iTunesU, NETA Conference, and Ask3

Hello all!

What a wonderful past couple of weeks it has been! Last week we completed Parent/Teacher Conferences, and everything went VERY well. When I had parents sign up, I allotted two parents per 15 minute time block. Students were encouraged to come "show off" projects they have created on their iPads. I had students make a P/T Conference folder in their Google Drive to dump all of the projects they wanted to talk about with their parents. I am SO glad I did this because for those students that couldn't attend with their parents [or for the parents that don't "allow" their kids to come with], this allowed me to open up their folder and still have opportunity to show the parents their creations. The only thing I would change is the number of parents per time slot. We just had SO much to talk about with all the things we have been doing PLUS middle school transitioning next year and upcoming things, etc....that I would have preferred just one student per 15 minute time slot. The few times where there were two schedule, it just felt a little rushed. Easy fix for next semester! :) With the help of my Two Springs friends [Sharae and Jenn], I was able to implement using SignUpGenius to help our school go paperless in the conference sign up process. If your school is not doing this, THEY SHOULD BE! The nice part is that is what Lewis and Clark uses [which 98% of our students are slotted to go there next year].

Jenny K and I have been working on creating iTunes U Courses for Chapter 11 in Social Studies [Ancient Greece], as well as creating one for ENERGY in Science, with four sections for each of the categories [sound, light, heat, and motion]. If anyone has anything already made for these, please let me know and we can work together! I needed a refresher course on creating iBooks because it has been several months since we talked about that in training. Thanks to Jenny for patiently helping me with that. I look forward to having several books made for next year's class!

Just yesterday, I found out Sarah A and I have been approved to attend the NETA Conference on April 24th and 25th! We first heard about this conference from the amazing Brent Catlett....thanks for the push, Brent! Sarah and I are eager to collaborate with others and get new ideas on how to implement the iPads and technology into our classroom. I can't wait!

Last week, Jenny came to our classrooms to help us introduce and explain the app Ask 3. I truly enjoy this app, especially for explaining math problems. After our introduction, we had a math lesson on dividing fractions. I had the students choose 3 problems to explain within the Ask 3 app. [After taking a profile picture and getting set up in the "class", of course!]. I truly like this app with math because it's nice to see how well students understand the steps in a problem. And if they are getting something wrong, it's easy to see exactly WHERE their thought process goes off track. You are able to place comments IN their videos at that exact point of error. You are also able to put in your own video showing them the proper steps, etc. if that is something you wish to do at that exact point in their video as well. Another thing I love about the app is that you do not need to export it or send it out to YouTube for the class to view. The videos are simply stored within the app. So when the students are done, they are able to view their own, view others, comment on others, etc. It empowers students to ask and answer each other's questions too. If you have not tried this app, I would HIGHLY recommend it. I look forward to testing it out in other subject areas besides math.

Has anyone else used Ask 3? What subjects/ideas do you have for utilization of this app? Thanks!