Apps to Support Bloom's Taxonomy

In lieu of another iPUG meeting during this busy time of year, here are some iPad apps organized by learning category for you to check out when you need a break from grading. Educational Technologist, Kathy Schrock, updated her list of iPad apps and how they fit into the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. She also revised the visual to resemble the interlocking of the cognitive processes as you can see below. 

Take a look at Kathy's Bloomin' Apps page: http://www.schrockguide.net/bloomin-apps.html. Scroll down and look for the Bloomin' Apps iPad edition. As an example, the Skype app falls under Evaluating/Conferencing. Some apps I would like try include Drawing Box Free (Applying/Illustrating), TwitCasting Live (Creating/Videocasting), SimpleMind+ (Remembering/Mindmapping), and Inspiration Maps Lite (Analyzing/Outlining)

Here is something similar my SON (School of Nursing) colleague found: The Padagogy Wheel Developed by Allan Carrington of University of Adelaide

Haiku Deck iPad App

For all you iPad users who need a break on Thursday for some creative fun…

Join me to try out Haiku Deck, a presentation tool you can use to create presentations on your iPad and share them with anyone to view on any web-enabled device/computer. This free iPad app was listed in numerous places as one of the top apps for education.

“You can use Haiku Deck to tell a story, pitch an idea, share some news, give an update, show your stuff, enliven a meeting, inspire a group, teach a lesson, or ignite a movement…Once you save your Haiku Deck to the web, you can view it on any smartphone, tablet, or computer. You can easily share Haiku Decks via email and your favorite social networks. You can even embed your decks in a blog or export them to Powerpoint or Keynote.” http://www.haikudeck.com/faq

Note: This is the opposite of what we have been working on, which is to create a PowerPoint presentation on our computer and then find the best way to present it from our iPad.

Here is a practice presentation I just made on my iPad:

iPad Mirroring in the Classroom

The Apple TV is working consistently in one of our classrooms for iPad mirroring. (Thanks to our UAA ITS crew for developing a profile that would allow it to work on our wifi network.) So far only a few faculty members are using it. The cool thing is that anyone with an iPad can project their screen from the room, so as more students bring iPads to class, they will be able to share their work this way. I would like to have an iPad mirroring option in all the COE classrooms.

At the ASTE conference, there was buzz about Reflector software, but I haven't been able to get it to work. Interestingly, I came across this article this morning: The 4 Easiest Ways To Mirror The iPad (Comparison Chart). The conclusion here is that "Apple TV gave us the best end user experience. When adding technology to a classroom we want to make the experience as seamless as possible for the teacher and student." 

Tablet Computing: Time to Get on Board

"The tablet itself [is] a portable personalized learning environment." 

Tablet Computing is one of the NMC 2013 Horizon Report's two technologies to watch within the next year for entrance into mainstream teaching, learning, and inquiry.

Note: "The NMC Horizon Report is an unbiased source of information that helps education leaders, trustees, policy makers, and others easily understand the impact of key emerging technologies on education, and when they are likely to enter mainstream use." (http://www.nmc.org/publications/2013-horizon-report-higher-ed)

Back at the ranch, the eLearning Workgroup surveyed the UAA student population concerning their mobile computing habits in 2011 and 2012 (and are now gearing up for the 2013 survey).  Each year more than 700 students completed the survey, and 77% of these students are checking email and 70% are accessing Blackboard through their mobile devices (phones and tablets). In the 2012 survey, about 21% of the student respondents own or plan to own a tablet, and another 31% would like to own a tablet.

What does this mean for UAA faculty and staff? First, we need to get comfortable using tablets ourselves. There are so many great productivity apps that are a good place to start (see the previous post). Second, we need to think about how we design our online course materials so they work on a tablet (as the Horizon report points out, "tablets are not a new kind of lightweight laptop, but rather a completely new technology"). Third, allow tablet use in the classroom and begin to develop classroom activities and assessments that utilize mobile technology.

Information and resources on Mobile Computing at UAA (put together by the Faculty Technology Center) is available online at http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/facultytechnologycenter/mobile/. 

Productivity Apps for Teachers on the iPad (ASTE)

The College of Education at UAA has an active iPad Users Group which we affectionately call iPUG.

In this session at ASTE, we will share advantages and disadvantages of free productivity tools for presenting, editing, documenting, and scheduling (with teachers in mind). Our presenters include Sunny Mall, who prepares secondary teachers through the Master of Arts in Teaching program and Wei-Ying Hsiao, who teaches in UAA's early childhood program. Joining Sunny and Wei, is Katie Walker, Instructional Designer for the College of Education at UAA.

Our favorite productivity apps include:
Dropbox for file storage
SlideShark for presenting PowerPoint presentations
CloudOn for editing Office files
Evernote for documenting
JotNot Scanner Pro for documenting
Paperless for documenting
AND...Cue for scheduling on your smart phone

Productivity Apps for Teachers

This is a reminder of the upcoming COE iPad Users Group meeting on Thursday at 11am in PSB 103A. Wei, Sunny, and I are going to present the session we are preparing for the ASTE conference: Productivity Apps for Teachers on the iPad. We will share advantages and disadvantages of free productivity tools for presenting, editing, documenting, and scheduling. Please join us even if you don’t have an iPad. Most of these apps can be used on other mobile devices, and besides, we would love to have your feedback (so we can do a bang up job next week at the conference).



Here are two nice visuals of some other useful apps for Education: http://ictevangelist.com/?p=1417&buffer_share=ac2ff

CloudOn brings Microsoft Office to your tablet.

I found CloudOn last year when looking for a free app for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. I liked CloudOn better than the others because it integrated with Dropbox. It worked great when I needed to assist someone with putting multiple PowerPoint presentations together when I only had my iPad with me. They have continued to improve this app; now it allows you to work with PDFs, too. For more information: http://site.cloudon.com/