Trans-Atlantic Twitter Conversation

November 12th, 2010

Twitter Logo

I started using Twitter in my classroom with my 1st and 2nd class during the final term of the last school year. I was encouraged to start because a number of schools throughout the country were coming together for a Twitter project. Organised by Simon Lewis (@simonmlewis) the project stimulated the pupils to learn about other schools in Ireland. During another part of the project, we had a Twitter conversation with all of the other schools in the project about the artist Jackson Pollock. This was really interesting and we followed this up by creating our own Jackson Pollock Pictures using a Jackson Pollock app on our iPod Touches. The pupils were quite engaged so after the project was completed, we continued to tweet every other day in class.

This year I have 2nd and 3rd class, half of whom I also taught last year and they were quite conversant with the whole Twitter idea. We continued to tweet this year and regularly tweet about things we are learning in class and things we write about on our School Blog. This week, we have joined other schools who have been tweeting about things we were learning during Science Week. It was while we were looking at our tweets this week that we received a message that read: “Hi there! We are tweeting from our classroom too! Would you share with us what you’re learning today? Where are you?” We replied to this tweet and so began a conversation during the course of the week with a school in Indiana, USA. (@superkiddos) This is what one of our lecturers in college called “opportunity teaching”. Without any pre-planning, we started learning about children who just happened to be the same age as my pupils. It was also interesting for my pupils to learn that the pupils in Indiana were just starting their school day as we were finishing up our school day. Another school in Indiana has also begun to join in the conversation with us (@BloggingBees). Here is how the conversation has gone over the course of a few days this week:

  • USA: Hi there! We are tweeting from our classroom too! Would you share with us what you’re learning today? Where are you?
  • IRE: We are learning things on our iPod Touches. We are in Sligo, Ireland. Where are you? What ages are you?
  • USA: We live in Indiana, United States. We r 7 & 8 yrs. old. We live by a lot of lakes. 20/24 of us have a lake in our backyards.
  • USA: Some things we’re curious about: Do u have school uniforms? Do u have big cities? How do u get around your town? Cars? Bikes?
  • IRE: We are learning about Christopher Columbus in history. Do you know anything about him? What is your weather like? It is cold.
  • IRE: We are 7, 8 and 9 years old. Our school is beside Knocknarea Mountain and near a surfing beach called Strandhill.
  • IRE: We wear a school tracksuit to school. It is navy with white stripes. We use cars because we live 5 miles from town. Its rainy!!
  • IRE: We start school at 9.20am. What time do you go to school at? We finish at 3pm. What time do you finish at?
  • USA: We start school at 8:20 and end 3:00 pm. We are just starting our day — are you ending your day?
  • USA: Normally it is snowy & cold in November, but today it is unusually warm. Last week it snowed and this week it’s hot!
  • USA: CC facts we think we know: Sailed across the seas in 1492 Discovered America 10/12 is Columbus Day Do u have Columbus Day?
  • IRE: We’ve just got another half an hour to go. We’re just finishing our Irish language lesson at the moment. Theres 27 in our class
  • IRE: Columbus died when he was 55 years old. We found out that his 3 ships were called Santa Maria, Pinta and Nina. We’ve no CC day.
  • USA: We have about 5 more hours to go. We’re getting ready for writing workshop.
  • USA: We are looking at a globe and light & figuring out why you are getting ready to go home & we are just starting our day.
  • USA: what lang. do u speak & know? We speak English.
  • USA: We know a little Spanish, Arabic, Korean, and sign language. (Our teacher if fluent in ASL.)
  • IRE: We’re going home now. We speak English and we’re learning to speak Irish. Goodbye. Tweet you tomorrow!
  • IRE: Our school website is http://ransborons.scoilnet.ie/blog/ Do you have a website so that we could learn more about you?
  • USA: Our corporation site is www.wawasee.k12.in.us
  • IRE: We wrote about helicopters http://bit.ly/cDRl7q We received an email from a Helicopter Training Academy in Australia because of it. #twience
  • USA: That is so cool! Can you teach us something about helicopters? Most people here don’t get to ride in helicopters.
  • USA: Helicopters are usually for emergencies or news media in America. The public ride in airplanes.
  • USA: We love learning about you on your website! So cool!
  • IRE: We found out on our iPods that Christopher Columbus introduced pineapples to Europe!
  • USA: Cool! We have someone in our class who LOVE pineapples! What kinds of fruit do you eat most in Ireland?
  • IRE: We can get almost any kind of fruit but our favourites are apples, pears, grapes and Irish grown strawberries
  • IRE: Do you get homework for the weekend? We don’t get any for the weekend but we do during the week.
  • USA: We don’t get homework, but our class is the exception. We are expected to read and practice spelling every night, though.
  • USA: Those are some of our faves too! We also love bananas. What kind of sweet things do you like? We like cookes and chocolate!
  • USA: We read your school’s site. Can you tell us: What is hurling? Our most popular sports are football, baseball, and basketball.
  • USA: We spell it “favorites.” We are wondering: is “favourites” a mistake or is that how you spell it?
  • USA: Do you spell other words differently too?
  • USA: Do you have special dances you do in Ireland? Some people here do a dance called a Tango.
  • USA: We do a school dance too!
  • IRE: We like chocolate bars, cake, jellies, sweets (candy) crisps (chips) biscuits, marshmallows, ice-cream, lollipops and popcorn.
  • IRE: Hurling is an Irish sport. The stick is made from Ash and the ball is called a sliotar. Over the bar = 1 pt. Under the bar=3pts
  • IRE: We spell favoUrite with a U. We also spell coloUr with a U. We also spell flavoUr with a U.
  • IRE: Maeve in third class does Irish dancing. One of her dances is called “The Job of Journey Work”. It’s a traditional set dance.
  • USA: What r your biscuits like? For lunch today we’re having chicken soup, turkey sandwich, cookie. What did u have for lunch?

