Using ipads in science
Overview
Here is a quick rundown about the professional learning day I attended that looked at using iPads with Science. One of the main things I noticed was that even though the day was focused on science, the concepts and ideas would have worked with any subject area.
Morning session
Our presenter for the day was an experienced high school science teacher who was earmarked by his boss to "get this Youtube thing working in schools" some time in the mid 2000's. The first interesting discussion that I think is worth sharing was about the responsibilities or functions of our brains. When we look at what's typically called the left brain and the right brain, each hemisphere is responsible for distinctly different task.
It was discussed that when western civilisation went through the industrial revolution, we went from working in jobs that heavily required the use of our body to complete laborious tasks such as farming and building, to tasks that required more left brain functions.
Administration and academic careers became a high focus, so our schooling needed to focus on developing the left brain functions in order to meet the new need in the workplace. With the dawn of the internet in 1990, the last 25 years have seen a rapid change as to skillset people are now required to have. Technology and computers can now do the bulk of the left brain functions. It requires however people with the design skills and creativity to be able to develop the ideas that can then be integrated with technology... leaving us with the consideration as to where our focus in schools lay. This is a pertinent consideration because typically, science has always been an area that is based on knowledge. With our current technology, information and knowledge has be devalued as a commodity for obvious reasons. We don't need to be the keeper of all wisdom, but we must take on a different role in the classroom. |
What can you bring to the classroom?
We discussed that because of how easy it is to access limitless information, being the keeper of knowledge is now redundant. As a teacher, we must be there to motivate and inspire our students. We also need to give them timely feedback (see John Hattie data).
It is important that we teach students how to identify the authenticity of the information they find, and help them understand that anyone can create a website with inaccurate information. There was an anecdote about a school teacher who created a website about fictitious species, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, and had his students do their assignments about it. |
They all worked their way through the task, doing their research on this animal, not knowing it was totally make believe. None of the students researched further into this animal to verify the information that was found on the one and only site that existed. They took it for granted that it was all the truth, and believed everything!
Click the button if you would like to read about this fictitious animal.
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Middle and Afternoon sessions
The middle and afternoon sessions were mainly focused on discussing specific apps, how to use them, and how to integrate them within your classroom.
We looked at:
Augmented reality apps
Flipping your classroom with Explain Everything
Creating screencasts from your laptop
Recording iPad feeds from your iPad with your PC
Finding public domain images that aren't under copyright
iPad keyboards - eg getting the degrees symbol for temperature, or greek letters
iPad shortcuts
Note taking on the iPad for staff
Note taking on the iPad for students
Green screen
iMovie
Creating websites
Information/content apps
We looked at:
Augmented reality apps
Flipping your classroom with Explain Everything
Creating screencasts from your laptop
Recording iPad feeds from your iPad with your PC
Finding public domain images that aren't under copyright
iPad keyboards - eg getting the degrees symbol for temperature, or greek letters
iPad shortcuts
Note taking on the iPad for staff
Note taking on the iPad for students
Green screen
iMovie
Creating websites
Information/content apps
Apps, Programs and Websites
Find below a range of apps and websites that you can use with your classroom. You may have seen some of these before, but haven't used them in the following way. I have basically expanded on the list in the previous section, and included some videos that you can watch (and re-watch) to help you get started.
This uses the idea of flipping the classroom and creating your own content to share with your students. Yes, you could find someone else who has made an even better clip than you (like Khan Academy), but making your own clip, with you in it will enhance the relevance to how you like to teach something and further strengthen a connection you will have with your students.
This uses the idea of flipping the classroom and creating your own content to share with your students. Yes, you could find someone else who has made an even better clip than you (like Khan Academy), but making your own clip, with you in it will enhance the relevance to how you like to teach something and further strengthen a connection you will have with your students.
What is augmented reality?
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Augmented reality apps are a really interesting concept. They allow the user to point their iPad at a picture or object that will trigger some form of digital content. The content usually requires an internet connection to access the augmented reality.
