Thursday

Thursday  We had a quick lesson on Twitter, reviewing what a hashtag does as well as the @ symbol. Twitter seems to be the app of choice for our #appleacademy friends. If you're into Twitter, do a search on our hashtag to see the banter and get links to some awesome resources. Thanks, Carl, for the great Prezi. It can be found Here.

We learned about Beat Markers for iMovie '11 for Mac. Holy Cow! This little feature alone will save us countless hours of fine timing when we synchronize music to photos/video. A link to how to use beat markers can be found at: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iMovie/9.0/en/mov2b938b8b.html

Today was a curriculum learning day. We got to explore how we could apply Apple products into Science, ELA, and the Humanities.

__**Science**__
 * Sample question: How important is soil in our lives?
 * Explore background knowledge and concepts
 * Investigate using digital tools
 * Discovery Education movies regarding soil, dirt, and compost
 * Use Airplay to share what they've found
 * Learn about types of soil by exploring resources on iTunesU
 * Apps that could help:
 * The Elements: A visual representation ($13.99)
 * Wolfram Alpha - also Goofram, the Google search version
 * Inkling - a science textbook for iPads
 * BrainPop's movie of the day
 * Starwalk
 * iTunesU
 * We used a Pasco probe with a bluetooth adapter to identify the CO2 levels of different types of soil. We paired the probe with a Sparkview app and learned how the data could be emailed as a CSV file so it could be compiled into a spreadsheet.

__**Mac Tips/Tricks already in the O**__S


 * Calculator on your computer. (Go to the search magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner of the screen and type in //calculator// to get it) You can do your calculations, ask for your tape and print it. You can use the preview to annotate a mathematical process.
 * Grapher on your computer. (Go to the search magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner of the screen and type in //grapher//to get it)
 * You can have 2D or 3D graphs. Use Preview to see them. You can take a screen shot and copy/paste into documents.
 * You can create an animation of a 3D graphic (do this under the View menu). Start animation @ view and end @ view. It makes a Quicktime movie of the animation. Move to iTuens to put the QT onto a postable device likean iPad or iPad. Put it into the Apps folder. This could be added to an ePub!

__**Math Applications**__ Here are some iPod apps: iPad apps include:
 * iTunesU - Lots of great content FREE! You can download the QT movies and use them everywhere.
 * Calculator
 * Number Line
 * Sums Stacker
 * Math Bingo
 * Nine gaps
 * Pearson Algebra prep
 * Mathboard
 * Time, Money, & Fractions
 * Algebra Touch
 * Everyday math may have apps available in June

Math in action: Canby School District raises math scores with purchase of mobile devices and apps.

__**Time to Share**__ - Our cohorts share what's going on in their school district.
 * 1) Technology resources in a school district. The importance of having financial resources that are predictable so that resources can be spread throughout a district and impact student learning.
 * 2) One school's adventure on making the switch from Windows to Mac. Conclusion was that it was what's best for kids!
 * 3) Observations and examples of how students are using Apple mobile devices. They are creating public service announcements and creating things like public service announcements. ARD (Apple remote desktop) makes life easier and more efficient for all.
 * 4) School is just starting the Mac experience. Teachers are using MacBooks and wikis. They use Atomic Learning and have a place for staff to ask questions and they answer them in a wiki form.
 * 5) The common core - we learned details about the common core standards and learned that they are "fewer, clearer, higher." We saw a digital clearing house for formative tools and heard about how assessment of skills will be changing. Students will be asked to do activities like analyze a gas bill then create a pamphlet to demonstrate how to conserve energy.

Language Arts in the Classroom

On the Mac OS: Some iPad apps:
 * System Preferences, Speech. You set up the key commands to make this work. The computer will read any text on the screen as long as you highlight it then press the pre-programmed command keys.
 * Dictionary - Highlight a word then press: Control-Command-d
 * Pocket phonics
 * Super Why
 * Millie and Molly
 * Shakespeare in bits
 * Miss spider
 * Sentence builder - Does similar things as Dibbles or K-12 time reading practice tests

The Language Acquisition Model:
 * The Escondito Project
 * Students showed a 4 to 5 times improvement in fluency within 6 weeks of recording themselves with the iPod through voice memo, listening/reviewing it, then turning work in to teacher.
 * Other Apps: QuickVoice and iTalk

__**Apptivity**__ - Our groups were in charge of finding a few apps and creating a lesson around it. We created the document in Pages then made ePub documents from it.