And so we ran out of time on Friday afternoon. We hope to continue the conversation via Twitter and see what else we can learn about life for pupils of the same age 3,000 miles away!

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Google Docs and the iPod Touch

November 8th, 2010

Google Docs Logo

I’m a relative novice to Google Docs and never really personally saw the need for me to find out what they could do and how to use them. I had been aware from many articles on the internet written by people in the field of education that they were widely used. However, it was only when I received my class set of iPod Touches in May 2010 that I began to think about how Google Docs could be incorporated into the use of the iPod Touch in the classroom.

I’ve received my class set of iPods on loan through a pilot project organised by Sligo Education Centre and Apple Ireland. Four classes in the country are piloting the use of this handheld technology in the classroom and they are located in Kilkenny and Wexford and are supported by their local Education Centre.

Google Docs SpellingOne area that I thought that Google Docs could be useful was in the area of spelling and tables so I started to learn how Google Docs could be used with the iPod Touch in the classroom. To use Google Docs, you have to set up a Google account if you don’t already have one. When registered, you then just go into Google Docs and select “Create New >> Form”. You then just set up a form any way you wish. There are different ways of seeking responses from pupils. You can have a text box answer, a paragraph answer box, a scale 1-5 answer box etc. For our Spelling Test, I set up a form where there were four possible answers for each spelling that we had been learning during the week. There was a radio button beside each spelling and the pupils had to select the radio button beside the correct answer for each spelling. There was also a text box for pupils to fill in their names. There was also a paragraph answer box for the pupils to type in their dictation sentences. All questions were marked with an * to show that they were mandatory fields and had to be completed. If a pupil forgets to fill in a field they will not be able to submit a form. Google Docs also creates a spreadsheet associated with the form that has been created. The spreadsheet gathers the information from the answers selected by the pupils.

When creating the form in Google Docs, an address for the location of the form is also generated. Because Google Docs is created online, pupils need to have online access. We have an Apple Airport router in the classroom which connects to the school broadband. The iPods have been set up to connect to the internet through this router.

So I placed the URL of the Google Form on the School Blog, to which the pupils have already set up a shortcut on one of the homescreens of the iPod. They open up theGoogle Spelling Spreadsheet blog, click on the link to the Google Form, select what they think are the correct answers and fill in their dictations. When they have completed all sections of the form, they click “Submit” at the bottom. In the meantime, I have already opened up the associated spreadsheet on the whiteboard and the pupils are always amazed when their answers appear instantaneously on the screen. Each pupil’s answers appear on a single line of the spreadsheet. The teacher can also look down a column to see the class response to each spelling – it can be easily spotted if the class as a whole has had a problem learning a particular spelling.

