The group gathered and explore two big ideas in book creation: teacher creation for students and student book creation. We used Meg Wilson's book creation reccommendations to start. All of the paid app book creators were very generous to give codes so our teachers could test out the apps in our session. Teachers spent time working in pairs or groups to explore how these apps and see how they could best be utilized in our classrooms. Here are the results from our exploration. The big winners were Book Creator and Story Creator.
Having a group of teachers learn together has been a refreshing change from our usual staff meetings. The mini-PLAYDATE has a book club feel with a technology slant. It is teacher driven and teacher inspired. We already know that next month we will be looking at movie making. Have you thought about asking teachers to learn together in your school? We would be happy to Google Hangout with other likeminded teachers if you are up for it. Will we see you in April?
I love the mini-PLAYDATE idea! Also a fantastic idea to contact the app creators for free codes to try out a paid app - of course they'd want a teacher to give it a try and possibly buy anywhere from 30 to hundreds of copies of their app. I hadn't thought of that before, thank you!
ReplyDeleteThanks Todd. We have really been loving the teacher directed, personal learning. I also think because teachers are CHOOSING to come it has a major effect on the work and the learning.
ReplyDeleteI just finished a project using Book Creator with my chem students. I love this app. Lots of export options and you can sync everyone's book into a single iBooks account for everyone to share their work.
ReplyDeleteAwesome to know Kevin! Thanks so much for sharing, I will add that to our google doc I think that will really send teachers into create mode with students.
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