iPad Resources for Administrators Real Racing 3 is an award-winning franchise that sets a new standard for mobile racing games – it really must be experienced to be believed. Mobile Excellence Awards - WINNER: Best Mobile Game 2013 Game Connect Asia Pacific - WINNER: Game of The Year 2013, Technical Excellence, Excellence in Art Meffy Awards – FINALIST: Best Mobile Game 2013 Real Racing 3 features a continuously expanding roster of officially licensed tracks, a 22-car grid, and over 70 meticulously detailed cars from makers like Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz, Bugatti, and Audi. Plus Real-Time Multiplayer, Social Leaderboards, Time Trials, Ghost Challenges, and innovative Time Shifted Multiplayer™ (TSM) technology, allowing you to race anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Introducing School-Wide Digital Citizenship Practices with iPads An elementary school in our district recently got 30 iPads and asked for some advice implementing them with students and teachers. In addition to suggesting some starter apps, I recommended that we have conversations with kids around the appropriate use of these devices. While almost every child has used an iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone, the exciting learning opportunities these mobile, Internet-connected, media creation devices create also open the door to new challenges. Rather than tell the students how they should and should not use iPads, I felt compelled to involve the students in the conversation. Knowing that all students had an awareness of the device, I started with the Camera app and opened with the question, “What do you know about the camera app?” As they were taking pictures and video, I would purposely zoom in and take pictures of a couple students and take video of others without them knowing. This began a conversation with the students.
Grading with Voice on an iPad [This is a guest post by Doug Ward, an associate professor of journalism and the Budig Professor of Writing at the University of Kansas. You can find him online at www.kuediting.com and www.journalismtech.com, and follow him on Twitter @kuediting. Doug's previous posts have looked at finding iOS apps, what to do if your Twitter account is hacked, using iPads in the classroom (one, two) and engaging students with music.--@jbj] One of the frustrating things I found in teaching online last semester was the lack of direct contact with students. The class felt impersonal, despite my efforts to give it life. I found that especially frustrating when I graded assignments. I overcame this in part by using my iPad to add audio comments to grading. Most students liked the voice feedback. Academics have talked about paperless grading for years. I’d never heard about adding short voice comments to PDFs, though, and I initially overlooked the option of voice recording on iAnnotate. Return to Top
What Does Leadership on a Professional Learning Team Look Like? Posted by Bill Ferriter on Thursday, 07/04/2013 As a full-time teacher and part-time consultant on Professional Learning Community implementation, I'm always asked questions like, "What kinds of things can teachers do to move their learning teams forward?" or "What kinds of people make the best leaders for learning teams?" Answering those questions starts by understanding that "moving learning teams forward" depends on three core behaviors: Nurturing Strong Relationships: The most successful learning teams care about each other, y'all. Defining a Clear Vision of What "Forward" Looks Like: Strong relationships aren't enough to move learning teams forward, however. #nuffsaid Moving forward, then, depends on a team's ability to define what "forward" actually looks like. Simple stuff, right? Without strong relationships, a clear vision for an ideal tomorrow, and an ability to translate vision into practical action, learning teams simply WON'T succeed. Does any of this make sense?
16 Ways Educators Can Use Pinterest [Infographic] It’s startling the way that children communicate with their teachers in today’s schools. They’re connecting over Twitter and Facebook groups, handing their assignments in by email and sharing links to research and information all over the place. But does Pinterest have a role to play? An infographic by OnlineUniversities.com takes a look at just that and comes up with a whole lot of ways that an educator can use Pinterest. Pinterest is devoted to organizing images from all over the web into “boards”, and up to now it’s been a lot of collections of fashion, style, celebrities and hobbies. Take a look at the infographic, created by the folks at OnlineUniversities, and let us know — is Pinterest right for the classroom?
Our changing world in cartograms In this series of interactive cartograms, FedEx shows our changing world (and I guess, how they are changing with it) through a variety of worldwide demographics such as access to mobile Web, growth, and happiness. Above is the cartogram for richest countries i.e. GDP. Choose a topic, press play, and the cartogram changes accordingly to match the current metric. In case you're unfamiliar with cartograms, they're the same idea as choropleth maps, but instead of using color to represent a metric, the country areas are used. For example, here's the cartogram for high-technology exports. Have a look for yourself. [FedEx]
9 Suggestions for the Welcome Back to School letter from the Principal “Although it was a bit too long, I really appreciated your letter this summer,” is something I have heard many times in the past 15 years. Like many of you, I write a “welcome back to school” letter to parents every summer, and I think it is a very valuable practice—but be sure to make the most of it. Last summer I happened to post my letter to my blog, something I wasn’t sure was worth doing because it tends to be mostly “inside-baseball,” material primarily pertinent just to my own immediate constituents. To my surprise, it generated quite a bit of traffic, all of it from web searches for various variants on the term “welcome back to school letter.” What I have learned from my search engine traffic is that the welcome back to school letter is something about which every summer hundreds or perhaps thousands of school-leaders go to the internet to seek advice. Accordingly, I thought I’d share a few thoughts for my principal colleagues about writing these important missives. 1. 2. 3. 4.