Stick pick and pupil picker

As part of my new goals as a lead instructor I've been looking for ways to keep students engaged in materials, hold them responsible for contributing to discussions, and check for understanding when it comes to following directions on projects. While I currently rely on volunteers and using bonus points to coax students into sharing their thoughts with myself and the class I am now trying to shift over to haphazard or random selection. I think these methods will keep students listening. As part of my new goal I downloaded two new applications that will help me select students at random and track their responses to questions: "Stick Pick" and "Pupil Picker". I intend to launch these in my classroom on Monday and will be looking to see how each can be used to accomplish the three goals I listed and additionally help me track student responses to see which content or directions seem most confusing to my students.

Using the iPad during the School Year

Because internet access is restricted to computers wired into the GRPS network at school I haven't used the iPad in my classroom yet. In the near future I plan on investigating more apps for biology thinking that I could wire the iPad into our classroom projector and get students to use it as a class or as a station in small groups.
During GVSU classes I have used the iPad in almost every course for getting quick access to email, online articles & books, and blackboard. The portability has been very convenient as I would be hesitant to bring my laptop to class every day but the iPad doesn't weigh much or take up much room, making it easy to bring along.
I'll update sometime soon after attempting to integrate the tool into my classroom more.

GRPS Summer Institute Usage

I'm at a summer workshop for p.d. The speaker just talked about parental involvement in school programs. I was able to download the school's improvement plan and to tak emotes in evernote during the presentation. That got me more involved in the lecture.
It took a couple times booting up the device-sometimes it doesn't like the Internet service available. The small keyboard has also led to some interesting typing issues, arg.

Initial reactions to the iPad as a learning tool

I wanted to take some time to capture my initial thoughts about the iPad both to give GVSU some immediate feedback and to see if anything changes over time.

I started this program skeptical that the iPad's usefulness in the classroom would be worth the price and currently I remain skeptical. Below I've made a couple bullet lists with comments and impressions the tool has made on me.

Pro's:
-Very portable and ready to use: I can whip out my iPad at any time and it's ready to go. It's lightweight and I don't have to wait for it to boot-up before I want to use it.
-Long battery life: I don't have to be concerned that it will die on me in the middle of class while I'm trying to take notes
-Screen: having a touchscreen makes scrolling fairly intuitive and offers new ways to interact with programs

Con's
-Keyboard is too limited/small: Compared to the netbook I'm currently typing on, the iPad's keyboard is very limited and I get impatient working with it-especially if I want to delete part of a word or have to scroll to get to an apostrophe.
-Incompatibility with flash: I know of lots and lots of cool animations and educational tools I'd love to use on such a portable device, but because it doesn't play flash animations I cannot use these. To be fair I've heard there is a work-around, but I haven't looked into it yet
-Lack of a word processor and other tools: I'm currently typing on a netbook that has the full MS Office suite, loads of memory (for a netbook), and is compatable with windows programs without using workarounds. It cost the same price but I can readily work on any document for class or a presentation without the frustrations of a tiny keyboard or lack of a word processor.
-Difficulty navigating websites: Some websites, programs, and downloads aren't happy with the way the iPad interprets them. For instance: when I log into my gmail account I cannot view emails that were forwarded to me by my other email accounts. It's also a pain to copy links into the browser as the text selection tool is clunky. This frustrates me big-time.
-No thumb-drive access: I can only really treat the iPad as a portable workstation IF the internet is running AND if I can actually adjust the text/document I want to work on. I really like being able to take documents anywhere, work on them, then transfer them to another computer via thumb-drive.

In short the con's have made larger impressions on me than the pro's. I will continue to try using my iPad because the technology and workarounds should continue to improve over time and perhaps I'll become greatly impressed with some function I discover soon. For now I would NOT recommend using these for future cohorts or other programs. If students were offered the choice between the iPad and the Dell netbook I'm working on right now (also purchased through GVSU for a different program for about the same price) I would recommend the netbook hands-down. In my eyes it's much more practical for the classroom.

Testing 1,2,3

This is my first bog entry getting prepped to share info with gvsu re:ipad usage