Completion!

School is out for the summer and all of the ELL students finished their ePubs!  As I read and listened to them I was often pleasantly surprised by how well some of them had done creating their ePub.  Unfortunately I was also a little disappointed with a few of them which showed limited effort.  The ones who had created great ePubs really put time into their writing and revising, brought in many photos from home, and focused on creating quality audio recordings.
After the students were done there still was lots to do:
1.  Save their Book Creator presentations as ePubs to iTunes and sync all the iPads so that their ePubs showed up on all the iBook shelves.
2.  Save their Book Creator presentations as pdf in Dropbox so that I could access all of them later.
3.  Read and listen to all their ePubs so I could use the rubric to grade them.
4.  The best part - meet together to share all their completed ePubs!
After they saw their completed ePubs and their grades almost all of them said that I could share their work with the world.  Only two of them were too shy to share outside of their class.
Here are a few of them as pdfs:

Marie's Story
Here's Belem's story:

Belem's Story

Book Creation Apps

I've spent months checking out different book creation apps for my students to use to create their ePubs.  I've downloaded free apps and purchased one copy each of quite a few to evaluate them to see which would work best for my ELL students.  I had been getting a bit stressed since we're getting down to the wire to complete these ePubs before the end of the school year.  I want all the students to be able to proudly show off their completed work.
Let me share some of the apps I've considered:
Pages
Pages is a great word processing app, but you can't create an ePub from it yet.  You can only create ePubs from Pages on a Mac computer.
Demibooks Composer
myMemoir
StoryKit
Creative Book Builder
Book Creator 
I've decided to use Book Creator because it will allow the students to import their previously-created audio clips from iTunes and their photos in their iPhoto Library.  It's also very simple to use and gives students the ability to be creative with fonts and colors.

Students have been asked to bring photos from home which we've scanned and they've also taken some photos with the iPads.  Then the photos are imported into iPhoto and put into the folder I created matching the iPad assigned to that particular student.  Each time I sync the iPads, the scanned photos are transferred and ready for the students to use in their books.

They've already uploaded all their audio clips from iTalk into Dropbox and from there they can import them into Book Creator.  It turns out that they can record directly with Book Creator which is great, but they had already created all their audio files as we practiced improving their reading fluency.

Students should be done next week, and then we'll convert their stories into ePubs!

The students are so excited about seeing their ePubs and sharing it with their family and friends.

Recording Their Personal Stories

The students have been furiously working on editing their personal stories.  Last Friday they came to the library to begin recording each section, and many of them made some interesting discoveries.  I've told them repeatedly that the best way to find their writing mistakes is to hear them..  As they began to record their first entry, many students came to me to say they needed to do some rewriting because their writing "doesn't make sense."  They will be doing some more editing.
My goal is for the students to spend the next few weeks recording all of their narratives, so that they can then begin to put their digital books together making their writing, audio, and photos into an ePub.
I hope all goes well.  I'll keep you posted.

Sharing the Cart

I've been talking with people in other districts with iPad carts about the best way to check out the iPads to classroom teachers.  Some teachers are thinking about checking them out when they can't get into the computer lab to use them for Internet research.  That is such a limited way of using a great resource.
One school district is checking out their carts on a monthly basis, having teachers fill out a one page proposal about how they'll use the iPads with their classes.  I'm hoping to check out our cart on a weekly basis offering support to help teachers explore apps they could use for projects.  There are so many free apps, but we also still have a bit of money to purchase some apps if needed.  One math teacher here checked out the cart, but before he did, he found about ten free math apps he wanted to use with his classes.  That worked really well, and the students were thrilled to use the iPads to work on math skills.  One caveat:  I tell all teachers to keep a list of which students are using which iPads so that we can identify the student if there's a problem.
I really think it's important to be able to offer professional development to staff if we want them to use the iPads as a productive tool with students, not just as a substitute for a laptop.  Last week I presented a one hour workshop for staff on iPad Tips and Tricks and got a really good response; they wanted more.  The great thing about the iPads are they are simple to use, but with some professional development, you can unlock more of their potential.