I have done similar exercises with maths tables and litriú Ghaeilge. I have done this exercise with 1st Class, 2nd Class and 3rd Class and the response has been widely positive. Once the pupils got used to the idea, they found it quite easy to complete. As with all classroom work, some were finished quicker than others. This has been my first tentative steps into using Google Docs with iPod Touches in the classroom. I’m sure that there are boundless possibilities as to how something similar can be used for assessment tools and pupil responses in other areas of the curriculum.

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Flickr Lunes Using iPod Touches

October 22nd, 2010

Flickr Lune Image

Writing some poetry was a theme in our English work during the past couple of weeks with my class of seven, eight and nine year olds. We had written some cinquains and octopoems to a greater or lesser degree of success. Co-incidentally, at the same time I read a blog post entitled “Writing Poetry with an iPod Touch” by Mary Farmer (@ebd35) where she explained how she had discovered a very easy app for creating Lunes. Lunes are a type of Haiku poetry with three lines – three words in the first line, five in the second and three in the third. The app was created by John Johnston (@johnjohnston) – he has written a blog post, called iPod Touch Poems, where he explains in more detail how to create the Lunes. In a nutshell, you do a Creative Commons search for a photograph on Flickr, the photo sharing website. You select the photograph you wish to have as your background, you overlay the text onto the photograph and create the Lune which is saved as an image.

Flickr Lunes App

 

We did have some teething problems when initially creating the Lunes, but once that was sorted out the pupils were easily able to create a couple of poems each.  The pupils had to first visit the site of the Lunes app and save the page to the homescreen of the iPod Touch. They then opened up the app from the homescreen, even though it then opens up in the Safari browser. They then searched for their photograph by entering a keyword. Here’s the tricky bit – once the first page of thumbnails appears, you must click on >> (the two blue arrows) to go to page 2 of the image search. For some reason, if this step is skipped you will not be able to save the finished Lune. When the pupil selects a photograph, a three-line template appears for writing the poem on top of the photograph. They could then choose to have the text on the top, middle or bottom of the photograph, depending on the layout of the photograph. They then simply click “Create Poem” and the Lunes is created. At this stage, the copyright holder of the image appears on the bottom of the photograph. To save the image, you hold a finger on the image and choose to save it in the photo gallery on the iPod. The pupils then came up to me and we used the Bump app to transfer their Lune from their iPod onto mine. They really enjoyed doing this. This app saves you the trouble of downloading each pupil’s image individually onto the class PC. Once all images were “Bumped” onto the teacher iPod, you just connect that one to the class PC and download all images at once.

Once we had completed creating the Lunes on the iPods, we printed them out and displayed them in the school. We also imported the pictures into Photostory (the free and easy to use movie-creating software) and created a movie of Lunes poetry. We recorded the pupils reading their own lunes which can be done from within the Photostory software. The movie was then created. You can read what the pupils wrote about this exercise and see the movie in our School Blog.

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Classics for Children

October 14th, 2010

Classics for Children

This week’s RTE Guide is giving away a free Classics for Children CD with each copy purchased. The CD contains 22 classic tunes which are suitable for use in the primary school classroom. Composers such as Debussy, Saint Saens, Kodaly, Bizet, Strauss and Haydn are, amongst others, represented on the CD. The tracks may be played for children in the given order or may be grouped according to common themes such as dances, marches, animal tracks etc. The RTE Lyric FM website contains resources to accompany each of the tracks on the CD. 

The three strands of the Primary school music curriculum are embraced in the musical activities accompanying the notes for each track. These strands are Listening and Responding, Performing and Composing. The children’s activities reinforce the nine musical elements upon which the music curriculum is based, namely beat, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and style.

All of these resources may be accessed through the RTE Lyric FM website HERE>>>>

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Using iPods in the Classroom

October 4th, 2010

iPods in the Classroom

Those of you who follow this blog will know that my class and I are involved in a pilot project looking at how iPod Touches can be of an educational benefit in Irish primary school classrooms. This project has been organised by Sligo Education Centre in association with Apple Ireland. There are three other classes involved in the pilot project in Kilkenny and Wexford. In previous posts I have mentioned how the project is organised in the classroom and examples of the sort of apps that we have used. In this article, I just wanted to mention some of the other uses that we have made of the iPods.

