What I learned at school today

Last year I decided to see if I could find a digital planbook that would work for me.  I tried a variety of planbooks - free and paid but my favorite and the one I will be using again this year is Planbookedu.com Why I love it: It is easy to use. Enter in a few bits of information and start planning. It even allows you to block off holidays. Very customizable - I choose the number of blocks in a day and what goes into those blocks. Keep track of PLO or Standards. Some are pre-entered... but they are also customizable. Add your own. It makes answering - what did I cover this term or in this lesson very easy! No need to re-enter repeated routines. I can repeat templates daily or weekly. This makes scheduling in routines and repeating blocks much simpler. Save file attachments right in your planbook and insert links too! Planbook allows me to attach all sorts of file formats. Keep my smartboard files or PDF files or handouts with my

As the school year ended I had more than one parent ask me for some apps to add to their iPads to keep students learning this summer.  I thought I would share some of the apps I  came up with here. This is a mix of apps for students from grades 1 to 6.  One great reading app for iPad is J'aime Lire.  http://www.jaimelirestore.com/ It is free to get and gives you access to 3 free books but you need to pay for individual books after that. The app has books for ages 3-12. Rover Rover is an app for ipad that lets students access educational websites with flash content. The app is free. Unfortunately most of the websites are in English but there is some great content here.  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rover-browser-for-education/id483262612?mt=8 Puffin To access French web content you might want to consider getting Puffin. Puffin isn't free but it also doesn't limit which sites your can visit so that means you can access any we

I am terrible with paper. I lose paper everywhere. When I started trying to conference with students using the "Pensive binder" recommended by The Sisters in the Cafe book it was a disaster. I was losing papers everywhere and never seemed to know what  paper I needed now. Frustrated with the system I gave up and went back to my clipboards and evernote notebooks. Then one day I read this blog post  and my search for a digital iPad Pensive solution began. The Contenders:  Evernote I love Evernote. I use it to store lesson plans and ideas, documents and tweets. I also kept students notes there. I thought I might be able to use it as a Digital Pensive on the iPad but when I tried to use Evernote as a pensive I found the program was TOO flexible and gave me too much space to write. I needed more structure to keep me in line, keep my notes brief and to the point and to make sure I kept my conference times down. Pensive from Daily Cafe Another option I tried wa

So you want to buy Ipads for your classroom- Here are a list of things to consider before you buy. Storage  - My Ipads came to me in a blue plastic bin with wires and cords everywhere. When you are thinking about your tablet remember to consider storage.  Where are you putting them when the students aren't using them? They need to be secured but they also need to be accessible. They need to be protected but the solution needs to be portable and inexpensive. Cases - Originally my Ipads didn't come with any cases. Someone purchased the iPad Smart Covers for my set. They are a flip cover that protects only the front of the ipad. At this time this has been sufficient but I would like to purchase better covers. According to my research there are a few good choices on the market but they will add a lot of money to your budget. GumdropDroptech Series   - $59.95 TridentKraken A.M.S   - $69.99 GriffinSurvivor-   $79.99 You need to decide what will work best

I was working on a movie project with my students last week when I realised that some of my students had taken their videos upside down. I wanted an easy way to flip them. When I searched for instructions online I found all sorts of complex and convoluted methods. One method for using VLC to flip videos involved so many steps that I never did get through them all. There are Iphone and Ipad apps that you can download to rotate the video on your device but ratings for these apps were not great and reviewers complained that the apps often crashed. In the end I discovered that you can easily rotate movies using Windows Live Movie Maker.  I don't recommend using Windows Movie Maker to make movies using Ipad footage because it often does not work but this product is ideal for quickly flipping videos for little or no fuss. Windows Live Movie Maker is available to download for free . How to Flip your Ipad (or any other video) using Movie Maker First - you will need to make sure

So this week my grade 1's and I have been having fun writing books about each other using the ipads. You should have seen how excited they were to do this.  They took pictures of each other and wrote about the photos they took. There are many apps that can be used to make books with our students. I tried quite a few before we settled on Book Creator .  All had good points and bad. I thought I would share a little about what I learned so it might be easier for you to pick an app that will works for you and your students. Picturebook The good:  Picturebook is available in French. It is easy to use and comes with stock images so students can start writing right away. There is plenty of room to write. You can use multiple images to create a page, It has a free version. The not so good: In order to use your own images you have to pay. Additional photo sets are also available for .99 each. Students can see these sets when they access the app. They are taken to a "

Our iPad adventures continue and we have started using our Ipads during Daily 5 time. When I first approached the administration about using Ipads in my classrooms this is where I believed we would use them the most. There are many apps that allow your students to read and interact with books on the ipad. For intermediate students there are endless options for free or nearly free resources. In french immersion primary however the resources are more limited. There are many picture books available for the ipad, unfortunately many of them cost money and only include 1 book per app.  There are some other options for getting books of the ipad however. In my class I am using two apps: Itubelist and Rover. Itubelist  Download her e Itubelist allows you to create playlists for students. They can watch videos without commercials and are restricted to the videos you pick for them. Students can then read along while watching books online. The app is free to download but it costs $0.99