I’m reading Learning First, Technology Second: The Educator’s Guide to Designing Authentic Lessons by Liz Kolb and participating in a weekly #ETCoaches Twitter slow chat to discuss each chapter of the book. Last week I was challenged to identify a phrase or sentence from the reading that struck me. I shared a quote from Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler:
That’s why I avoid “teaching technology” - which may seem counterintuitive for a digital learning coach. However, when you spend time using digital tools with digital natives, it doesn’t take long to see that they don’t really need you to show them which buttons to click - they can figure out a lot of that on their own. What they need is to be guided in reflecting on their thinking and learning processes, creating quality content, and sharing their learning in powerful and appropriate ways. Do we want them to use digital tools? Absolutely! But, as the book title so beautifully reminds us, it’s learning that comes first. One of the reasons that I love Apple products and applications so much is because the tools are easy to use, which means our learners can focus on sharing what they know. Coppell’s Director of Instructional Technology Nancy Garvey says it beautifully: Last week I stumbled upon the perfect opportunity to, as Nancy says, “take how to use something out of the equation.” My five-year-old daughter, who is in kindergarten, brought home her first ever Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser packet. These have been coming to our classrooms and schools across the district over the last couple of weeks, and I’m sure we’re all excited to beg all of our friends and family for money. Jump Rope for Heart is all about raising money for the American Heart Association and instilling lifelong heart-healthy choices in our young learners. JoLeigh was so excited to get her campaign started that we went to the park right away to start filming. I recorded a few clips of JoLeigh playing, and before we went home, we recorded her sharing what she knows about heart disease. That’s when the fun began! I handed JoLeigh my iPad and opened Apple’s newest video editing app, Clips. As she explored what the app has to offer, she quickly discovered the Posters feature, where she could select from beautifully premade animated clips. JoLeigh knew right away that she wanted to use the color splash poster, and intuitively knew to select it, then click the red button to record. I helped her spell out her title in the text box, and then it was time to select our video clips. This is where I thought she would struggle. We had done several takes of each line because she couldn't remember everything in one take. No big deal - that's why we were using a video editing tool to put it all together. Did I mention I thought she would struggle? I was wrong! JoLeigh figured out - and taught me - two different ways to edit her clips. First she figured out that she could record only what she needed from a given clip. She also found that you can trim a clip even further once you've recorded it. This makes it easy to edit down to just what you need for a quality video. In addition to trimming your videos, Clips gives you some pretty neat options: you can record live titles, dictating your message while Clips transcribes it into animated captions, put filters on your video, and add fun emojis and cool, customizable stickers. All of these easy-to-use features give your video a professional, polished feel that can be difficult and time-consuming to achieve in other programs. Surprisingly, JoLeigh wasn't interested in those things. She did love, however, that she could mute the videos of her playing at the park and record her voice on top of them. This was a fun way to share tips for living a heart-healthy life while displaying a visual of what an active childhood looks like. JoLeigh's final step was to bring her video to life with background music. Like iMovie, Clips has a fairly large library of free music to use. You can also import songs you already have stored in Apple Music. JoLeigh picked an upbeat song, added one last poster to close out her video, and was ready to share her learning - it really was as easy as 1, 2, 3! JoLeigh is so proud to contribute to the good work the American Heart Association does with Jump Rope for Heart. Check out her final product! What I know as a mom of a kindergartener, a Digital Learning Coach, and a passionate advocate for all learners, is that kids can do anything if we step back and let them. My kindergartner made a product that could probably pass for a commercial. It was important to create a polished, professional-looking marketing tool because this video was published to an authentic audience - everyone we know who might contribute to JoLeigh's fundraiser or even share her video to a larger audience of potential donors. In addition to my love of the ease-of-use in Apple apps such as Clips, it's the ability to create professional-looking products that takes these apps to the next level. We want our learners to be contributors to the world, and what better way to do that than to give them tools to truly engage an authentic audience? A few months ago, JoLeigh got to be part of the authentic audience for a group of 7th grade scientists in Jodie Deinhammer's class. JoLeigh and her classmates submitted questions to the 7th graders on Flipgrid, and then the 7th graders participated in labs in order to answer the questions. Jodie's class answered JoLeigh's question via a polished video made in Clips. JoLeigh got to watch different parts of the experiment while listening to the 7th graders explain their experiment and the conclusions they drew. They used the different tools in Clips, such as stickers, to help JoLeigh understand that insects' behavior is influenced by their food source. Check out this amazing connection!
