Learning Fun with @TigglyKids

I was very lucky to run into the awesome people at Tiggly when I was at #ASCD16. I stopped by their booth and was blown away at what I saw. Manipulatives for the iPad to help students learn to count, spell, and create. Here is a video that explains more of what it is.  

Awesome right? Well, videos always make things look pretty cool, so I needed to see how my 5 year old would respond to Tiggly for the iPad. Tiggly sent me their educator kits for Shapes, Math, and Words. Here are some images of what comes with the sets. 

Each Education set comes with 5 student sets for $150.00. Along with the manipulatives, each set comes with a Teacher Handbook, 5 Activity books, and 5 Thinker Journals. 

The Teacher Handbook comes with detailed explanations of the different apps that are included with the purchase of the sets and how they are used. They also have activities that teachers can set up for the students. 

The Activity Books allows students to have fun away from the screen and do some learning on their own. 

The Thinker Journal is a place for young students to draw and share their thoughts. This could be a cool reflection space for students that are using the apps and the Activity Books.

A see these sets being a nice addition to an elementary classroom that has access to iPads so students can have fun on their own and still practice their reading, spelling, and math skills.

You might not want/need an entire 5 student kit for your home, so Tiggly has the individual kits for purchase as well. 

Each kit costs $29.99 and is worth every penny. Please do not take my word for it, trust my son Leo.

A video posted by Nicholas Provenzano (@thenerdyteacher) on Apr 25, 2016 at 1:43pm PDT

Leo was using the pictures he created using the shapes to make his own little story. This is just one short video, but Leo played with this for an hour before moving to another Tiggly app. He loves to create stories and the app was a very fun way to facilitate his story telling.

Here is Leo playing the Chef game for Tiggly. This has to be one of his favorite games on the iPad right now. He uses the manipulatives to count the number of ingredients needed to make a crazy recipe. When it is done, a whacky meal with a zany name is displayed. It gets him laughing every single time. I have had to go into the settings are reset the app so he could redo the recipes almost a dozen times.

Tiggly is an award winning product that can support young learners as they explore shapes, words, and numbers. I personally think it is cool and would be awesome in the classroom. Leo thinks it is "Awesome!" and it is his "favorite app". How can you argue against that testimony. 

The 1:1 Dilemma #edchat

I had a chance to attend another great edcamp this weekend (EdcampOU) and I sat in a session on 1:1 computing. A district very close to mine passed a bond and will be rolling out iPads to all of their students (Grades 1-12) in the coming year. Teachers were given them first and are being trained on how to use them. It was an excellent session run by Chris Stanley(@StanleyTeach).

I have a 1:1 situation in my classroom with a class set of iPads. While it has been an amazing experience, there are limitations when five students are sharing 1 device over the course of the day. For some of my students, this is the only access they will have to a computer for the entire day. I also do not get to leverage all of the power of the iPad because some apps require storage on the tablet. Despite those issues, the 1:1 experiment has been a huge success in my opinion.

The conversation about 1:1 spilled over into Twitter and one of my district's administrators, Aaron Johnson (@i2_sing_america) and @kevinozar joined the conversation about supplying students with the devices and what do we do about teachers that are resistant to adopting the new pedagogy that comes with the new tools. These are great questions and here are my thoughts on them.

I think the one that drives me the most batty, is the reluctant teacher argument. Yes, there are teachers that do not like change. That is a fact. Are there that many reluctant teachers that an entire district should not move forward with a 1:1 program? I doubt it. Even if there are, it seems to me that the situation is an administrative issue. If an employee refuses to use a new tool despite adequate training and support, that is when the boss steps in and uses appropriate measures to get them on board.

Now, notice I said adequate training and support. That really is key. I think most teachers are reluctant to change because they have had too many new programs and tools thrust upon them without adequate training and support. I would love it if every teacher could grab and iPad and start to lesson plan like a pro, but that is not happening. I have had the iPads in my class for almost a year and I'm still on a learning curve. Worse yet, I've been supplying my own training and support through Twitter. Now, if my district were to move toward a 1:1 model, I would be in an excellent position to support students and staff. That is a bonus. One person's pain can turn into another person's salvation when it comes to technology integration. Without proper training and continues support after the training, 1:1 programs, and all new pedagogical initiatives, will fail miserably.

