First Week Review : Looking Forward and Further Questions

This week was a truncated week at SAR HS; in what follows, I review what happened and clarify some open questions to be pursued over the next week or so:

In the classroom:

• Vocabulary Instruction: Students were introduced to membean.com, a portal for differentiated and "guided, engaging, multimodal vocabulary instruction". I'm excited to further students along the membean path and monitor the progress, as well as roll out differentiated quizzes along the way.

• Classroom Journal: Students must keep a classroom journal and were encouraged to use a google doc, a notability file, or a journal app. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, and I stressed student choice along the way: google docs are easy to share, but don't allow for drawing within the app; notability allows for typing and drawing (a tablet strength), but is a slightly steeper learning curve than a simple google doc; journal apps are really fun and highly personalized, but each has its own method for exporting and sharing (I check students' journals periodically over the course of the year).

• Haiku Discussion Boards: Students submitted their first discussion board posts through some training and introduction to the interface. I plan on using discussion boards as preparatory activities or extensions of classroom conversations, and I'm excited for students to engage with one another in a professional though somewhat more conversational matter in this medium.

On my end:

• Annotation on the iPad: As an iPad newbie, I think that one of the strengths of its interface is its tablet nature (i.e. the ability to actually write within one's hand on a document). I'd like to optimize that feature this year in my written feedback to student work, though without too much shuffling In the past, I've used Haiku's clunky annotation system, so I hope to trial some annotation apps over the next week or so for actual, written feedback onto student documents. For it to work, it will have to move somewhat seamlessly out of and back into the Haiku portal.

• Prezi: I've solved the Prezi mirroring question--I can now mirror and cycle through a Prezi presentation with my iPad as projected onto the Smartboard. I plan on using this system for back-to-school night presentations next week.

• Smartboard Notebook: I plan on tweeting directly at Smartboard to inquire about the lack of a "full screen" option on the smartboard iPad app. As I mentioned previously, the app is robust and syncs with Google Drive (the location for all my Smartboard files). This will simplify my "drawing" on the smartboard, too, if I can do it via iPad mirroring. 

All in all, a great week, though with some glitches (see my previous posts). I rolled out membean, though students struggled with signing on at first (the correct website is membean.com/enroll!). I used a Prezi to review classroom procedures, but I couldn't mirror via the iPad until it was too late. And I used my Smartboard files for classroom activities/homework announcements, but I didn't use the iPad app. 

To be continued....