Batch Geo is a Blast!

Objective: 
Students will be able to share their personal experiences by answering questions.

It's been a while since I wrote because we had spring vacation, and the lessons I've been doing haven't been using the iPad, but I think they've been interesting so I thought I'd share.  I created a form in Google Docs for the students to access through their Google Apps accounts.  They filled in the form answering these questions:

1. What is your name (first name only)?

2. What city and country did your family come from?

3. Why did your family come to the U.S.?

4.  How did your family travel to the U.S.?

5.  How many years ago did your family come to the U.S.?

6.  If you moved to the U.S., how did you feel when you arrived here? 

As they filled out the form, I received the info on a Google spreadsheet.  I copied all the gathered data and pasted it into a page at http://batchgeo.com

It automatically creates a Google Map for you with push pins for each student's city and country.  I shared the map with the students projecting it with the LCD- they were so excited to see their own info on a Google map.  I shared with them how they could mouse over the push pin to see more info and even click on the little man on the left to access street view.  What was especially good about this was that it inspired the students to make sure they had the right info and edit it properly.  If they misspelled their city or country, they didn't appear on the map and they all wanted to appear on the map!  Here's a link to their first try before the edits:  http://batchgeo.com/map/b70fd5500571f1deb31715fe5f35db8d

The next class day they were still excited as they were asked to take their written responses to the above questions and put their answers in paragraph form. 

The following week I shared a document with students called "My Story Part 2".  They answered these questions:

1.  Was it easier for you or your parents to adjust to living in the U.S.? Why?
2.  What is different about living in the U.S.?
3.  What do you like about living in the U.S.?
4.  What festivals or special traditions does your community have?
5.  What are some popular foods in your community?
6.  What is a family tradition that you love?
7.  What languages are spoken in your home?

Since then the students have been working with Ms.Sigler, their ELL teacher, on developing their answers into full paragraphs with details and correct grammar and punctuation.  It has been challenging, but they're working hard and doing well.

We will be using their written work along with photos, audio, and maybe video to create their digital books in the coming weeks. I can't wait to see their finished product!

Do iPads + ELL Students = Reading Comprehension?

Last week I presented a session at the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE) conference in Seattle.  The title of my session was the same as the title of this post.  I'm still not sure of the answer to the question I posed.  During formative assessments as this project proceeds, I do see quite a bit of growth for most of the students.  Recently we completed the summative assessment called the DRP (Degrees of Reading Power) which, according to the test maker, are "holistic measures of how well students understand the meaning of text. Test results are reported on the DRP Scale of Text Difficulty – the same scale that is used to measure the reading difficulty of printed material."  
The test results give us a score for each student which indicates an independent reading level and an instructional reading level.  Looking at the class's scores, 66% of the students made considerable progress on the DRP since they took it in the fall.  I think their growth has been even more exceptional since we gave the DRP in February instead of in May when the spring test really should be given.  But it is only one measure of student progress.  The students also took the new WELPA (Washington English Language Proficiency Assessment) a few weeks ago.  According to the state:
"It measures students’ growth in English language knowledge and skills. Results from this test determine which students are eligible to continue to receive ELD services."  We won't have the results from this test until May, so we shall see if any of the students were able to test out of English Language Development services.  I'm hopeful.

Editing Woes

The students came back to the library to work on editing their writing assignment that they had completed in their ELL classroom.  This time they recorded their own writing using the iTalk app.  Then they listened to the recording while editing their own work.  I told them how I usually will read aloud my own writing so that I can hear my errors.  They really worked hard on this and heard lots of errors that they had made; unfortunately they don't have enough writing skills yet to be able to know how to make the corrections properly.  They tried, but many of them did not know how to punctuate correctly to say exactly what they wanted to say.  I do think it was good that two girls came to me saying that their writing didn't make sense as they tried to record it.  They are becoming more thoughtful about their work.  There's lots more work for us to do.

Fantastic Flying Books app is Fantastic!