One really great use that we have found for the iPods is to use them to do spellings / tables / litriú tests on. It’s amazing how enthusiastic pupils can be about spellings all of a sudden when you introduce technology as a method of completing the task. We sometimes do this in one of two ways. Firstly, if it’s a short test like just doing four spellings and four tables on a daily basis, we sometimes use the “Notes” app which comes pre-installed with every iPod Touch. This is a very simple notepad with a pop-up keyboard. It was amazing how quickly the pupils mastered the fact that there were three separate keyboards – one for letters, one for numbers and one for punctuation. Even seven year old pupils in Rang I mastered this without difficulty. When Rang III started to learn litriú this year, I thought that we wouldn’t be able to do these in this “Notes” app because if the síniú fadas. However I should have known that at least one of the pupils would already have discovered how to do this – one eight year old demonstrated to the other pupils (and the teacher!) that if you held your finger down on the vowel a list of options popped up, one of which was the vowel with the síniú fada. So now we have also been able to do litriú using this method.

 

Google Docs

Another method we use to do spellings using the iPod Touches is by using Google Docs. I’m quite a novice at Google Docs but this seemed to me to be a great way to become acquainted with how to use them. If you have a Google account you can access their documents when you log into your account. For these spellings tests, I have simply set up a form in Google Docs where there are multiple choice answers for the spellings. I place a link to the form on the school blog. We have placed a bookmark to the school blog on one of the homescreens on the iPod. The pupil simply visits the blog which opens in Safari and they click on the link for the spelling form. The pupil is then presented with four options for each spelling that they have learned and they click the radio button next to the correct spelling in each case. I also include paragraph boxes at the end of the test to allow the pupils to type in their dictation sentences that I call out. When they have completed the test, they click the “submit” button. At this stage I also have the spreadsheet which is linked to this form open on the whiteboard screen. As soon as the pupil has submitted their spelling work, their answers should immediately appear line by line on the spreadsheet. They love the immediacy of this! It’s not too difficult to imagine the skills that pupils are learning by engaging in such an activity. There is great hand-eye co-ordination as they use the small keyboard; there are listening skills involved as they listen to the teacher for dictation; there is memory and recall being used as they complete dictation; there is decision making as they select the correct spelling. Educationally they are not learning anything new – however, they are just using modern technology to get to the same end point. The difference is that the iPods are hugely motivational and that can only be of benefit to the pupil in the long term.

Using the iPod Touches for research on the internet is a great advantage of handheld technology. Again, it’s the immediacy of the action that is so beneficial. Just today, Rang III were doing an exercise from their English book where they had to sort and classify and list animals according to whether they had long or short tails. As they began to ask me questions about the length of tail of certain animals, I knew I couldn’t answer them truthfully. However, the solution was in their hands. They just went onto Google Images and searched for images of each of the given animals before making their decision of which list to put the animal in. They have also done other work where they have to look on the internet for information about certain things. The fact that the world of the internet is on their fingertips is a huge advantage.

I’ve been looking at some ways of allowing the pupils to interact with the whiteboard by using their iPod Touches. I looed around for online noticeboard type sites. I liked the Wallwisher website and thought about ways that we could use this site. However, one of the disadvantages of the iPods is that they do not support any Flash-based or similar sites. Through Twitter (@tonyvincent) I became aware of the Wiffiti website which does support iPods. We tried this last Friday, but I wasn’t entirely happy with the results and may just keep on looking for another similar website to allow the pupils to give feedback on a particular topic using the iPods.

Storynory

Another great way we are using the iPods is to listen to Podcasted stories. At the moment we are using stories from Storynory. On the iTunes account that we have set up, I have simply subscribed to the Storynory podcasts. So when I go in to iTunes I can decide which stories I want to download onto the Mac. I then sync all the iPods to this iTunes account and the podcasts are downloaded onto each iPod. The stories tend to be traditional tales which are very suitable for the age group that I am teaching. The classroom is never as silent as when the pupils are sitting quietly, each with an iPod and a set of earplugs in each pair of ears. They have also completed Podcast Reviews as a follow up to their listening. These are exactly the same as a book review and are a great way of responding to the podcast and ensures that the pupils have listened well. The pupils really enjoy this activity.