Should school districts pay for students to have devices? This is the question I have changed my position on at different times over the past couple of years. I believe that BYOD cannot work because of the digital divide. I also think it can't work because it now asks a teacher to have an elementary understanding of how many different devices and OSs work. That sounds like a logistical nightmare for any teacher.

Computers, iPads in this case, are starting to become the norm in the classroom. In my district, it is an accepted expectation that work is completed on a computer and submitted to teachers electronically. It has been that way for almost 10 years. As the makeup of our district has changed, that expectation has slowly changed. There are students without access to computers at home and struggle to complete work before or after school. As a teacher, I make the accommodations I need to help those students succeed, but they will have trouble all year and some teachers are not as accepting as I am. As a school, we offer supplies to students they cannot afford on their own. If a student doesn't have pen and paper, don't we offer it to them to use? Are computers entering the same category? We give all of our students email addresses, how can they use them if they don't have access? We are moving students to Google Apps for Education, what's the point if they can;t use the tools outside of class. (Yes, GAFE isn't awesome on iPads, but maybe we go laptops. Don't let that be the sticking point in this post.)

I think it is becoming the responsibility to provide access to all of the students in an effort to give them the computing skills they will need outside of the classroom. If a student is only given pencils to do their work, they will not be prepared when they go to college or have to fill out online job applications. I know funding is a nightmare and their are logistical issues that have to be dealt with, including adequate bandwidth to handle the traffic, but should these be the roadblock to providing the best education possible for our students?

What are your thoughts?

Epic @EvernoteSchools Experiment Update #3

We are in our third week of the EEE and things are going pretty well. I have had some students encounter problems with saving work on Evernote from home. They told me there were some error messages and some of their work was lost. Like most things tech, not everyone is going to have a perfect experience every time. I told them to write down as much information as possible the next time something goes wrong and send it to me so I can send it to Evernote.

There is something valuable to be learned when tech behaves badly. Kids need to be reminded to save work regularly and have back ups just in case. The vast majority of my students have not had any problems using Evernote or saving information, I just hate seeing a few struggle because of technical errors outside of their control.

Students started taking class notes this week and reading stories on-line. It has been a really great combination for my class. I have had multiple students tell me that they used their personal devices to access the stories, the notes and write their responses all away from their home. Kids are really investing in the time and energy it takes to learn the new system and are finding the places to integrate it into their lives. As time goes by, more students will become more comfortable with the system and do some cool things with their accounts.

I have two teachers that have started to use Evernote in my building since introducing the system to them and I have another two that are interested in moving their notes, lessons, assignments, etc to Evernote as well. It is so exciting to see teachers excited to learn new things. The two that are already using it have expressed utter joy at being able to easily share information with students and staff. It really has changed they way the approach the classroom.

Things I've seen with Evernote:

• Student took a picture of my notes on the board after I was done to add to their Evernote account
• Student took down the email address of the students at his table to contact if he was out for the day
• Students sharing notes to other that have missed school
• Students wrote their entire essay in Evernote and then submitted it to Turnitin.com
• Students typing up blog posts on Evernote and then posting them to their Blogger Account. 

These are just a few things I have seen the past couple of weeks. I can't wait to share more of what the kids are doing. 

- @TheNerdyTeacher

Using My iPad in the Classroom This Year (Redux) #edchat

Two years ago today, I wrote a post about how I was going to use my iPad in the classroom. It was simply titled "Using My iPad in the Classroom This Year". To my surprise, it is my most visited post of all time with over 37,000 page views. That is about 20,000 more than my second most read post. I thought it would be fun to do an updated post having used the iPad in my class for two years. Now that I have a class set of iPads, the number of apps that I use or will be using has changed and I thought I would share that with everyone.