On Friday, my students had a chance to spend some time with the app of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.  I had planned on having students read/listen/interact with the book for part of the period and then write about it, but they had such a great time with the app that we never got to the writing part.  Students were paired up with their headphone splitters, headphones, and iPads.  They spread out throughout the library absorbed in the book, and all I heard were their reactions to the app:  laughter, giggles, oohs and aahs, and comments like, "Look at his face!", "That's cool!", "Let's see that again."  

Thinking about how to write about the story

They loved playing the piano within the story

 

They had a great time creating words within the alphabet cereal and then taking photos of them.

 Afterwards all the students said they preferred the app to the movie. One student expressed the reason why so well; she said, "You felt like you were experiencing the story."  The interactive app draws the reader in rather that being a passive watcher of the film.
Students will continue with their ELL teacher on Monday to write about the app with this objective:
Students will be able to summarize a story by writing about it in complete thoughts and sentences.

Fantastic Flying Books

There's a wonderful animated movie and app called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.  The movie is nominated this year for an Oscar for Best Animated Short and it's available for free download through iTunes.  The app costs $4.99 for the iPad, includes a link for the movie and is definitely worth it.
Last week I showed the movie to the ELL class and had them taking notes about the movie.  It is filled with music, but no dialogue, and I wanted them to be able to tell the story of the film.  I gave them a form to fill out listing the characters, the settings, the problem, and the resolution.  Afterwards they had to retell the film's story in their own words.  Many of them did a very good job, though only one of them was able to really retell the story in her own creative way.  She truly made it her own story.  I think one of the differences for this student is that she was well-educated in her home language in her home country.  Many of our students are refugees with limited or no schooling in their former refugee camps, or they cannot read or write in the language that is spoken in their own home.  It is much easier to acquire fluency in a new language if you are literate in your first language.
That said, I am looking forward to next time, when the students will have the chance to spend some time with the Fantastic Flying Books app.  It is an interactive book with narration that tells the charming story of Morris Lessmore who is displaced by a terrible windstorm.  It's a wonderfully charming story with very clever interactive features, including a bowl of alphabet cereal in which readers can make words.  Afterwards they can even take photos of their bowl of words and save them.
I'll keep you posted on how the students like the app.

Practice Makes Almost Perfect

Objective:  Students will increase reading fluency through using their voices to express feeling while reading.

We've been spending lots of time recording our reading aloud, listening, and critiquing.  The last two times students came to the library they read Reading Fluency Practices from their ELL textbooks.  These were readings they were familiar with already.  The first week two students shared iPads and used a form to critique their own reading and their partners' reading.  With some good feedback from their ELL teacher, Jennelle, I changed the written response form so that students would be required to use complete sentences when they critiqued their own reading aloud.  I also had students working alone with their own iPad.  This made a big difference in the quality of their reading and written work.  Since they're saving all their recordings in Dropbox, I can listen to them from home.  They each have their own folder in the same account, and we've been able to save many weeks of recordings and compare their reading fluency now with how they did in the beginning.  I'm really beginning to hear much improvement.  I was hoping the students would be taking their standardized reading test this week, but it's been moved to March, so I won't know till then if what we've been doing translates into better reading scores for the students. I certainly hope so.

Snow Pad

We've been having lots of snow here in Seattle, so we're going on our third snow day as of tomorrow.  That means not much activity with the iPads.  Last week I did get to show my students a quick StoryKit book I created.  It was about them, so they really seemed to like it.  I think they're getting very excited about producing their own books soon.  StoryKit would be very easy for them to be able to use, but I don't like the limitations of the program for creating something lasting that can include audio.  Once you e-mail it and someone reads it on their computer, they can no longer listen to the audio.  So I'm still on the search for another app to use with my students.
The iPad symposium at PSESD was really great.  My presentation seemed to be well received and I came away with lots of great ideas from other people's presentations.  Actually I really came away with a full brain and much to explore.  Truthfully these three snow days have been a wonderful opportunity to do just that!
One of the apps I learned about is Sock Puppet - it's a hoot.  It's just fun to play around with, but you could also use it with students in creating plays, videos, etc.
I also came away from the symposium determined to spend some time using Evernote.  I've had this app for ages, but I've never really used it, though it's supposed to be a great organizational tool.  I'll let you know.