 I hope this article has given readers a brief flavour of the influence the iPods have had in my classroom since their arrival. They have certainly changed the dynamic of the classroom. The pupils are extremely motivated and eager to do work using this modern technology. We are stiil discovering new ways of using the iPods to enhance the teaching and learning experience, but so far we are all really enjoying using them.

 

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Seomra Ranga’s 3rd Birthday

October 2nd, 2010

3rd Birthday

It’s been so busy at Seomra Ranga with the re-development of the new site that I completely overlooked the 3rd birthday of the site last week. Yes, the site has been going since September 2007 and it has really grown in the space of those three years. From humble beginnings, Seomra Ranga creeped into cyberspace very tentatively. Yet, over the past three years, the site itself has grown and the number of visitors to the site has grown steadily year on year. This September alone was the busiest ever on the site with the number of visitors reaching almost 90,000, a staggering figure.

Some months ago, I realised that the site had grown so much that it had become unwieldly, and from my point of view had become difficult to manage. I knew that the time had come for the site to be given a spring clean and a new breath of life. So, it is quite opportune that as the site celebrates it third birthday, it is almost ready to enter into a new phase, with the imminemt release of the new site. Some visitors to the site have been contacting me to enquire when the new site will be ready – all I can say is that it will hopefully be relatively soon. I’ve been working solidly putting the resources together on the new site and it’s coming together well. I’m quite pleased with the new look and feel to the site and I hope that regular visitors to the site will like it too. So, as Seomra Ranga enters its fourth year, its reincarnation is just around the corner!

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Writers in Schools Scheme

September 11th, 2010

Poetry Ireland

The Writers in Schools Scheme is one of the longest running arts-in-education programmes in the country. 2007 marked the 30th anniversary of the Scheme, run by Poetry Ireland and funded by the Arts Council/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

The Scheme part-funds visits by writers and storytellers to primary and post primary schools throughout the Republic of Ireland. There are over 250 writers and storytellers for schools to choose from on the Writers in Schools Web-Directory of Writers.

To apply for a visit by an author, the school selects a writer or storyteller they would like to invite from the Writers in Schools Web-Directory of Writers, contacts them to see if they are available and then arranges a date. Once a date has been agreed between the school and the writer, the school completes the application form (which can be downloaded from the Poetry Ireland website) and sends it by post/email or fax to the Writers in Schools office. There are two types of visit - Type A: Visit duration of 120 – 150 minutes and the cost to the school is €76.00, half the writer fee; Type B: Visit duration of 300 minutes and the cost to the school is €152.00. The Writers in Schools Scheme also pays the travels expenses of the author. For more information on the scheme and to download an application form, visit the Poetry Ireland website.

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iPod Apps in the Classroom

September 10th, 2010

iPhone Apps

Two weeks back at school and everyone is back into the routine again. I’ve kept on my last year’s Rang II and have nine new additions to make a RangII/III split class. Of course one of the first things they were delighted to be back in school about was the use of the iPods in the classroom. From that point of view, nothing has changed. As I explained in earlier posts, my class set of iPods are on loan through the pilot project organised by Sligo Education Centre and Apple Ireland.

The children love doing any sort of work on the iPods (or “playing” on them as they would say!). I was interested to see how my nine new additions would manage doing some work on the iPods – I needn’t have worried! They are just absorbed with this new technology in the classroom and need very little instruction on how to use them. Whatever they are unsure about, the other “experts” in the classroom (.ie the eight and nine year olds in Rang III, who are only using them since last May) are willing teachers and just explain in quite simple terms what to do.

There has been a lot of interest in the previous posts I wrote about the use of the iPod Touches in the classroom, so I thought that it was opportune at the start of the year to let readers know what sort of apps we have been using both for entertainment and to enhance our learning:

1. Flip It! Lite: a very simple animation app for making flip books

2. Perfect Balance: Harmony: This is a great app for logical reasoning and spatial awareness. I initially downloaded the Lite version of this app thinking that it would take the children ages to make their way through the various levels. I should have known better. The first had them all done in 15 minutes. They were enjoying it so much that I purchased the full version.