Safari - FREE

This is still a go to app. My students are always encouraged to look up things on the internet when they have questions or need to do research. It is fast and simple to use. There are very few problems I have encountered with using Safari and will continue to use it happily.


Evernote - FREE (or Premium Account)

This should not come to much of surprise for those that read my blog on a regular basis. I've had decided to embark on an Epic Evernote Experiment that will use Evernote in many different ways with many different pieces of hardware. I will be sharing all of the reading material for the entire school year on Evernote as well as having students use it to take notes in class and create e-portfolios. I will be using it for all of my lesson planning and storing of different bits of information I think I will need later using the web clipper tool. This app will allow me to move away from the word od space eating filing cabinets and allow me to focus more time on instruction and innovation and not copy making. I upgraded to the premium account because of the added benefits of sharing, editing and space and I couldn't be happier. 

PS Touch - $9.99

I'm not much of an artist or a big whiz with Photoshop, but I have used this app multiple times on the go to create and or edit photos for presentations. It is easy to use and provides an tutorial on how to use all of the different aspects of the app. I would love to see all of the amazing things a real photo-editing pro could do with this app. I cannot afford to put this app on all of the student iPads, but I do let students use it when they really want to get their hands dirty with some photo-editing magic. If you love to tinker with photos, then this is the app for you. 

Blogger - Free (iPhone/iTouch Only)

This app is only available as an iPhone/iTouch app, but it works just fine on the iPad. Students will be using their blogs to respond to different visual prompts throughout the year and this is a great app to do that. It's free and easy to use. Students can log in and work on their post or just copy and past it over from their Evernote account. I really want them to create an iPad specific app, but I also want Google to create a Google Drive editing app, but that doesn't seem like it is going to happen any time. Anyway, Blogger is a nice addition to the iPad and I use for some of my posts when I'm on the go. 

Nearpod Teacher and Nearpod Student - App is FREE - Subscription Based Access

I will be working this new app and web-based program into my classroom this year. The apps are free, but there are different levels of subscriptions you can purchase to use the service. It allows the teachers to have guide students in lessons while they follow along on their device. My class is a class of iPads, but it could work for BYOD where students have iDevices and Android devices. It looks like a great way to have students follow along in class, participate in the polls and questions on the tablet and increase engagement in lessons. I think Nearpod is going to be a really cool addition to my classroom. 

Skype - FREE

Skype is a wonderful app if you want your students to communicate with students across the country or one county over. Many students have their own Skype accounts and use it to chat with their friends. As a teacher, I have use Skype to bring experts in to speak to my teachers and administrators as well as connecting my classes to other students. It is a wonderful tool to use in class and one that more teachers need to consider looking at including in their lesson plans. 

iMovie - $4.99

I really encourage my students to make videos because they can be fun and educational. This is a great app that students have loved to use in class. I love that it can allow the user to quickly upload to YouTube when the video is completed. It does take some time to get used to the editing features, but it is worth it when the students create some fun and different projects. The iPads allow the student to be mobile and record in different locations, so iMovie allows them the freedom to edit where they are comfortable. For the video minded students, iMovie is a must for the classroom. 

Twitter - FREE

I use Twitter on a regular basis in both my professional life (@TheNerdyTeacher) and my school life with students (@MrProvenzano). I encourage my students to use Twitter to create a backchannel during class discussions using specific hashtags. The biggest question I get is about students who might be off task and I can only say that if my students are off task, it's because my lesson is boring. A student will not pay attention using any means necessary if they are bored, it's not the app, it's the lesson. Twitter has been used well by my students and I encourage teachers to see how they might use it in their class. 

There are some of the apps I will be using and have used the past couple of years. Feel free to share your favorite apps in the comment section and we can all learn some new things. Thanks for stopping by!

- The Nerdy Teacher

Using @Evernoteschools for Lesson Planning #EdChat

Since I started this Experiment to use Evernote in every aspect of my classroom, I wasn't really sure what I was going to discover. I was sure there would be some way that Evernote was not going to meet my needs and I would be forced to add another tool to my chest while I continue the experiment for the school year. One way I was weary of was lesson planning. I have used the the traditional planner book for years and it has always been very good to me. I could easily flip back and see what I what I did the year before as I planned the upcoming school year. I'm not a big fan of trying to fix things that are not broken, but I figured I needed to give it a try in the name of the Experiment. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.

