Book Creator, Haiku Deck, Notability, and Paper 53 (Things 15-18)

After exploring iTunes U in the last "thing", I got the experience of being a student this week to learn about some publishing and note-taking apps. I had heard of all of these apps before, but I hadn't taken the time to explore them because I was sure that none could be better or easier than what I already had in place for note-taking (and I wasn't terribly interested in publishing in a non-physical form). However, that attitude was shortsighted because I did discover some really cool things from each of these apps. Also, the tiny step I took into online publishing/digital storytelling this past year with Storyboard That was pretty successful, so I should be looking for new things to build on that! :)

The first app was Book Creator (@BookCreatorApp). After playing around with it and seeing how easy it is to use and how beautiful the final products could be, I actually tried to implement it with my summer class kids. Surprisingly, they weren't really into it and decided to go with the traditional blank books that they have always used (if you need those or other creative paper products - you can even make your own puzzles! - Bare Books is a great company) over the app. So, I haven't used it with students yet, but I did make this book introducing myself to my students for Thing 15.

The next app was Haiku Deck (@HaikuDeck). This one was actually the most frustrating for me because I was trying to work with it at my school, where the filters originally blocked all the images that I was trying to use. It works marginally better there now, but I just had to do it all at home for it to really work. This would be a big stumbling block for using it with students because if the features don't work like they're supposed to, the products won't be as good as they can be, and the kids will be more focused on their frustration with the tool than on showing what they know (as I was!). I liked the way there were stock photos that actually made sense with the words that were on each slide, and each of the different themes were beautiful. I didn't like how I couldn't resize the text myself and how all the slides in the same deck had to be on the same theme (or maybe I can resize it and they can be different themes, but I couldn't figure out how to change those things). It's not so much that Haiku Deck is better than Powerpoint or Keynote, it's just that it's different because the options are more limited and the slides do look more professional in a much shorter amount of time. For Thing 16, I made this Haiku Deck about what I have learned so far in this course.

Thing 17 was an exploration of Notability (@gingerlabs), an app that promised to make me "Fall in love with notetaking." Well, mission accomplished! I mean, I was already pretty into taking notes because that's the only way I remember things, but I was also pretty committed to my pen and paper method. I like being able to draw arrows and symbols easily (without having to remember the keystrokes for them) and color-coding as I go. I also like being able to change my method halfway through by just turning the paper or changing the notebook I use. I've started to take more notes using Google Docs in meetings, but when I'm reading something or preparing for an assignment, I'm still into writing by hand. Nevertheless, Notability won me over. I love that you can include an audio clip, and it is so easy to switch between typing and writing! I don't know when I would use the features that allow me to import a photo or a symbol, but I like that they're there. However, my favorite feature is one that I'm sure it's totally superficial, but I love it anyway: the three top font options at the top of the note! I like to change the fonts of my notes based on the content of them, and this allows me to do it. I also now have a use for the several styluses that I've somehow collected over this school year.  Here's part of my first exploration into the different notes I could take (that's a picture of my fish - enjoy! :) ).

The final "thing" for this week was to learn about the concept of sketchnoting. I'd heard about this before and been really impressed with some of the sketches I saw on Twitter from educational leaders (the #adesketchnote hashtag will take you to some from Apple Distinguished Educators), but I've never wanted to try it because I've never considered myself an artist. After looking through some of the introductory materials for sketchnoting and Paper 53, it became pretty obvious that most people who do this do not consider themselves artists. I still think that writing words is more effective for me, but I enjoyed trying to put my thoughts into images. It made me think more about what was actually important when I didn't have to words to explain what I was drawing. I do know that sketchnoting has words AND pictures, but I was trying to focus on the drawings to fully embrace this new thing...I couldn't help myself from writing a caption, though.

I like the different writing tools available - my favorite was the fancy fountain pen! I definitely need a better stylus to really make sketchnoting happen because I kept running out of room - I need to be able to write smaller.

Here are some examples from sketchnoters who are way better than I am so you can see the vast possibilities:

From Sylvia Duckworth (@sylviaduckworth) - Her tweets and notes made me feel like I was at ISTE too!

From Sylvia Duckworth (@sylviaduckworth)

From Brad Ovenell-Carter (@Braddo)

An important note about sketchnoting is that it doesn't HAVE to be on an app; you can definitely do the same thing with paper and pen/pencil/marker/quill. This is a great post about using sketchnoting (or sketchquoting, as Heather Marshall calls it) in the classroom with no apps necessary. I would LOVE to try this!

I liked the fact that this week was dedicated to apps that I had been wanting to make time to explore. I also liked that being required to make a product for each app forced me to go through the process the students would go through instead of just skimming the features of each one. I would really like to incorporate at least one of these apps into my class for next year; I don't require that the kids take notes any specific sort of way, so sketchnoting might be an interesting thing to introduce to them. They doodle a lot anyway, so it could be a natural progression. A few years ago, I went to a reading conference where the presenter showed us some examples from her students' reading notebooks that looked like versions of sketchnotes, and I've wanted to try it ever since. I'll have to do some more research to make sure I understand it better before I try to present it. I'm not totally sold on Haiku Deck as being much better than other presentation tools, but I do think that Book Creator has a ton of possibilities for improving booktalks or independent reading responses. 