3. Story CubesRory’s Story Cubes: We haven’t used this app in a while so we must start to use it again as it’s a great app for developing oral language skills. Although it’s an Irish made app which is reason enough to use it, Rory’s Story Cubes is proving very popular all around the world. It consists of nine cubes on the screen, each face of which has an image. The object of the app is to tell a story connecting all nine images that are facing up. It’s so simple and yet so effective. Two of my pupils actually put together both of their Story Cubes screens and told a longer story. This could also be developed into a written activity.

4. Zentomino: As with many apps in the App Store , there is a free Lite version and a paid version. This can be a difficult app for younger children but it is also a challenge. It is very good for spatial awareness. The object of the app is to fit a number of regular and irregular shapes into another shape template. As I said, it can be difficult and frustrating!

5. Basic Math: This is a free app and is good for practising maths tables. Pupils can practise tables in the four basic mathematical operations. Pupils are given a table and are asked to select the answer from three possible options.

6. ICDL (International Children’s Digital Library): A very basic app for younger children initially containing four digital books. It is envisaged that more books will be added from the extensive Library over time.

7. ChicktionaryChicktionary: There is a Lite and paid version of this app. It is very similar to the letters game from the Channel 4 show “Countdown”. You are given seven letters and are asked to find 32 words using these letters. The words to be found range from three, four, five, six and one seven-letter word. You can earn points for each word found and you can also work on a timer. The whole app is animated with clucking hens (hence the name of the app) and all the found words are revealed in egg boxes. The children really loved this app as did the teacher. It was a great way of building up vocabulary and making words.

 8. Doodle Buddy: This is a drawing app where the pupils can either draw a picture alone or with a friend. It has the usual drawing tools that you would find in any drawing application. It also has stampers which the children love to use as they create a sound effect when you stamp them onto the screen. You can view some of the pictures they created using this app on our School Website. However, a great addition to this programme was discovered by the pupils themselves, the ability to connect iPods via wi-fi. This enables the pupils to draw a picture together even though they may be at opposite ends of the room. They can also text each other. So I used this function at the end of the last term to get the pupils to quiz each other on tables. The possibilities of using this type of function are endless.

9. Origami Classroom (by Easy Studio – I can’t seem to find this now in the App Store): This app provides step by step instructions on how to fold paper to create animals. fish and other objects. It also provides a video to accompany each creation showing someone making the object. A lot of my pupils found this app hard to follow. Perhaps it would be more suitable to older pupils.

Jackson Pollock10. Jackson Pollock: During the final term of the last school year we got involved in a Twitter project with a number of schools around the country, part of which was discussing the “No 5″ painting by Jackson Pollock via Twitter. One of the other teachers in the project informed me that there was a Jackson Pollock app so we incorporated that into our project. The pupils created paintings in the style of Jackson Pollock using this app, which you can view on our School Website.

11. Faces iMake: This is a new app that we have just introduced since September and the children loved it. There was very little explaining to do with it – in fact, as usual, the children discovered many more things that it could do and were able to teach me and the rest of the class. This is a drawing app where pupils create a picture of a face using everyday objects like food, school objects, buttons, tools etc. We were working on food in science last week so we made faces using just the food items. The art work created was great and looks really well on the classroom wall. I haven’t managed to put these on the school website yet but will do so soon.

12. Lets Tans: This is another new app that we have been using during the past two weeks. It’s based on the Chinese tangrams puzzle and is great practice for the shape and space strand in the maths curriculum. It’s also great for spatial awareness. Depending on what level of the game you are playing, pupils are given a number of tangram pieces to fit into a blank template. The pieces may have to be twisted or reversed in order to fit into the template. The pupils really enjoyed it, some more than others. I started the pupils off on the second level of the game, the Junior level, which consisted of 140 puzzles to be solved. One of my seven year old pupils had finished all puzzles on this level by the second day using the app! The teacher can actually check that all puzzles have been completed and see how long it took the pupil to complete each puzzle. It’s really a great app.

