If you're frustrated that you can't type fast, if you wish you could just draw something quickly, then for $.99 is a good investment in Penultimate. I plan on using it to write quick sentences for projecting or basic diagrams.
As I can't create a new thread myself, I'm just posting here. I finally got a new LCD projector and the VGA adapter, so today was my first day hooking up the ipad to the projector. I had R&J on screen as an ibook, and as we read we had the pages on screen and used the editing function to mark key elements such as couplets, an extended metaphor, puns etc. It looked cool, and the kids were excited, but overall, I don't think it was a success. The kids were mostly focused on the screen and how/what I was doing rather than WHY I was doing it -- the content. Some students stopped following along in their books, which is totally counterproductive. Even if those elements were eliminated with time, I still do not think this is a good strategy, at least for reading an entire text. Editing a text through ibook is limited (for one thing there is no cursor) and the time it takes to do something like highlight a word distracts from the lesson and makes it less meaningful and less effective than when I do it sans technology. I think editing a word document on a laptop (which wouldn't be as pretty), or even better, using a document camera, would be much better for this lesson. That said, I think using ibook on the ipad would be helpful for a think-aloud when you're focusing on one excerpt or passage. [But also on the financial side, I have electronic copies of all our novels for free, and other than R&J, not only are the books not free in ibook, some, like To Kill a Mockingbird and All Quiet on the Western Front are not even available.]
I'm still messing around with Penultimate.
ReplyDeleteAs I can't create a new thread myself, I'm just posting here. I finally got a new LCD projector and the VGA adapter, so today was my first day hooking up the ipad to the projector. I had R&J on screen as an ibook, and as we read we had the pages on screen and used the editing function to mark key elements such as couplets, an extended metaphor, puns etc. It looked cool, and the kids were excited, but overall, I don't think it was a success. The kids were mostly focused on the screen and how/what I was doing rather than WHY I was doing it -- the content. Some students stopped following along in their books, which is totally counterproductive. Even if those elements were eliminated with time, I still do not think this is a good strategy, at least for reading an entire text. Editing a text through ibook is limited (for one thing there is no cursor) and the time it takes to do something like highlight a word distracts from the lesson and makes it less meaningful and less effective than when I do it sans technology. I think editing a word document on a laptop (which wouldn't be as pretty), or even better, using a document camera, would be much better for this lesson.
That said, I think using ibook on the ipad would be helpful for a think-aloud when you're focusing on one excerpt or passage. [But also on the financial side, I have electronic copies of all our novels for free, and other than R&J, not only are the books not free in ibook, some, like To Kill a Mockingbird and All Quiet on the Western Front are not even available.]
Oops, sorry; that was me posting.
ReplyDelete~ Ashley Brockman