The title of this post comes from a teacher in Wyoming. She is a part of a pilot project to use iPads in her regular classroom. She had some training on them, but she went into using the Apple iPads without much else in her toolbox.
Since then, she's learned a lot in a steep learning curve. Recalling notes the students took by hand, for example. Another app lets kids read something, record their own voices and hear themselves reading a text, such that they can improve how they pronounce words.
I had forgotten about that; I just thought that I would record my voice and let students hear me read a book, or make a point. Never thought about letting htem hear their own voice.
Anyway, I gave my first "Lunch and Learn" at my school today. I started with a plan: show two Apps that are already on my iPod Touch and keep it simple. The title of the event was not "Learn everything" ... it was "Lunch and Learn". I was picking up where the AT person from our Board left off three weeks ago. She briefly touched (HA!) on using an iPod Touch in the classroom, but didn't have hers on her to show the rest of the teachers. I had mine, so I did a bit of a lecture on how to use it.
Since then a few of my fellow teachers have asked me about different apps and reasons for getting an iPod Touch. They also knew that I was doing Spec Ed II. And so, I was to marry both of thise elements into a brief 10 minute session on 2 apps. More, I was so informed by the participants, will follow next week.
I did get the Dragon Dictate to work. Sort of. I wanted to let them see how well it worked - much like it worked in this video:
I'm kind of hoping that my fellow teachers will see this video and make sure that, although I kind of messed up this particular part of the Lunch and LEarn, Dragon Dictate works well.
The second part of the L&L was using Voice Memo. My demo went pretty much like this video:
I didn't record nearly as much as this demo did; I had to keep it brief, as I had to get out and get into my own classroom. I will be using GarageBand on my Macbook and upload a few moments of the recorded L&L for readers of this blog to listen to.
Since one of my fellow teachers took advantage of Apple's offer, he'll get both a new MacBook and an iPod Touch. I think the next L&L will be about using the camera on the Macbook to record something and post it for visual learners and identified students in my classroom.