13. Smiley Sight Words: This is another new app that we have been using during the past two weeks. I think I found out about it through Twitter via @ebd35 who is using iPods in her classroom in England. This app gets the pupils to practise their sight vocabulary. Within the app there are 40 levels of Smiley Sight Words, 7 levels of Dolch words, 11 levels of Dolch Words by Frequency, 10 levels of Fry Words by Frequency, 10 levels of UK Words by Frequency plus a selection of other word lists. There is also the option to customise a word list. At the moment my pupils are working their way through the Dolch word list – they have to go through each list three times and get three “thumbs up” for correctly identifying each word. This app is great for developing vocabulary.

 These are the main apps that we have used so far during this pilot project. The aim is to introduce a number of other apps before the project ends. I’d also appreciate any suggestions of educational “apps must-haves” that teachers think would be great to use.

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The Magnificent Mind of Daisy Dunne

September 10th, 2010

Daisy is gifted. When she was 5, she drew a map of the world on the kitchen wall. By the age of 8, she took her fathers car apart and put it back together again. By the time she was 12, she was studying Science and Mathematics at university. With each birthday, Daisy becomes more devoted to finding answers to the worlds most puzzling questions. That is until her childhood friend Mitten, teaches her the one thing she doesn’t know; life’s most important lesson.

Children’s favourite, Cups and Crowns Theatre Company present this wonderful, original story about a gifted girl and her extraordinary friend for their touring programme commencing September 2010. The show is devised by Cups and Crowns, performed by Gillian Kelly & Maria O’Leary,  Set Design by Dara McGee and directed by Fiona McDonagh. With a duration of 45 minutes, the show is aimed at pupils between 1st – 6th class.Duration: 45mins

The company will facilitate drama workshops before the performance. The facilitator will bring the children through a structured workshop using ‘process drama technique’, which allows them to gain a better understanding of the artistic processes and themes in the performance. A short ‘Chatback’ session will happen after the performance. The facilitator will open up dialogue with the young audience about their experience of the story. This session will involve Inquiry, Discussion and Reflection. Schools will also receive a ‘Teacher Activity Pack’ with suggestions of follow-on artistic activities linked to the performance. This is a wonderful way to extend the artistic experience for everyone.

The Drama Schools Programme consists of the following:

* ‘The Magnificent Mind of Daisy Dunne’- 45min Production

* 1 x Pre-performance Drama Workshop

* Post Show ‘Response and Reflection’ Session

* Teacher Pack with follow on Artistic Activities

Total Cost – 300 Euro

This Educational Programme is designed with consideration for the Primary Schools Drama Curriculum set out by the Department of Education and Science. If you would like Cups and Crowns to visit your school – Phone Today: 0868534542 or Email – info@cupsandcrowns.ie

www.cupsandcrowns.ie

Cups and Crowns is kindly supported by Mayo County Council, Galway County Council, Galway City Council, Clare Arts Office and Sligo County Council. This Show was specially commissioned by and made for GALWAY ARTS FESTIVAL 2010.

This performance has not been seen by Seomra Ranga and the purpose of this post is simply to provide schools with information about an educational drama experience that they may wish pupils to engage in.

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Learning With iPods in the Classroom

July 4th, 2010

Since receiving my class set of iPods on loan through the pilot project organised by Sligo Education Centre and Apple Ireland, I’ve had a chance to think about and observe in a short space of time how they have had an effect on the teaching and learning that takes place in the classroom. Anytime instant access to any type of technology, but perhaps especially hand-held technology, changes the classroom dynamic and has an immediate effect on the type of learning that takes place and also, perhaps more importantly, on the way that learning takes place.

 

The immediate effect that could be observed after beginning to use the iPods in the classroom was the eagerness of the children to learn. That is not to say that they were previously unmotivated, in fact they were quite bright. Nevertheless, from the moment the pupils entered the class in the morning, they were eager to get their hands on the iPods to use as a learning tool. Having this hand-held technology just heightened their willingness to try something new and different in order to learn. The pupils simply loved working with the iPods. They frequently thought that they were “playing” on the iPods (“Teacher, can we play with the iPods today?”, was a common question) but didn’t realise that even though they may have been playing a game, they were learning a skill at the same time. So whether it was an educational app or just a game, the pupils were learning a skill that is transferable to other areas of the curriculum and to life itself. Although we have only had the iPods for about six weeks, they have been the success of the year as far as the pupils are concerned. This Wordle shows the impact  the iPods have had on the children this year: Review_of_the_Year

 