One of the apps we looked at was called Aurasma. It's quite a simple process in getting the augmented reality to work, the difficulty is in coming up with the creative ideas to get it to work! Here's an example of what you could do. If you stood on a basketball court and took a photo of the empty court, you could make that your trigger image, or Aura. Then, when you have kids playing basketball, you could go and film them, and create your content. After linking the video of kids playing to the image of an empty basketball court, your augmented reality has been created, and ready to view. To view the augmented reality, you need to use the camera in the app, and point it at your trigger image. This will play the video you created. If you do so by standing at the actual empty basketball court, this will work, or you can point the camera at the photo that you originally took. If you were standing at the empty court, when you now look at your iPad, you should see kids playing. In reality, there is no one there. If you took a photo of the empty court, printed the picture on a sheet of paper, made 0 copies and gave it to your class, and then they used the app on the sheet, it would come to life and play them a video. As I said, it's your creativity that will limit your use with this app, but once you get the hang of it, it's loads of fun! |
Screencasting with Explain Everything
We have been using Explain Everything as our main tool for having students reflect upon things they have learned.
Here is a video on how you could create screencasts to help "flip" your classroom, and I have also been getting my students to make their own. They seem to get a real kick out of seeing themselves in a video, which acts as a great distraction to the fact they are reflecting on what they have learned! |
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I absolutely love Explain Everything. If there was a "your students can only have one app" scenario, I'd say, make it Explain Everything. It is an extremely powerful reflection tool, that allows students to make their own short reflection/revision clips from concepts they have learnt during a unit.
From a teaching perspective, if you want to go down the rabbit hole of making revision lessons on all content you cover, Explain Everything is very easy to setup and use. It has a good quality camera for the size you will need to make your screencast, and the audio quality is quite good too. You can bring in files like PDF's, JPG's and MPEG's that you can talk to and annotate. Yes, there are many resources online that probably do what you have already done, but the added bonus of doing it yourself is that it will be exactly how you have taught it, and it continues to build a relationship with your students.
Here's a quick how-to video (above) for you to check out.
From a teaching perspective, if you want to go down the rabbit hole of making revision lessons on all content you cover, Explain Everything is very easy to setup and use. It has a good quality camera for the size you will need to make your screencast, and the audio quality is quite good too. You can bring in files like PDF's, JPG's and MPEG's that you can talk to and annotate. Yes, there are many resources online that probably do what you have already done, but the added bonus of doing it yourself is that it will be exactly how you have taught it, and it continues to build a relationship with your students.
Here's a quick how-to video (above) for you to check out.
iPad Keyboards
The PL was designed to help you get the most out of your iPad for Science, and that includes trying to get the degree symbol º for when discussing temperature, and Greek alphabet characters alpha to omega (α to ω) which may be required for some Maths.
There are a number of free keyboards that you have access to on the iPad, though for specialised chemistry keyboards that include common elements, a easy to use subscript/superscript numbers (for dealing with writing molecules, atom valences etc) you can purchase them from the App store.
You can find and add keyboards through Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Keyboards -> Add New Keyboard, and by tapping the one you want. When you have your typing keyboard up, using the world button will cycle you through the keyboards you have. Check out this quick
There are a number of free keyboards that you have access to on the iPad, though for specialised chemistry keyboards that include common elements, a easy to use subscript/superscript numbers (for dealing with writing molecules, atom valences etc) you can purchase them from the App store.
You can find and add keyboards through Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Keyboards -> Add New Keyboard, and by tapping the one you want. When you have your typing keyboard up, using the world button will cycle you through the keyboards you have. Check out this quick
Ipad shortcuts
Don't you hate having to type the same details out over and over again? Typing your email address is really fiddly because of having to switch from the letters board to the @ symbol and back to the letters. Or perhaps typing in a student number or account number with heaps of digits is also time consuming. Luckily, you can now add shortcuts to help save you time.
The way it works is by having the iPad convert a designated word to whatever it is you want it to write for you.
Here's an example:
So you have a fantastic email address like [email protected], but you are sick of going through the rigmarole of typing out your wisely chosen email address every time you need to do something online.