Another thing I liked about these apps is that most of them "talk" to the Google apps, so it's easy to upload them to Keep or Drive. I think it'll be easier to organize them that way instead of having to open the different apps to get to my notes or products. I'm also getting more familiar with iBooks through practicing with these apps. I think Notability has some great possibilities for professional use, especially since you can share the notes easily and do a combination of writing, drawing, audio, and pictures. I could see using this for a department or team meeting to brainstorm. I'm not sure that these apps lend themselves to regular parent communication, but I might try to use a Haiku Deck instead of a Keynote for my Go To School Night presentation. That would be hard to do if I couldn't access the images for presenting at school, but I might try. I usually have too much text on my slides so I don't forget my points, and Haiku Deck does do a nice job of limiting that.

I'm still not a fan of iTunes U for learning myself, but maybe that's because I'm already using the wiki and Google Classroom and I don't like to have so many platforms going at once. I do like how the iTunes U course is organized with the assignments that you can check off and each app having its own section, but I don't like that you have to do everything on the iPad. I much prefer working on my laptop!   

iTunes U (Thing 14)

iTunes U is overwhelming to me, especially on the heels of the educator blogs from the last "thing." There are a lot of courses and collections available for free, which is great, but it's hard to know what is good and what isn't with just a cursory glance at them, which is all I seem to have time for right now in this class. So I did my usual thing and downloaded like 20 of the most promising courses and collections that appeared in categories that I teach, including the "Teaching with Technology" and Apple Distinguished Educators (ADE) content that we were required to look through. I'm using my iPad because it seems easier than way than installing the iTunes store app on my laptop which I think will be good for the next few "things" as well since they're all apps.

It seems like the courses are more geared toward teachers and other school leaders than students (unless I'm totally missing something in my searching).  I found several courses and collections that I would like to explore further, including TED Talks in Education and Management, "Vocabulary Instruction," "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer" (I think I have an earlier version of this on paper), "Harvard Thinks Big," "Harvard EdCast" (there are a few of my former professors here that I'm looking forward to revisiting!), and the "Design Thinking Challenge." The ADE content that I was most excited about - "Lessons for the Classroom - To Kill a Mockingbird" - was blocked from being downloaded onto my iPad because it had "explicit content." I'm not sure what that could be, but it's frustrating that I can't get what seems like good material because of our device settings. There are other courses from the ADE that I'm excited about such as "Flipping the Classroom: The Why and the How," several middle school language arts lessons ("Write Your Own Adventure: Interactive Fiction," "Tapping into Digital Media for Storytelling," and "Figurative Language in Descriptive Writing"), and "Discovery - Challenge Based Learning." Of course, there is way too much for me to really learn from each course before school starts, so I'm going to have to pick two and three and go from there.

For administrators (and teachers too!), I think the ADE's "Creating a Culture of Innovation" and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's (ACSD) "The Whole Child Podcast" would be great. It's important for administrators to know how to evaluate and support teachers, but it is equally important for them to remain connected to the school culture and vision that they espouse. I think we need to keep our "whole child" approach at the front of our collective mind because it can get lost among things like standardized testing and other requirements that are handed down from on high. I love that many of these courses and collections have podcasts as well as written material because that means more people will be able to access the material, and it also means that I have something new to listen to on the train.  :)  Here are photos of my course library in case you would like to see them:

For my students, I found several apps that I think would be good in "Learning at Every Level" in iTunes U. My students are already familiar with Quizlet; I think it's required for some classes, and they sometimes also use it for English for vocabulary flashcard review. They can share their cards with me electronically, which eliminates the need for hundreds of physical notecards which will only be thrown away (or recycled, if we're lucky!) once the vocabulary quiz is over. They can also revisit their cards at a later date or share with friends when they are studying. There was also an app called Creative Writing Prompts that was supposed to be good for writers of all levels, including students. I have a lot of writing prompt books in the classroom that get a lot of use, but with an app, the kids don't have to share the book or wait until one of their friends is finished. They will also have it with them at all times on their iPads. Finally, I had a lot of fun with an app called Starting Shakespeare; luckily enough, the two plays included in this app are Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream, the two that I teach the most! It includes background information, vocabulary, and textual connections (among many other things). It is also specifically geared toward students who are just starting their study of Shakespeare, which almost 100% of our students usually are. 

I think we have enough online learning platforms as it is right now for our students to juggle. Adding iTunes U would probably be overwhelming to them, just like having to pay attention to the course wiki, Google Classroom, and iTunes U is for me. I can see the opportunities that it holds for me professionally, but I don't think that I'll be incorporating it into my classroom directly (except for finding the apps). I don't like the idea of just sending them to a course to figure it out for themselves; that can be confusing since they're not all set up the same way and many of them have videos, PDFs, links, etc. all in one course. Again, it's mostly good information, and I would make sure that the course was relevant and meaningful before sending them to explore it, but it seems like a lot of work for me to preview and then have to reteach when they inevitably struggled with either the technology or the content. So, I do like learning about how to teach Shakespeare from iTunes U, and I appreciate that I can connect with even more educators this way, but I'm not sold on it for my students.