10 ways I use my iphone in the classroom

Image used under creative commons licence

Hello my name is Stephanie and I’m an iphone addict.

I use my iphone in conferences, in meetings and *gasp* even in the classroom but I’m not using it to play angry birds.

Here’s 10 ways I use my iphone to make my teaching more effective:

1. Video – capturing learning as it happens

The main reason I got an iphone was for the video capabilities  I’ll often walk around my classroom with my phone capturing student learning. Video can be used for students to check in on what they actually did versus what they really did. For instance, do students give each other time to talk or do they butt into conversations? I will frequently  use interviews as an alternative for pencil and paper tests making assessment far less intrusive on the student.  Moreover video is an effective way to put friends, family and sometimes even parliamentarians right into our classroom.  Using an iphone means footage can be edited on the spot and then shared potentially with the whole world in a few minutes.

2. Posting pictures to the cloud 

I’ve easily taken thousands of photos this year of my class. Some of them are the generic photos of kids at school events and on field trips but I also use the photo function as way to capture student learning and thinking. What makes the iphone awesome is that these photos can then be easily be shared even if I’m away on camp. I use flickr as my cloud storage of choice and will sometimes email stand-out pictures to students families.

3. Texting parents

You don’t need a fancy phone for sms and so this hardly seems worth mentioning. Nevertheless, I’ve found the best way to engage with my previously hard to reach parents, parents who don’t have email or might work odd hours, has been through text messaging. 160 characters keeps communication short and to the point. The asynchronous nature of text messaging also gives the parent time to think and then respond at a time  that suits them.

4. Professional learning

I’ve got twitter, feedly, diggo, facebook, pinterest all on my phone. I often use my commute in the morning or my lunchtimes to scan my social network feeds for readings and ideas in the classroom. Professional learning for me isn’t a once a week meeting, it pretty much happens from the minute the alarm goes off on my phone.

5. Timers and reminders

The phone has a handy stopwatch and timer available. I’ve used my phone to time students speeches and also a countdown for tidying things up at the end of the day.If you are a bit like me and are so engrossed in teaching that you forget that your student needs to go over to the teacher aide room or need a prompt to photocopy something for class when you arrive at school, the iphone will send you reminder at a certain time or place.

6. Kindle

Although I much prefer paperbooks to the electronic version. If I’m desperate for a book and New Zealand shops don’t stock it I’ll make a quick trip to Amazon and hey presto the book was there on my phone. Granted it’s a bit tough on the eyes and I wouldn’t recommend reading the entire of Moby Dick on your phone, but if a student is borrowing my ipad and I want to read a passage from a book, the  iphone is great second option.

7. Broadcasting

You are watching a news story with a reading group about kid’s school lunches. One of the students pipes up,” hey why don’t we see what things are like in our class?” The student takes photos of a quick survey, which is then posted to your blog and then let the journalist know via your class twitter account all from your iphone.  No more mucking around waiting for the computer to load and finding the right cords for the camera, the sharing is seamless and the ability of my classroom to connect with the outside word is so much simpler.

8. Anecdotal note taker

If you are conferencing with a student or group of students, instead of writing down the conversation or taking a bulky laptop, you can use your phone to quickly record that conversation. I use Evernote which is an easy way to sort each child into folders and the app also has a nifty audio feature. When I’m talking about a child’s reading progress with another teacher, that teacher can hear the child read. The  notes  I make on Evernote are easily accessible from any device I’ve got the programme installed.

9. What the heck is that?

When I was out on duty when a group of kids spotted a rather interesting looking spider. I had no idea what the said spider was so I whipped out my phone a quick google confirmed the species of the spider and that it wasn’t dangerous to even if poisonous spiders aren’t exactly a huge problem in New Zealand. Point is we can access the information right then and there

10. Augmented reality

One of the most awesome features of the phone is augmented reality. Apps like wikitude, skyview etc. give kids a heads up display of what they are seeing in front  of them. If you are on field trip you can learn point your phone in front of  a building or a landmark and get a detailed history from wikipedia. Better yet, get the kids to start entering details for their area or make artwork come alive with aursama.

No limits

In reality there are hundreds of ways to use your iphone in teaching. What I love about my phone is that I mostly use it for a specific job and then *gasp* put it down again. It is the quick functionality of the phone, the unobtrusive nature of recording, the  seamless sharing between channels and the fact it is small enough that I can put it back in my pocket when I am done which makes the iphone an indispensable teaching tool.

Moreover the ipod touch is the most common device students in my class own. Through using my phone, I better know how to help my kids learn effectively with the technology that in too many classrooms is at best sitting in a student’s pocket at worst outright banned from school.

So the next time you see a  teacher hunched over their iphone in the staffroom, ask them how they are using it in their teaching and learning.

Whoops I better go, my phone is ringing.

How do you use your mobile device as a teaching tool?

Setting up individual student blogs using blogger (part 1)

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Despite my well-documented loathing of blogger as a content management system over the last term I’ve set up 28 (!) individual student blogs using google’s platform. As a result, I thought I would do a write-up of the process for any teachers out there interested in going down this path.

First of all do you have a purpose to your blogging. Unless you can articulate this right now then stop. Setting up student blogs is a lot of work unless you know why you are doing it then there really is little point.For me blogging has come out of a desire to give my students a chance to interact with students outside of our community and also an authentic audience for their writing. Your whys might be different from me and that’s all right. Just know why you are blogging.