Here is a shot of my desktop version of Evernote. I have created lesson plan notebooks for each class I'm teaching. Within those notebooks, I've created notes for the individual units I have created for the school year. For each unit, I do not place dates, because I want the flexibility to move units around as I need to. 

Within the notebooks for the specific classes, I have scanned and uploaded various assignments I had in paper form only and added them to new notes. For assignments I already had in digital form, I copied and pasted them into new notes. This was a very simple and smooth process. I now have every document I need to teach a full year of school. 

Since all of my students will have Evernote accounts, I can easily share the assignments with the students in specially created notebooks. I can take a note, copy it and place it in the shared notebook when I assign the work. No handouts, copies or lost work. It will be there for the students the moment I place it in the notebook. There will be a tremendous amount of time saved by not having to pass out assignments to everyone at the start or end of the class. 

I have also created notebooks that contain notes on tech tips for using the various tools. The students will have complete access to any and all information when they want and where they need it. Simple things like this will save everyone involved some time when it comes to troubleshooting. As the school year moves along, I will be able to add new notes to address issues that come up along the way. 

One of my favorite parts of lesson planning in Evernote is the ability to tag my notes. 

If I want to see all of the different essay assignments for first semester, I just need to search tags for "Essay writing" and "First Semester." Only those notes will appear in the search field. I can narrow the search down as much as I want. It is awesome. I was never much of a tagger when it came to using Evernote for personal use, but for lesson planning, it would be stupid not to tag everything. My notebooks are only going to grow over time, so tagging makes sense when I want to find something to edit it or even share it. Tagging is going to save me so much time down the road. No longer will I be digging through a filing cabinet looking for "that" assignment. A quick search of my tags will have it ready in a flash. 

As I look at the set up, I have to say the best part is the fact I do not need to re-invent the wheel a year from now. It took me hours to sit and plan out an entire school year for three classes, but it is worth it. I will not have to do it again. I will have to tweak assignments and I might remove or add readings, but the bulk of my content is saved for life. 

Another nice bit is that my lessons are available on my iPhone, iPad, home computer and anywhere I have Internet access. If I want, I can download all of these notes and access them when the Internet is down. I've spilt drinks on my lesson planner before, it was an awful experience. Now, it's not a problem. 

If you are looking for a new way to approach lesson planning, please take the time to explore how Evernote can change and improve the way you prepare for the school year. You will not regret it. 

I look forward to sharing with you more of the cool things I discover and the Epic Evernote Experiment continues. 

- The Nerdy Teacher

The Epic @Evernote Experiment #edchat @EvernoteSchools

Hello everyone! I've had plenty of requests to write about what I'm doing and I wanted to wait until I was all set before I wrote a post.

This Fall, I will be doing an Epic Evernote Experiment. I know that I have used the word Epic to describe my previous project (The Epic Romeo and Juliet Project), but this Experiment is truly Epic and I'm a sucker for alliterations.

My plan is pretty simple, use Evernote to share all of my class notes and reading with the students. All assignments will be shared through Evernote as well as any additional resources that I use in class. Seems pretty straight forward.

I have spend the past few days compiling all of the resources I have used in my class for my Honors American Literature, Traditional American Literature and Freshmen English. I have created notes, notebooks and tags for each piece. Units were cross-referenced using tags and the title of the note so students can quickly find what they are looking for on Evernote.

I created four Notebooks for each class; Assignments, Notes, Handouts and Stories. These are the four standard notebooks that will be shared with each student when they arrive to class in the Fall. They will have access to all of their textbook needs on Evernote wherever they are. All additional notes will be placed in the Notebooks as the school year progresses.

