The Madison Metropolitan School District is dedicated to using classroom technology to its full potential. The district uses a range of computers, laptops, mobile devices, interactive whiteboards, and cloud-based web-tools. This blog is to share information with teachers and staff for training, professional development and sharing or gaining ideas across the district. The views expressed are those of the MMSD employees and do not reflect the opinion/views of the district itself.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Collaboration is Essential
In North Pole, Alaska, a 5th grade classroom has 15 iPads for 29 students. The iPads are in the hands of the students most of their instructional time and they use them in many different ways. The activities range from skills review and word processing to projects.
I found this video on YouTube and chopped a piece that demonstrated one of the more transformational ways to use iPads: Collaboration. This is an absolutely necessary component behind the success of using iPads (or any technology for that matter) for instruction. Here is the portion I wanted to pass along, students answering how they feel about having to share an iPad and what classroom routine the teacher uses in this shared environment.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Logging Into Educreations With Your Google Account
MMSD teachers and students have been using Educreations as an iPad app for about a year and a half. It has proven to be a powerful tool, despite its simplicity. Because it is a web-based tool, Educreations can be used on a PC with a browser such as Firefox or Chrome. We like this "cross-platform" application as it isn't device-specific. Students can use it to record their processes as they work through problems on the whiteboard, annotate images and documents, and then share the recordings with teachers and parents.
One of the drawbacks to using web-based tools is that the tool requires the student to create an account in order to store and share their content. Lately, though, a lot of web-based tools are integrating with Google Apps for Education in order to use the tools with the students district Google account. This is of great value to teachers wishing to avoid creating yet another student account.
Why is this important?
Being able to log in will allow students to keep their recordings online, and then the recordings can be accessed from any computer or mobile device. Using the generic "not-logged-in" version of the application limits the recording to stay on the iPad, but it can't be saved elsewhere unless the creator has an account. Logging in with the student's Gmail account is a way to bypass this and save students' recordings off of the iPad.
On The PC
If you are not using Educreations on an iPad, you can still go to the site to create new recordings or see the recordings you made elsewhere. Go to http://www.educreations.com and choose to log in with Google. The process will be the same as the iPad (see below).
On the iPad
If the account is not logged in, a student can log in by creating a recording and pressing "SAVE". Following the prompts through the save process will be a log in screen with an option to log in with Google.
Tapping on this button will give you a Google log in screen, like this:
However, the way MMSD students and staff log in is different. We can force the log in screen to go to the MMSD domain by typing in the district email address and pressing SIGN IN, without the password. The next screen will look like this:
Once you're logged in, you can now save your Educreations in this account and access it anywhere, iPad or PC, as long as you continue to log in with this account.
One of the drawbacks to using web-based tools is that the tool requires the student to create an account in order to store and share their content. Lately, though, a lot of web-based tools are integrating with Google Apps for Education in order to use the tools with the students district Google account. This is of great value to teachers wishing to avoid creating yet another student account.
Why is this important?
Being able to log in will allow students to keep their recordings online, and then the recordings can be accessed from any computer or mobile device. Using the generic "not-logged-in" version of the application limits the recording to stay on the iPad, but it can't be saved elsewhere unless the creator has an account. Logging in with the student's Gmail account is a way to bypass this and save students' recordings off of the iPad.
On The PC
If you are not using Educreations on an iPad, you can still go to the site to create new recordings or see the recordings you made elsewhere. Go to http://www.educreations.com and choose to log in with Google. The process will be the same as the iPad (see below).
On the iPad
If the account is not logged in, a student can log in by creating a recording and pressing "SAVE". Following the prompts through the save process will be a log in screen with an option to log in with Google.
Tapping on this button will give you a Google log in screen, like this:
However, the way MMSD students and staff log in is different. We can force the log in screen to go to the MMSD domain by typing in the district email address and pressing SIGN IN, without the password. The next screen will look like this:
Once you're logged in, you can now save your Educreations in this account and access it anywhere, iPad or PC, as long as you continue to log in with this account.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Google Translate
Our Sherman LMS, Lydia Bertram, frequently sends out "Tech Tips" which outline some new updates or features you might be interested in using someday. This one in particular is pretty neat: It's how to translate entire websites into another language using Google Translate. Even better, the links you click in the translated page are automatically translated as well. Also: There's an app for this on Android and Apple devices. I used it to communicate with a woman who spoke only Portuguese and it worked pretty well.
My own words of warning about online translation services: The translations are not exact. Colloquialisms, idioms, and sentences that require some context are translated literally. For example, the Chinese version of a saying that means essentially, "Study every day and you'll be successful" translates from Chinese to English literally to "Good good study day day up." So, this is not a good tool for writing letters to parents who do not speak English. This is merely a tool to help students understand the general meaning of the text.
A fun example I've always used with students when driving home the difference between translation and interpretation is this: Write a simple phrase in English. Plug it into Google Translate and choose Spanish. Then translate that phrase into French. Then to Portuguese. Then Italian. Now, translate it back to English and see how close it is to your original phrase. It gets farther off when you use Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
This doesn't mean you should avoid using it all together. When you just need the gist of what is being presented, Google Translate is a pretty good tool. Thanks, Lydia!
P.S. "When you need the gist..." might be translated strangely in this application. :)
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| Click here: Google Translate Tips at MMSD |
My own words of warning about online translation services: The translations are not exact. Colloquialisms, idioms, and sentences that require some context are translated literally. For example, the Chinese version of a saying that means essentially, "Study every day and you'll be successful" translates from Chinese to English literally to "Good good study day day up." So, this is not a good tool for writing letters to parents who do not speak English. This is merely a tool to help students understand the general meaning of the text.
A fun example I've always used with students when driving home the difference between translation and interpretation is this: Write a simple phrase in English. Plug it into Google Translate and choose Spanish. Then translate that phrase into French. Then to Portuguese. Then Italian. Now, translate it back to English and see how close it is to your original phrase. It gets farther off when you use Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
This doesn't mean you should avoid using it all together. When you just need the gist of what is being presented, Google Translate is a pretty good tool. Thanks, Lydia!
P.S. "When you need the gist..." might be translated strangely in this application. :)
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