I facilitated two 135 minute discussions around the use of iPads in the classroom with teachers and administrators from the Brecksville-Broadview Heights City Schools (BBH) back at the end of August as part of their staff in-service day. Rather than deliver lecture style presentations over a ton of apps, I decided I wanted to create a more meaningful and engaging learning experience to use with the BBH staff.
The concept for the two sessions was to remix ideas and content I had seen used before in other professional learning settings. The first was an idea that I was familiar with from attending and leading conversations at Science Leadership Academy‘s EduCon. It involved the use of a conversation protocol to help guide the session. The second was drawn from a Media Scavenger Hunt that Dr. Wesley Fryer had put together for a session he led called “Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing.” The final idea was adapted from something I’d seen David Jakes use as part of his What If? presentation series.
So you’re coming to DigiCamp for Teachers and you’re planning to bring your own Apple mobile device, but which apps should you load up prior to camp to make your time on the beautiful University of Akron campus productive? Look no further, I’m here to share with you all the apps that the Center for Literacy has loaded on their “loaner” iPads and iPod Touches. While we made ever effort to pick as many free apps as possible, sometimes it’s just worth paying to get a high-quality app.
We know that lots of parent-child book reading, pretend reading, and book browsing with traditional picture and storybooks promotes children’s development of literacy knowledge and skills in ways that support reading success (Mol & Bus, 2011). Reading storybooks exposes children to print and starts the process of learning how speech is written down. But can that very same process be nurtured when reading e-Books as children start to learn basic reading skills? Can parent-child sharing of e-Books help children gain an understanding of concepts such as, knowledge of letter names and how letters relate to sounds, identification of meaningful parts of words, awareness of book language as different from everyday language, and the insight that print has meaning? After all, at their core, e-Books are still books, right?
These very questions are some which I have been exploring with a small group of colleagues for the past 3 years. So, I was extremely excited to review the Cooney Center E-books QuickReport titled “Print Books vs. E-books.” The QuickReport explored parent-child interactions as they were reading print and/or digital books together. The Cooney researchers refer to this type of activity as “co-reading.” Read the rest of this entry…
I’ve been off the blogging path for a while, sidetracked by a number of projects that I have kept me quite busy for the last 3-4 months. One of those projects was an eTech OhioTeacher Planning Grant program I have been leading called the Digital Text Initiative. Over the course of the 2011-2012 school year, I’ve been working with 9 K-2 teachers in 3 local districts to study the ways elementary teachers incorporate eBooks in their classroom.
This has been a great project, and one that was noticed by a writer from the New York Times. He published a piece titled “Bringing up an E-Reader” back in March that featured students, parents and a teacher from the DigiTXT program. I’m currently working on data analysis from a variety of sources and also starting to put together some of the greatest hits from the project for the a final report. This report is slated to be released as a white paper about mid-June. I was asked for 3 DOs and 3 DON’Ts for using eBooks that we could use in the white paper. Here they are.
DO:
Look for eBooks with content that has direct ties to your curriculum and student’s personal experiences.
Allow students opportunities to self-select eBooks for independent and shared reading experiences.
Consider the role space plays in the reading experience and design a quality-learning environment for browsing/reading eBooks in the classroom.
DON’T:
Select eBooks with multimedia or interactivity that is extraneous and/or not relevant to the story.
Use an eBook with students until you have thoroughly previewed and evaluated its potential as an instructional resource.
Underestimate the “WOW” factor that eBooks bring to the table. Use their natural engagement to capture reluctant reader’s interest and motivate them.
Tonight I will be sharing some digital storytelling resources with one of Dr. Denise Stuart’s graduate classes here at The University of Akron. I’m primarily planning to do some live demos of a variety of web-based and iOS options, but here are a few examples of published work from a few of the resources I’ll show. The complete list of resources I’m sharing are available from this Google Doc.
A short piece that incorporates text and music to tell the story of a pumpkin’s lifecycle. The images used were created win Powerpoint and saved as .jpeg files. Those .jpegs were imported into Animoto for sequencing and audio integration. The finished story is available to view online or as an embedded video.
The iPad revolution is here! Even our youngest students expect a learning space that integrates digital tools, accommodates a mobile lifestyle, adapts to individual learning styles & encourages collaboration. Teachers must become proficient in an mLearning pedagogical approach grounded in an understanding of mobile technologies hardware, software & OS. How does a teacher incorporate all these technology tools into meaningful learning? Help your students use iOS apps to tell their own stories, boosting reading and writing skills. Find out which apps work best for what grade levels and learn management techniques for projects. Attendees will learn about many different iOS apps to support and enhance the reading and writing process. This session will prepare K-5 administrators, teachers and parents to support student use of iOS devices in the elementary classroom.
It’s a snowy morning in Akron, Ohio. Kim, Aiden and I are getting ready to head to Columbus for the conference. There’s always a lot of little things to try and squeeze in a short weekend when you leave for a conference on a Sunday.
As I was thinking over my To-Do list, one item I wanted to share with the Shiny Youth team was my list of essential information & communication tools that I’ll be packing to use at #OETC12. Here are the items I’ll be using to connect, converse and create at the biggest educational technology conference in Ohio.
For the past few days, I’ve been in beautiful Sedona, Arizona to attend and present to a group of early childhood educators from Arizona and New Mexico as part of the Southwest Institute Summer Literacy Institute.
Southwest Institute for Families and Children (SWI) is a non-profit research and development organization focusing on children’s health and education.
Below you will find the slidedeck from my presentation to this dedicated group of early childhood educators, many of whom serve high-poverty children and families from the Navajo nation.
Back in October of 2010, I was interviewed by Lisa Guernsey for an article on eBooks that was to appear in School Library Journal. That article has finally been published in the June 2011 edition. You can read it in its entirety here. Thanks to Lisa for including information about Akron Ready Steps and our eBook research in the article. A small snippet from the piece follows below.
What’s an ebook anyway?
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Jeremy Brueck, an Akron, OH-based pioneer in children’s digital reading research, spends his days grappling with the cacophony of questions raised by children’s ebooks. With help from grants from the U.S. Department of Education, he’s examining how electronic materials should be used in early childhood programs, including Head Start.
He’s urging librarians, teachers, and parents to pause to get a handle on exactly what they mean when they say “ebook” in the first place. “We have to get out of saying ‘ebooks,’” argues Brueck, who codirects Akron Ready Steps, an early literacy program, and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Akron. “It’s just too broad.” Read the rest of this entry…