In the Notes Notebook, I have placed background information on authors and historical information centering around the various texts and stories we will be reading making sure to use the tagging feature to allows students to pull the information up quickly. I also created notes that have YouTube video read ins of some of the stories. I have created a complete digital backpack for my students. They will have everything they need for the entire year on the first day of school.

This process was a long and tedious one, but I have these notes FOREVER. I was able to upload PDFs and us the Evernote Clipper tool on Google Chrome to quickly and easily create notes and store them in the correct Notebook with the specific tags I needed. This really is a game changer for how my students will be able to access information inside AND outside of the classroom.

This would be an awesome experiment, but it's not quite epic. With that in mind, I have added another level to bring it to epic proportions. E-portfolios. I'm looking for my students to use Evernote Notebooks to store their written work and projects. With the ability to take photos and record audio I envision students being able to take pictures and store their thoughts on various work throughout the year. Long term, this could be great if an entire school district got on board and students from a young age could curate all of their work over the course of their school career. Imagine a 12 Grade student being able to review their writing from 5th grade. I can't think of a better way for an individual to measure growth. I wish I could see my work from grade school.

I'm excited to be working with some other companies who partner with Evernote and want to help with this Experiment. IPEVO is sending over a document camera that, later this summer, will allow images to be directly sent to Evernote. I'm really excited for the chance to look at this document camera. I have heard nothing but good things and I'm always pumped to offer more tools to my students. I envision many of my artistic students using the Document Camera to record their hand drawn work at home and storing it on their Evernote accounts. Their are many different possibilities.

I'm talking with other groups that are interested in being part of the Epic Evernote Experiment. If you are a company and want to join the fun, please send me an email at OneNerdyTeacher@gmail.com and I will get back to you right away. If you know of a product that would fit in well with my Experiment, please let me know and I will reach out to them. Any new products will be mentioned on my blog as they come in and I look them over.

I'm really excited about the possibilities of creating this environment for my students. Follow the journey on the special page I created. The Epic Evernote Experiment

If you want to start your Evernote journey now, follow this link to sign up!

That's it for now, stay tuned for more fun in the near future.

Gatsby Graffiti and Animation

My students created "graffiti" to put in display to teach students about themes and symbols found in "The Great Gatsby". These pictures demonstrate the power of PBL and technology.

Here is a video with some close-ups of each work. 

Another group asked if they could download an app for their iPad because they really wanted to do animation for their project. I was out of money for apps purchasing, so I picked up an iTunes card and used it to upload the app on her device. The student in the group worked on this for a week. We are working on adding the song she wants soon. The app was Animation Desk. 

There are many more projects I can't wait to share with all of you. Stay tuned for more great work. 

No Tablets, No Problem Thanks to @Evernote

This past week, my students did not have access to the iPad they had been using this year. They were being used in the Science department as part of the ongoing pilot. I gave students plenty of warning in advance, but I wasn't sure how they were going to handle the change. Kids can be funny when it comes to change.

Well, they did not melt down. The kids quickly took out there personal devices, opened up Evernote, and got to work. Some students needed to download Evernote to their device, but they had the support of other students to direct them to the right place. It was awesome. Using Evernote in class allowed the students to transition to a non-iPad environment very quickly. Even if the internet went down, they could still use the app and sync the notes when they had access later.

Some students did not have access to a personal device and needed to take notes by hand. I apologized to one student who was taking notes by hand for the first time in months. They said it was not that big of a deal. They intend to just take pictures of the notes and upload them to Evernote at a later date. Awesome! I could also let them use the new Doxie Go scanner I have been playing around with if they would like. The scanner can send scanned papers directly to an Evernote account.  It is an amazing scanner for a decent price. It's worth checking out if you have lots of papers you want to organize in Evernote.

I'm very happy that I've been able to pilot Evernote Schools with my iPads. It has created a very solid note-taking environment for my students that is not solely dependent on the device and my students saw that this week. More of my students are now looking to use their personal devices in their other classes. I hope this little experiment pushes more students to think more about the tool and less about the device. It has definitely changed my thought process.

If you want to start your Evernote journey now, follow this link to sign up!