack, they can certainly do that. Students can open the graded work and tap on Open Submitted File to get to the original document.  Students can then highlight, write, and insert text boxes on the document. However, if you want students to make changes that do not look like revisions (you want the paper to look like it is a clean draft), you will want them to open the document in whatever app they created it in (for example, open it in Pages).  Teacher markings and comments will be gone, and students can add text, remove text, etc. just like they could when they created it.
3. If eBackpack begins to act a little wonky, students can tap on the settings icon at the top left of the screen.  Then, have them tap on Clear Cache at the bottom of the box.  This should clear things up and make things run more smoothly.
4. If a pen in eBackpack begins to erase text near it, have students change the color of the pen. This should fix the problem.  Color choices on the top row work better than those at the bottom.
5. When viewing assignments, students can tap on Complete or Not Completed at the bottom right of the screen to see what assignments they turned in and marked as being done and those they have not finished or marked in that way.  Some students think they have lost assignments because they only see those that are marked as completed.

Creating in eBackpack

    

       Though most think of eBackpack as a way to send and receive materials and lessons between students and teachers, eBackpack is much more than that.  Students can do many things in eBackpack.  They can create documents that include drawings, photos, audio, and text.  They can also record audio up to 2o minutes and video up to 12 minutes in length!    Students can take pictures of their work in eBackpack and record themselves explaining their thinking, reading, or reflecting on their work.  When reading, students can take a picture of their book and then insert that picture into a document where they can read a passage, circle or highlight key ideas, great writer’s craft, or literary elements.  They can even type or write their thoughts right next to the picture!  Think of all the Post-it Notes we will save!   Students  with wifi can even participate in a discussion with the teacher and classmates over a book, a lesson, and more.  Teachers can insert live links into assignment instructions to take students to specific websites.  Documents can come alive with teachers’ voices leaving important messages and reminders for kids.  A teacher can even read a passage aloud for students in eBackpack!

To start creating:

1. Tap on the plus sign in the upper right hand corner
2. Tap on Create Document.
3. Name the document and tap OK.
4. Tap Mark it.
5. Now, you can insert text, draw, insert images or take photos.
6. To insert an audio recording, tap on the microphone at the top of the screen.  Then, tap in the document where you’d like the audio to appear.
7. When finished, students tap save and select a location for the document.  They can turn it in or save to My Files.
8. Remember, when you tap on the plus sign to start creating, you can also record a video or record audio.  When finished, those recordings can also be saved to My Files or turned in.

Shadow Puppet EDU

     

     Shadow Puppet Edu is an easy to use app for the iPad that allows students to create presentations and projects using their voice, music, photos, and short videos.  The creations can easily be uploaded into eBackpack for teachers to review and share.  It is very similar to iMovie, but is a simpler and quicker app to use.  Here are some facts about it: It can be used without internet connection!  Videos can be up to 30 minutes in length and can include up to 100 video clips and or photos.  Text, audio, and interactive effects can be added to each photo/video clip.  Video clips can be up to 30 seconds, but you can add more clips from the same video by tapping and holding on the video until the option to select another clip pops up. The photos can be original or students can search from places like the Library of Congress, Met Museum of Art, NASA, NOAA, and more.  They even have an ideas section to help you get started!

To Get Started: 

1. Tap on Create New.
2. Select and few photo and video clips to make into a video.
3. Tap on the music note to add music.  This must be done at the beginning of the recording.
4. Tap start and narrate the story while flipping through the photos and clips.
5. While recording, you can draw, zoom, and add text.
6. When finished, tap save.  It will save the video to your camera roll.  You can also tap more and choose to open in another app.  Then, you can upload it to eBackpack or another app like iMovie, iTunes U, etc.
7.  Tap on Reorder to rearrange or remove photos or videos.
8.  Turn the mic off if you do not want to record your voice.
9.   If you make a mistake, tap undo to erase everything from the page and start again.