There are two iOS 7 settings that every teacher needs to turn on if they are using iPads with their students. The first one is called Speak Selection. With Speak Selection enabled, students can have text from websites (and many apps) read aloud to them. Here's how to do it: Step 1: Go to General on your Settings and choose Accessibility. Step 2: Next, select Speak Selection and make sure it is turned on. Step 3: Within Speak Selection, you have a few options. One is Speaking Rate. Make sure the rate is not too fast. You also have the option to highlight words as they are being spoken, which is a nice feature for students who are still learning to read, but older students may not want this feature, as they may feel that it is drawing attention to the fact that Speak Selection is being used. To use Speak Selection, highlight a section of text on a site. Immediately, a box opens with a couple of options. "Speak" is now one of those options. While the selection is being read, if you have chosen to highlight the words, you will see each word as it is read aloud (see picture, below right). You have the option to pause or copy the selection while listening. The text below is dolphin facts for kids from the website Science Kids. The other must-have setting you need is Guided Access, found under the Learning tab in Accessibility. With Guided Access turned on, you set up your students in an app and then activate the Guided Access. Now students cannot get out of this app without using a passcode. Not that I don't trust my students (insert smiley face here), but it is easy to get distracted at times. Here is how to do it: Step 1: Turn on Guided Access. Step 2: Select "Set Passcode." You will be asked to enter a 4-digit passcode twice. Make sure it is not the same passcode that you have used to unlock your iPad, as your students may already know that one! Step 3: Make sure the Accessibility Shortcut is turned on also. That's it. Now, to use it, open the app that you want your students using. When in the app, triple click the home button on your iPad. You will see "Start" in the upper right hand corner of your screen. Tap Start. Your iPad is now locked in this app. To get out of the app, triple click the Home button again. You will be prompted to enter the passcode that you set with the Guided Access. Once you enter the passcode, you will see "End" in the top left of your screen or "Resume" in the top right. Make your selection and you're all set! If you have selected "End," you will see a message that states "Guided Access has ended." I hope that's helpful!
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Last week I blogged about the screencasting app Explain Everything, and I'm still thinking about all the possibilities of using screencasting in the classroom. I've been a huge fan of wordless picture books for years. Children's literature with beautiful illustrations has always been a draw for me, and now that I am not in the classroom and my children are all grown, I really have no excuse to keep on buying these books, but I do anyway. I have not yet tried this in the classroom, but I'm eager to give it a go some day. I'd like to take pictures of some of the pages in the book, and then have the children's voices recorded as they tell the story. Older students could even add the text and narrate at the same time. With Explain Everything, students could add snippets of video related to the topic of the story, or add to the illustrations! I am amazed and appreciative of an author's ability to tell a story through pictures alone. I've come across some wonderful ones, and I'd like to share them with you. Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad by Henry Cole is the story of a little girl helping a runaway slave, told in gorgeous pencil illustration alone. No words, no color. Imagine adding historic video from slavery times, and even some haunting music. Gives me chills. The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney is Aesop's fable told in stunning illustrations against the backdrop of the African Serengeti. I can hear African drums as children's voices retell this message that no act of kindness is ever wasted. Pancakes for Breakfast by one of my favorite authors Tomie de Paola is a story young students would find very appealing in its humour. The little old lady is determined to make pancakes against all odds. Hmm... should we add a recipe? How to make maple syrup? David Weisner has written many wordless picture books, all with beautiful, full-color illustrations. Flotsam is the story of a little boy who is beach-combing and finds an underwater camera. The pictures on the camera lead him on a magical adventure in his imagination. Wonderful writing prompts galore in this one! Weisner has written some other remarkable wordless books, including Tuesday, The Three Pigs, Freefall, Sector 7, and more. Bluebird by Bob Staake is my new favourite book. This is a story of friendship and bullying, and is a very emotional read. A little bluebird befriends a boy who is bullied and lonely, and ultimately changes his life. Adding students' own voices to this story could be a very thought-provoking project. The last book I'd like to talk about today is Zoom by Istvan Banyai. In this book, the reader "zooms" between a farm, a desert island, a ship and more. And then your eye zooms out as you realize you were not where you thought you were! Wonderful writing prompts in this book as well, and I'd love to see what students could create with Explain Everything. This was the best week in the whole year, probably, as far as a travelling teacher's job goes. The fall colors were absolutely stunning, and I was in 7 different schools this past week, so I had many opportunities to marvel at this beautiful country we live in.
Today I'd like to discuss screencasting. A screencast is kind of like a screenshot, except that screencasts contain video and/or audio. Explain Everything is a screencasting app available for iPad and Android. I have heard teachers say that if you could have only one app in your classroom, then Explain Everything is definitely the one you would choose. At only $2.99, it's a real bargain, and you get lots of bang for your buck! There's a little video on their site that explains how it works. My colleague Amanda Smith (@Mandy_S_24) created an awesome tutorial that I also recommend checking out. Here are some ideas for ways to use Explain Everything in your classroom. 1. Assessment: Ask your students to create an Explain Everything video to explain which personal strategy they would use to solve math questions or solve problems. 2. Projects: Students create a screencast to showcase their learning on a particular topic (animals or habitats biographies, science experiments, etc). 3. Flipped Classroom: Teachers create screencast for students to watch at home as part of a flipped classroom assignment, or for students who were absent from class and missed a lesson. 4. Portfolio: Students can create video on EE to save to the digital portfolio. Take a picture of the book they're reading in Guided Reading class and record themselves reading, using decoding and/or comprehension strategies, and timing fluency. One of the best features of Explain Everything is that the project can be saved as a photo or video, uploaded to Dropbox, YouTube, or Evernote, and then you may use the links to embed the project into a class blog, wiki, etc. I'm sure there are many more applications that I haven't considered yet, and I'd love to hear feedback from others on how they've used screencasting in their classrooms. |
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Lori EmilsonTravelling Curriculum Support Teacher Archives
April 2017
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