Now you have the option of making your iPad write that entire email by linking it to a word. The trick is, don't link it to an actual word, say "email", because when you need to actually type the word "email" it will change to [email protected] which is potentially awkward when you have emailed your boss asking them "Did you receive my [email protected] yesterday?".
What you can do however is make a jibbersih word, but something you will remember. For you email, try the word "eemail". Whatever it is you will remember best, just double up on the first letter, and it should be safe... unless you write about aardvarks and llamas a lot, aaardvark and lllama would be appropriate in those circumstances.
Want to see a live example of this in action? Click and watch :)
The way it works is by having the iPad convert a designated word to whatever it is you want it to write for you.
Here's an example:
So you have a fantastic email address like [email protected], but you are sick of going through the rigmarole of typing out your wisely chosen email address every time you need to do something online.
Now you have the option of making your iPad write that entire email by linking it to a word. The trick is, don't link it to an actual word, say "email", because when you need to actually type the word "email" it will change to [email protected] which is potentially awkward when you have emailed your boss asking them "Did you receive my [email protected] yesterday?".
What you can do however is make a jibbersih word, but something you will remember. For you email, try the word "eemail". Whatever it is you will remember best, just double up on the first letter, and it should be safe... unless you write about aardvarks and llamas a lot, aaardvark and lllama would be appropriate in those circumstances.
Want to see a live example of this in action? Click and watch :)
ipad note taking with noteshelf (for staff)
We had a quick look at the app called Noteshelf. It basically turns your iPad into an electronic pen and paper. It has heaps of functionality for changing pen thickness, colours, nib types... you name it.
I haven't purchased it yet to try it out myself, so only can go on recommendation by Andrew, what I saw on the day (it did look really great) and by it's high 5 star rating on the App Store. For biased imagery and videos about their product, go check out their page - click that button to the right!
I haven't purchased it yet to try it out myself, so only can go on recommendation by Andrew, what I saw on the day (it did look really great) and by it's high 5 star rating on the App Store. For biased imagery and videos about their product, go check out their page - click that button to the right!
ipad note taking with notability (for students)
Here's a good App for students who are taking notes and commenting on what they are taking notes about. It seems to link their real-time writing, and voice notes together, so when you play back, you can see where in your written notes the voice notes belong to. It has functionality like Noteshelf, but being a different app, has a slightly different feel.
Notability has the option to link with Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive etc (as does Noteshelf) so all you notes can be easily saved on the cloud, for access anywhere. Why I have indicated that this is good for students is that it's about half the price, though it contains not as much functionality as Noteshelf. I guess you get what you pay for. You can Google search Notability and have a look at their fancy page, or just click that button to the right and a new page will open for you with it.
ipad Green screen
Green Screen by Do Ink was really simple to use, and super effective. Firstly, setting you green screen colour was very simple, you just select the matching colour of your screen from the palate. You don't even need to use green, but generally it's know to work really well because no one really has green skin.
Once you have that setup, selecting you background is simple, and you can insert either videos or pictures. The examples we looked at included talking in front of an image, like what a weather person on TV would do, and the video example allowed students to pretend they were in the bush with real life animals, documenting them like David Attenborough, but without the risk of really being there. Check out this YouTube clip to see Green Screen in action, explained by what could be one of your own students. |
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IPAD IMOVIE
Now, I've put iMovie at the end of the iPad app list because I think it is a great way to round off all of the above components. What I mean by that is that what makes the iPad such a powerful and creative tool to integrate into your teaching, and more importantly, student learning, is that iMovie allows you to get all of the different bits and pieces of created content from above, and bring them together in one place.
iMovie lets you bring in photos, videos and audio you have created on to your iPad together, and is your one stop shop for editing. Titles can be added, sound tracks/backing tracks, volume levels can be adjusted... there is a lot you can do with iMovie.
For the last couple of years now, since iOS 7 was released, iMovie is now included in the standard package when you buy your new iPad - not to mention other fantastic apps Keynote, Pages and Numbers, Apple's answer to Microsoft PowerPoint, Word and Excel.
iMovie lets you bring in photos, videos and audio you have created on to your iPad together, and is your one stop shop for editing. Titles can be added, sound tracks/backing tracks, volume levels can be adjusted... there is a lot you can do with iMovie.