Creating an ePub

I spent most of today getting ready for a presentation I'm giving at an iPad symposium on Wednesday.  By "most of the day" I mean all the time that I wasn't being distracted by something else on the Internet.  I decided to create an ePub out of this blog so that I could share it with people who come to my presentation.  I'd never created an ePub, but I didn't think it would take long using Apple's iWorks Pages program since I already had written the blog.  Yes, I was wrong....I can hear people snickering.  It did take several hours and many exports to actually produce an ePub that looks somewhat how I wanted it to look.  It was mostly a matter of getting the photos to place properly within the text and getting chapters to begin at the beginning of pages.
For those of you who aren't sure of what an ePub is, it's an electronic publication that can be read on iPads, Nooks, and other e-book readers.  At this point, you can use Pages on a Mac to create one and then drop it into your iTunes account.  When you sync your iPhone or iPad, the book goes into your iBook app. I was hoping to use it with my students, but unfortunately the Pages app for the iPad doesn't yet create ePubs so I'm going to check out an app I downloaded the other day called Book Creator.  I actually think Book Creator will be easier and more manageable for my students anyway.  I'll let you know how it works.

Set Up

I thought I'd share how I have my iPad presentation set up in case you're trying to figure out the best way to do it.

Here are some photos:

This is my LCD projector, laptop, iPad, speakers, and my Point2Vue doc camera by Ipevo.

I was at an Adobe Photoshop User group meeting and someone was presenting with this doc camera.  I love it because it's so small and portable and yet has great clarity and the ability to zoom.  This lets me show the students where I'm placing my fingers to open apps or swipe.

Carrying Case open

Carrying Case closed

The VGA adapter lets me project exactly what is on the iPad.

 The splitter lets two students work together using two pairs of headphones.

This device lets a group of five students listen to one iPad.

I do have another couple of photos with the new headphones I bought.  They work much better with the iPad and take up much less room.  They're made by iHome and cost just $20 at Office Max.

The speaker is closed here and ready to be put into its traveling bag

Trapped by an App

Objective:  Students will improve their reading comprehension by using context clues while reading and by using digital tools such as the Dictionary app.

I used the app Miss Spider's Tea Party to have students work on using context clues to determine word meaning.  In their pairs students listened to the book being read as they read along.  Before I gave students instructions, I handed them a list of words which I thought they might have trouble with in the story.  They were instructed to put a check mark in the column that best fit for their knowledge of the word:  Can Define, Recognize, Don't Recognize.  In addition there was another column for Other Words.  Afterwards they were told they could watch an animation of the book being read to see if that helped them to understand the words better.

I also instructed the students in how to use the Dictionary app to look up words by typing them or speaking them; how to listen to the words pronounced; and how to create a Favorites List of words.

All in all this was a bit of a frustrating lesson for me.  I had planned on using a different app, The Unwanted Guest, but when I watched it through and listed all the vocabulary words my students would need help with, it was just not feasible to use it.  I listed over four pages of vocabulary words my students probably wouldn't be familiar with. So then I searched until I found Miss Spider's Tea Party, read it and came up with only one page of vocabulary words (still too many, but usable).  The first major problem I ran into came when I downloaded the free app and got caught in its web.  With no warning or indication that it would happen, the app downloaded along with about 13 other unwanted game apps and advertising apps.  Since the iPads are linked to the same account, I then had to go into each iPad and delete all the superfluous apps.  What a sticky web was weaved for me. You can see why I'm not hyper linking the app on this blog; I don't want anyone else falling into the trap.

Correction:  I found out later that the reason the unwanted apps appeared was that my principal had downloaded the apps to his iPad which is linked to the same account as the student iPads.  His iPad has since been unlinked.  Lesson learned.

iTalk update

Earlier I wrote that with the free version of iTalk, I couldn't save the students' recordings and upload them to Dropbox.  I accidentally discovered that when I have the iPad synced with iTunes and I scroll down to the bottom, I can transfer files from iTalk to my computer with File Sharing.