IPad Projects

                     




Free from the iTunes store:


https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/sharing-learning-real-audiences/id849905173?mt=11

Sharing Learning with Real Audiences: iPad Project ideas for the Elementary Classroom.
By Gavin Smart

I came across this resource when I met Gavin at an Apple Regional Training Event last summer and keep recommending it to teachers. There are many other 'One Best Thing' guides in the iTunes Store

Apps for Students with Dyslexia

Another great link from Call Scotland

http://www.callscotland.org.uk/Resources/Posters-and-Leaflets/iPad-Apps-for-Learners-with-Dyslexia/

Check out the other app wheels from this link for ASD and complex communication needs.

Starter Apps to scaffold learning and aid presentation skills that I like include:

Explain Everything: App to use voice, picture and words to explain a classroom activity

Write to Read: learn to read by writing

Comic Life: versatile presentation tool

Book Creator: makes books with pictures, words and sound

Pages: word processor – can save for word or pdf

Collins - Big Cat books –  to read stories to you, to read by yourself, to create stories yourself

Phonics –  Hairy Letters and Pocket Phonics

Evernote: Teachers and student may like to make notes and record homework with this app

For struggling readers – see free resources at https://load2learn.org.uk  and http://www.seeingear.org/ for free access to library books for those with specific learning difficulties

E-Books for students with dyslexia

Useful link from Call Scotland - Most of the providers are voluntary organisations or publicly-funded services offering books for no or low cost but there are also some commercial providers of accessible digital books:

http://www.booksforall.org.uk/Finding-Books/Accessible-Book-Providers/

The table tells you if the provider is just for Scottish students or open to anyone. Check out https://load2learn.org.uk  from the list

iPads and Dyslexia - Access

For ease of access go to General Settings and accessibility

Look for the Accessibility section and consider Invert Colours, Text Size, Text to Speech

For advice on access, reading and writing:
Paul Nesbit of Call Scotland has a great presentation with straight forward advice:
http://www.callscotland.org.uk/Common-Assets/ckfinder/userfiles/files/iPad-Apps-for-Learners-with-Dyslexia-presentation.pdf  

Useful resources for design students

 Some apps and free Web 2.0 tools that Design Essentials students shared were:  

Stumble Upon to help with researching products/interests: http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Pintrest - keep track of your internet searches with your own pins and look at other peoples pins - try a search for chairs and see what you get! http://www.pinterest.com/

Flipboard for ipad to collate log books, make magazines. https://flipboard.com/



OU T217 Saturday School

Fantastic day on Saturday October 5th with students starting T217. Modelling and Sketching

Very creative modelling with plasticine. Inspired by the words, fun, warm and aggressive, everyone got down to modelling their first shapes.

Next - more shapes inspired by the word fluid

Then combining the shapes and a bit of remodelling inspired new designs for chairs

After a discussion we realised we had several ranges including the


Cocoon Range

Favourite Resources

Students on the OU course H800: technology-enhanced learning practices and debates have been listing favourite resources. These are a few with comment and descriptions by the students:

Mindmup: http://www.mindmup.com - is a free mind mapping tool that can be used online, with Google Drive, and on your desktop. MindMup works like most mind mapping tools in that you can create a central idea and add child and sibling nodes all over a blank canvas. MindMup nodes can contain text and links. When you're ready to save your MindMup mind map you can save it to Google Drive, save it to your desktop, or publish it online. If you publish it online, you can grab an embed code for it to post it in a blog post or webpage. 

 VideoNot.es: http://www.videonot.es - is a new tool for taking notes while watching videos. VideoNotes allows you to load any YouTube video on the left side of your screen and on the right side of the screen VideoNotes gives you a notepad to type on. VideoNotes integrates with your Google Drive account. By integrating with Google Drive VideoNotes allows you to share your notes and collaborate on your notes just as you can do with a Google Document.

 Educlipper: http://www.educlipper.net - is a place for teachers and students to collaborate on the creation of visual bookmark boards. It's kind of like Diigo with a very visual element. You can use the eduClipper bookmarklet to add "clips" (bookmarks) to your eduClipper boards. You can also add PowerPoint, PDF, and image files to your boards. You can add links to videos to your boards. You can play the videos without leaving your eduClipper board. And those who have Google Drive can add Google Drive files to their eduClipper boards. The best part of eduClipper, and why it could work really well as a collaborative tool, is that you can create class boards to share with students and they can share boards with you.

Jane Hart's Top 100 tools for learning has been going for several years now. She provides a list of tools and we can vote for tools we find most useful. The 2013 list isn't out yet, but you can have a look at 2012. I often refer to this site. Not only does it provide information about the tools that people are using, but it also gives you a picture of their popularity (uptake / decline) year by year.

The link is: http://c4lpt.co.uk/top100tools/.

Treezilla: http://www.treezilla.org/

This project aims to record trees across the country - Citizen science from the OU. If you scroll down to the bottom of the index page, you will see links to other similar initiatives - I love the OpenScience Laboratory as well.

Stixy: http://www.stixy.com/

This is a really great interactive bulletin board. I've used it on development projects where the project teams and / or stakeholders need to work together to gather resources and share ideas. It's a very visual tool. I've also used it to create online mood boards for brainstorming and design. One idea is to use this to gather information that will inform the development of personas / user profiles.

Prezi: http://prezi.com/: 

This is a presentation tool. I probably don't need to describe this one, but it does work very well, and makes it fairly simple to create, collaborate and share online presentations. The templates allow you to produce something very slick without too much stress.