Good Practice

End of Term Collection: Recommended iPad apps

There are many excellent apps available for iPad that can be used in school. Here are a few that come recommended by the Digital Learning Team:

OneNote


Cost: Free (Office 365 login required)
Description: OneNote is part of the Office 365 package and you will need to login before you can use it. It is a great organisational tool where you can can keep notes of meetings, to-do lists, lesson plans and many other things. You can alse use the camera to insert photos directly and then use the draw function to annotate the pictures.
Use OneNote Class Notebook if you would like to use OneNote to create a digital jotter system in your classroom, check out the guide here.

Office Lens

lens
Cost: Free (Office 365 login required)
Description: Office Lens is a document scanning app, but it has many more uses than simply scanning. You can use it to take a picture of a whiteboard during a presentation and then fix the view so it looks like you are right in front of the board. Lens also features Optical Character Recognition, this means it can read text from pictures. Take an image of text and then choose Immersive Reader when you export it to have the app read the text out loud to you.

Learning Tools
175x175bb
Cost: Free
Description:
Learning Tools is a great simple app designed to be used in the classroom. It does not require wifi to function once downloaded and installed. Learning tools contains a mini whiteboard, traffic lights, countdown clock, multiple choice answers and stopwatch. It is simple to use and perfect for formative assessment.

Post-it Plus

175x175bb1

Cost: Free
Description: This app is perfect if you like brainstorming using post-its or collecting exit tickets from pupils using post-its. Collect all your post-its from students or colleagues and then take a picture of them using the app, it will recognise the post-its. You can now move the post-its around, add new ones or put them into groups. Keep the post-it board on your iPad or export it as an image if you want to use it for something else.

Plickers

plicjers
Cost: Free
Description:
Plickers is great for formative assessment and can store the results your pupils give even if the teacher is the only person in the room with an iPad. Pupils are issued with cards that look like QR codes, dependent on how the code is rotated it gives different answers to a multiple choice question. The teacher puts a question on the board and pupils hold up their cards to be scanned by the teacher iPad. Teachers can create banks of questions to use over and over again and can look back at reports so they can track pupil progress.

Photos

Cost: Free
Description: The built in Photos app for iPad includes some little known hidden features. The mark-up feature which allows you to draw or type on an image as well as magnify certain areas of the picture is really useful! Find out how to mark up photos here.

Microsoft Learning Event Series

The Digital Learning Team will be hosting a series of events in collaboration with Microsoft. Microsoft Teacher Ambassador Natalie Burgess will join the team to run two learning events for staff in Edinburgh Council schools where they can learn about some of the new developments from Microsoft Education. These will run from 1.30-3.30pm on Friday 12th may and Friday 26th May. You can sign up here.

 

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

Innovation Centre for Education Launch

On Friday 21st of April the Digital Learning Team launched the Innovation Centre for Education.

The centre was put together in collaboration with CGI and XMA. It showcases digital technology available to schools through the refresh with CGI, as well as devices that can be purchased through other suppliers. The items on show include apps and accessories for iPad, Virtual Reality headsets, programmable toys, laptops and desktops.

Guests at the launch included representatives from Edinburgh schools, CGI, XMA, Apple and Edinburgh Council. They had the opportunity to find out the aims for the centre and how it was created, they also had a chance to try out all the kit in the room and chat to the Digital Learning Team.

The Innovation Centre will soon be opening for schools in Edinburgh to book a visit. This will provide an opportunity to try out the available technology and work on the digital strategy for schools, with the support from the DLT. Schools will be informed when they are able to book sessions.

We would like to thank CGI, XMA and Edinburgh Council in their support with this project.

Engaging Learners using OneNote

Blog post by Secondary Development Officer, Anna Kellner:

I have returned to teaching for two half days a week and am experimenting with the use of Class Notebook. I opted for the use of Class Notebook in an attempt to motivate learners who find maths a challenging subject. In the short time I have been using OneNote Class Notebook I am already aware of a number of advantages. These include pupils being able to access work anytime, anywhere, the efficient and easy monitoring and marking of work, the ability to differentiate material and provide timely feedback to learners.

How it worked…

I put notes into the Content Library so that pupils have something they can refer back to.

I then populated the pupil notebooks with corresponding sections containing questions on all of the topics.

Pupils worked independently on these questions whilst I monitored their work and marked everything they did from my own device.
If there was something that multiple pupils were struggling with then I would stop the class and go over the concept, these notes would go straight into the Content Library.

Whilst the pupil notebooks were populated with questions and tasks, for all of the upcoming topics, pupils did not have access to all of them at once.
To gain access to different sections pupils had to first complete the initial section, with the answers revealing the password to unlock the next stage. This allowed for self-paced learning and made differentiation inherent to the process, whilst ensuring learners’ knowledge was secure in each topic before moving on.

The class have been working well and they are engaged in their learning, they have also shown interest in accessing the notebook from home. The ability to constantly monitor and assess all pupil work has meant that I am aware of misconceptions at an early stage. Therefore I am able to scaffold and support individual learning needs.

For a guide on using OneNote Class Notebook click here.

The Math Learning Center Apps

The Math Learning Center have created some excellent resources for supporting numeracy and maths. Their apps are available for iPad or can be accessed via a web browser on a PC, but even better they are completely free. The web based versions can be used for whole class lessons or to support groups with the interactive features. You’ll no longer have to go searching the maths cupboard for the long lost geoboards and elastic bands, concrete materials for counting and 2D shapes!

Number Rack

img_0062

Fractions

img_0064

Math Vocabulary

img_0063

Pattern Shapes

img_0056-1

Number Line

img_0057-1

GeoBoard

img_0054

 Number Pieces

img_0058-1

Number Frames

img_0055

Digital Leaders @ Fox Covert RC Primary

Ciara and Lucy, Digital Leaders at Fox Covert RC share their experiences of the iTeach Digital Leaders Lab in this week’s guest post!

20161116_203319000_ios

Fox Covert RC Primary Digital Leaders

In our school everyone is part of a pupil group. This year our Pupil Council and ICT Group joined together to become the Digital Leaders. At the start of the year we had a meeting to discuss what we wanted to achieve. Some of the ideas we came up with were; creating tutorials on how to use apps, making sure our iPads have the apps they are supposed to have and raising funds for new iPads.

One of our first jobs was to use Meraki to download the apps we needed. Then we organised the apps into folders so we could find them easily.

We found out that iTeach were planning their first Digital Leaders Lab in Scotland and we were very excited. The day of the trip we had to get to school by 8.20am because we had to travel to George Watson’s. When we got there we had snacks and were told what we were going to do. Digital Leaders from Tynecastle High School showed us iPad tricks and tips in small groups. Then we had a Kidsmeet. Digital Leaders from some of the schools showed everyone one they use. We prepared a short presentation showing how we use iMovie and even prepared a short trailer.

After that, we split into two workshops and learnt lots of interesting things. One of the workshops demonstrated how to use a robotic ball called Sphero, that you could program using the app Lightning Lab. The other workshop was about how to create trailers using iMovie. Ten of the children in our Digital Leaders Group attended the training. We learned a lot and thought it was a very successful event!

At assembly, we shared our experience with the other Digital Leaders and the rest of the school. We are planning our own Kidsmeet to share more tips and tricks with all of our classes. We would also like to arrange some drop-in sessions to show people how to use other apps.

Check out Fox Covert RC Primary’s guide to using iMovie and sample their wonderful work below!