For the last couple of years now, since iOS 7 was released, iMovie is now included in the standard package when you buy your new iPad - not to mention other fantastic apps Keynote, Pages and Numbers, Apple's answer to Microsoft PowerPoint, Word and Excel.
Laptop Screencasts with Screencast-o-matic
I've been having a bit of fun already with Screencast-O-Matic. It what I used to make all of the previous videos, it's great!
So you don't have to buy it, and can use the free version, which despite having some limited functionality, still has all of the main components that will allow you to make a decent screencast.
You can easily set what space on your laptop you want to record with a click and drag box. Toggling the camera on and off is a simple button click, and when you are ready to record, you get a 3 2 1 countdown to let you know when to begin.
Once you are happy with your recording, you have options to save the file to YouTube, or even just to your Screencast-O-Matic account where the video will be quickly compressed, uploaded and hosted for you. Copy/paste links will let you use and share you video with others.
So you don't have to buy it, and can use the free version, which despite having some limited functionality, still has all of the main components that will allow you to make a decent screencast.
You can easily set what space on your laptop you want to record with a click and drag box. Toggling the camera on and off is a simple button click, and when you are ready to record, you get a 3 2 1 countdown to let you know when to begin.
Once you are happy with your recording, you have options to save the file to YouTube, or even just to your Screencast-O-Matic account where the video will be quickly compressed, uploaded and hosted for you. Copy/paste links will let you use and share you video with others.
Recording Your iPAD from laptop with X-Mirage |
X-Mirage works similar to Apple TV, in that it allows you to mirror your iPad to your laptop. This can be used in conjunction with screencast-o-matic in order for you to make videos about how to use apps on the iPad. Watch the short video below on how to get X-Mirage up and running. I will also include a link to the mentioned Tony Vincent website that allows you to download the program and get a one year free license key.
how to not breach copyright with Public Domain Images
Sick of being slapped with lawsuits for breaching copyright laws? Well, do a creative commons search for images, and this will filter out images that you cant use, and only show images you can use! Typically, these images are for use if you provide photo credit to the publisher.
For totally free images, check out Morguefile which has loads of images that you can use without crediting.
For totally free images, check out Morguefile which has loads of images that you can use without crediting.
How to Make your Own Website
I have created this site using Weebly, and you can link to your account a bunch of student accounts for them to have a play with too. Their sites are not publicly available on the internet, a password is required (which you can hold) for their viewing.
IPAD CONTENT APPS
This last section is just for f content apps that I saw whilst at the PL day. We didn't spend too much time in this area, as the power with iPads and learning really comes from creating content, which requires prior knowledge of the subject.
Elements 4D
An augmented reality app that allows you to see and hold three dimensional cubes of elements. Mix them together to see what they produced. Check out the YouTube clip to see it in action. Anatomy 4D
It works the same way as Elements 4D, but for the anatomy of the human body. You can look through different systems eg skeletal, circulatory, and also at specific organs eg the heart. |
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ColAR Mix Augmented reality app - find topic related printable sheets, students colour them in, and bring their images to life using their iPad. Chemistry Keyboard A specialised keyboard that allows you to write out chemical equations with correct sub/super script usage, equilibrium arrows etc. Sky Guide
Astronomy app, it uses your location and just knows what stars should be where. Point and shoot for information - more augmented reality. Hungry Birds
This game is about the scientific concept of natural selection, and how evolution can be a result of the changing environment. Powers of Minus 10
Focus on your hand and zoom in further and further to see what is happening at a microscopic level and beyond. Molecular Model Kit
Build molecules using your iPad, instead of fiddling around with, and losing all of the pieces from a real kit. Photomath
Just take a photo of your maths equation and Photomath will instantly solve it for you, including the steps for the problem. Great app, just don't let your kids see it! |
PhotoMath from MicroBLINK on Vimeo. |