Through the use of the iPods in the classroom, the children have experienced new ways of learning – it’s not that they have learned anything that they made not have otherwise have learned, it’s just that they were learning in a different, more engaging way. They are growing up in a technological age, where they are surrounded by any amount of technology devices, so they were totally unfazed by the introduction of the iPods into the classroom. It got to the stage where they were making new discoveries with the iPods and they were teaching me how to do things! Discovery learning is one of the principles underpinning the curriculum and the children were constantly making new discoveries of ways of working with the iPod. This resulted in a three-way process of learning – teacher learning from children, children learning from teacher, and, more importantly, children learning from each other, the most effective type of learning. If the pupils can discover something by themselves or from their peers, they will remember it for much longer than if the teacher “teaches” it to them. I recently came across (via Twitter @seomraranga) two very pertinent and timely quotations to do with technology and education. The first said: “Any teacher that can be replaced by technology, deserves to be!” The second said: “Technology doesn’t improve education, it changes it. TEACHERS improve education”. In relation to iPods in the classroom, these quotations indeed are very apt.

 

There have been challenges during the past six weeks while we have been attempting to integrate this new technology into the primary school classroom. The obvious challenge for the teacher is to use the technology as a tool to teach what he/she would have been teaching anyway. So although the same learning outcomes will be expected, the route towards those outcomes will be different. This will be a challenge for me in the next academic year. Because we have only had the iPods for about six weeks, the objective at this stage of the year really was to make the children comfortable with using them. In the next school year, my job will be to match a little better the use of the technology to the curriculum that I will be teaching. That challenge will be to select appropriate apps to teach a particular topic or to guide the pupils to web resources on that topic. Another challenge which became evident is a structural one – our broadband in the school has been a source of contention for a good while. While it has improved, it can be unreliable at times and can tend to be slow. We have changed broadband supplier, but will probably still have to upgrade the line to get faster speeds, so this will hopefully improve our internet experience using the iPods.

 

Another consideration when using iPods is to realise that Apple products do not support any Flash-based or similar applications on web sites. This is unfortunate because most sites aimed at primary school aged children makes great use of animation to teach something. This is frustrating, but it just means that the teacher has to have visited sites beforehand to make sure they can be accessed by the pupils on the iPod Touches.

 

Some people have been amazed when I tell them that my pupils have been using iPod Touches for learning in the classroom. They thought that they were too young to be able to manage this technology. But we have to realise that these children are growing up in a technological age where they are surrounded by emerging technologies and that some of their toys, coupled with their leisure time, are technology-based. They’ve got PSP’s, mobile phones, MP3 players, game consoles etc. Children are not frightened to engage with new technology and rarely need a user’s manual to find out how to use it. They just dive straight in. When we visited Burnt Oak Junior School in London who have been using this technology for the past year, we enquired from them about what age pupils should be to use iPods in the classroom. At present, they are using them with their Year 4’s (about age8/9). They told us that they also tried the iPods with their Year 6’s and found that the younger children learned much quicker than the older ones. My pupils are aged 6-8 and I was really interested to see how they would manage. I shouldn’t have worried as they took to the technology like the proverbial ducks to water. It was also interesting to note that I had some Junior infants in my room during the last week in June when their teacher was absent for the day. They are 4/5 years old. I gave them iPods, asked my pupils to show them how to work them and within minutes, they were also working away quietly – busy, engaged and learning !

 

 

I believe that the pupils have been learning new skills through their use of the iPod Touches in the classroom. They are learning physical skills like hand-eye co-ordination and manual dexterity. Through using certain apps they are honing their thinking skills which sharpen the mind. They become fully engaged while using the iPods and they are learning in a fun and interesting way. Using the iPods also fosters independent learning in the pupils. Frequently the pupils will ask me how to do something on the iPod. It serves a purpose to tell them that you do not know, to have a go or to ask another pupil in the classroom. It’s been amazing to see how much they can learn from each other and how much they can teach me! There is a saying that goes: “If they cannot learn the way we teach, then we must teach the way they learn”.

I’ll very soon give some examples of the type of work we have been doing during the last term using the iPod Touches. I’ll mention the apps that we’ve used and shown how they have been useful as a teaching strategy. I’ll also mention some of the plans for using the iPods during the next school year.

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