Next up get your kids commenting. In my opinion commenting is underutilized as a way to teach blogging to students. First of all, commenting offers a opportunity for others to model effective posting to students. The more posts the students read, the more exposure they have to blogging before the students start posting.  If you already have a class blog, get the kids to comment there but there are hundreds of fantastic blogs out there for kids to learn how to interact with others online.

But what if the kids say nasty stuff online?

Have you taught them how to comment? I firmly believe that just like any other classroom activity blogging requires active teaching by the teacher.  You’d never go out on a field trip without first talking through good behaviour with your students. The same is true with blogging, you need to model good behaviour and supervise your students. I read and respond to each of the students comments on my class blogs and am now monitoring all activity on the individual blogs. For ease of tracking, I’ll get the kids to fill in a form using google docs to show where they have commented when we are commenting on other schools blogs.

Early on the term the class and I co-constructed our class’s quality commenting checklist.  In retrospect the quality commenting checklist has also served as a document for my students and I to have an ongoing conversation about good online behaviour and netiqutte. I still have a little giggle every time my students pull each other up using text language or the importance of spelling as I know that came from the work we’ve done around quality commenting.

More importantly if there are comments where I feel a student might have said something that breaks our guidelines, I’ll have a conversation in private with them. My class also audited each others comments on a Monday morning using the checklist which gives an opportunity for peer review.  In short you want to have a heightened awareness by the kids that this isn’t facebook and there are higher expectations for them.

Ok so you are ready to take the plunge and start setting up blogs. My advice probably is only of use to google apps schools but imagine that some of my thinking is going to be applicable to other platforms.

First up you might want to decide on a system for both naming and addressing the student blogs. The name refers to the title of the blog which is seen on both the header and the tab at the top. The student’s first name is usually a good idea or you could add the school eg. “Stephanie @ University on the Hill.” The address refers to what you type into your browser so this blog’s url is traintheteacher.wordpress.com.

If you are using blogger, then using firstname.blogspot.com isn’t going to happen as the addresses are long since taken. For the student blogs I’ve used the acronym of the school the student’s first name the first letter of the last name and the year the blog started so it looks something like this: tttstephaniet2011.wordpress.com. But have a fiddle around and decide on a system.

Now you are ready to create your blogs.

Wait for part 2 where I give the technical details.

Tips for surviving your first term of teaching*

Lunch is calling. Image used under creative commons licence.

Ladies and Gentlemen who have started teaching 2012

If I could offer you only one tip for surviving your first term of teaching, remembering to eat lunch would be it. The long-term benefits of the daily déjeuner have been proven by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now.

Take time to get to know your students. All of them have a story and interests. Even the most challenging of students usually have things that they are interests and talents. Take time to find out what they are.

The monday morning jam
Avoid trying to attempt any photocopying of resources on Monday morning. Get you photocopying done on the weekend or Friday afternoon or really any time apart from Monday morning.

Use your Classroom Release Time wisely.
Classroom release time can easily be frittered away especially if you have the time spread over the week rather than one specific day. Get out of your classroom to avoid distractions and have a set of goals you want to accomplish during the time. Try and get into as many classes as possible to observe other teachers doing their thing.

A notebook of notes.
Get an exercise book with each students name written on it and hey presto you have your ‘notebook ‘which is great to refer back to if looking at patterns for attendance, lateness, missing PE etc.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Ever.
In my experience, the easiest way to make small problems become big ones is by not asking for help. Teachers are in general incredibly generous with their knowledge and resources. Gobble up all advice and don’t be afraid to pinch resources. You’ll pay it forward eventually.

Rest.
Have at least one school-free day a week. Go home early (i.e before 4.30) at least one day a week. Yes this term I haven’t followed this advice very well but particularly on weeks where you have late finishes make sure you schedule yourself at least one early finish.

Money
January is a financially challenging month for beginning teachers. At the time of writing there are ways to wrangle money for registration costs. etc from WINZ if you are persistent. If you are moving cities, you qualify for removal expenses from the Ministry of Education and the unit in charge of relocation are friendly and helpful. On the other hand, the Ministry’s Salary Assessment Unit are hands-down the worst government agency I have ever had any interaction with. Communication with this agency is only conducted via post and you might not get paid correctly for a few weeks months.

Initial Registration
Teacher registration is fairly painless process. If you have lived overseas in the last 10 years, organize your overseas police certificates well in advance of your application to avoid stress. Teachers Council will send you an email confirming receipt of your application and then again once its confirmed before sending out a nice shiny registration card.

Teaching Observations
Having your teaching observed is a way for you learn and grow. Treat every observation as a chance to improve your teaching. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Don’t talk over the top of  students. Ever.
This is sometimes a hard one, but waiting for silence and stopping when students chatter is really important. By talking over kids you send out a message that you don’t expect to be listened to and in turn that you don’t expect your kids to listen to others.

Check kids have understood verbal instructions before starting a new activity.
In my class  I use hand signals to check the kids know what they are doing. 5 fingers up means ‘I’ve got it’ while no fingers means I have no idea. Anyone under a 3 being asked to stay back for another round of explaining or modelling.

And it all comes back to food…
Make up big batches of food in the weekend and freeze individual portions for later in the week. Having pre-frozen dinners on hand for the nights where I was too exhausted to do anything but watch old episodes of the West Wing saved not only my sanity but extra dollars and a few extra kilos.

*Shamelessly stolen from the sunscreen song.