Want to know more about how Apple empowers learners to engage in the world around them? Check out the DLC blog series! How have you used Clips in your classroom? Share in the comments below!
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Did you ever consider that a spreadsheet could be more than, well, a spreadsheet?
DLC Alli Pryor shares how the app Numbers transform data into beautiful visuals and beyond! Thinking Maps are a wonderful way to help learners organize and visualize their thinking, so I'm excited to share a Keynote template with Thinking Maps for learners to manipulate on their own or to collaborate on from their individual devices.
My friend and teammate Kelly Skillingberg created the template, which you can use or share, below! Note: Open link on an iPad or Mac, tap download to view the file. As the Apple a Week blog series continues, I'm linking to DLC Megan Kozar's Lightbulb Lab, where she shares some tips, tricks, and ideas for using Pages to take word processing and digital scrapbooking to the next level.
Can I just say how excited I am that Podcasts are back with a vengeance? Not that they ever went away.
I remember when Podcasts first became a thing, and everyone was on the bandwagon (except me). Then it seems like we didn't hear about them anymore. And now all of a sudden - BAM - we've got Podcast fever again, and this time, I caught it! I'm even more excited to share that Digital Learning Coaches Alli Pryor and Trisha Goins recorded the first ever DLC podcast, available here! This week on the winter blog series An Apple a Week, by Alli Pryor, guest blogger and fellow Coppell DLC Brian Timm explains quick wins and best practices for Keynote.
Is there anything more powerful than asking a child how they want to learn? I don’t think there is! Thursday when I worked with the 4th grade TechXperts, we brainstormed different ways Padlet could be a powerful tool in their classrooms. As usual, I was blown away with their ideas! Padlet is a virtual bulletin board with tools to create a visual, interactive shared space. With Padlet you can:
New to Padlet? Check this out! I did my best to capture the ideas being shared because they are amazing and this group is so excited to use Padlet in new ways! Check out their ideas below! Morning MeetingOur 4th grade classes here at Mockingbird love morning meeting for so many reasons - it’s a wonderful time to share thoughts and ideas, build relationships in the class, reflect on prior experiences, review what happened in prior classes, and prepare for the day ahead. They love the idea of adding a digital element to their meeting each day, not to replace the rich conversation they have, but to keep it going throughout the day.
Padlet in the Writing ProcessWorking on narratives or descriptive writing? Tanishka shared that Padlet would be a great place to brainstorm a narrative:
Hear from the TechXpertsWant to see more of their ideas? Check out our Padlet below! How do you see Padlet being a powerful tool in your classroom? Share in the comments below! I am so excited to participate in Alli Pryor's winter blog series "An Apple a Week." Each week, Alli or a guest blogger will be posting about an amazing Apple feature or product. You can check out the first post on Alli's blog Diary of A Digital Learning Coach.
Want to participate? Add your ideas to our Flipgrid! I hope you follow along to learn more about how Apple products can change and enhance the learning experiences of our students. At the end of the series, I'll create a table of contents to all of the posts for an easy, one-stop shop of tips and tricks! It’s true what they say about time: it flies when you’re having fun! That must be why it seems like our school year was only just beginning. I blinked, and here we are on the other side of Winter Break. It’s hard to believe that we’ve officially begun the spring semester! I’m so excited to get back into classrooms and back into design work with educators and teams. As you dive into the third nine weeks, I wanted to share a resource that I put together with my teammate and friend Amanda Lanicek and with the help of Megan Kozar, Alli Pryor, and Lisa Hansen. We created a menu of integration ideas for each grade level K-5 based on the skills of focus for the 3rd nine weeks in the district Scope and Sequence. Each idea is broken into three pieces: Learn, Do, and Reflect. You can use the pieces individually or as a complete series. Some of the integration ideas are more built out than others. If you see something you’d like to implement, please let me know so I can support you in designing and implementing the best possible experience for your learners! What are you most excited about for the spring semester? Share in the comments below! |