Ms.+Jatzke


 * August 2012:** It has been a summer of learning all about the Ipad. I want to be ready to jump right in and teach the students in the 7th grade Honors Math class because Mr. Reilley had them last year. He will be a tough act to follow!

The new Ipad teachers attended a two day training session. One of the highlights was when students from last year came in, stood at the front of the room, and addressed a room full of teachers about their experiences on the Ipad. Loud and clear, the students want all of their work to be done on the iPad. So I came home and scanned all of the warmups that I usually give my students to work on during the first few minutes of class, while I transition from my previous class, take attendance and check homework. I'm not sure I'll use them all, but at least they are ready to go!


 * September 7, 2012:** First day of school! Today my students and I met each other, and I think we are all equally excited. I explained that this is an Honors Math class, and that we would be following the PreAlgebra book to get them ready for Algebra, but that I would not issue them a book to take home because it should all be accessible on the Ipad. I still have to figure out exactly how to do that, but I have confidence that we'll be able to do this as soon as everyone has their IPads in hand and my Smartboard is working properly.

I asked the class to raise their hands if they were involved in the Ipad group last year. Then I asked for a show of hands of students who are familiar with how to get around on the Ipad, and know how to use Apps. Virtually everyone raised their hands. They told me that they would be teaching me all about it. :-)

Next week, I plan to start teaching the math curriculum, and introduce the students to the main apps. I would also like to get them exploring/comparing two message forums I have set up for them: Google Groups and Edmodo. We will also talk about DropBox as a way to store files.

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 * September 12, 2012:** First day with our Ipads! I decided that because half of my class were either coming from last year's Ipad program or had their own personal IPads, I would jump right in and assign a project. The Project was titled "Show Me What You Know" but I allowed students to pair up. It was interesting to note that students did split themselves up so that each of the veterans was grouped with students who were not all that comfortable with the IPad apps. The only requirements were that the project had to use 3 Apps and have something to do with fractions, since I knew they learned about them in depth in 6th grade. This is just one of the outstanding projects that I received.


 * September 13, 2012:** Back to School Parent night: I showed parents the Course outline and explained that this was a class that would get them ready to take Algebra next year. I also discussed the NJASK, and that we would be preparing for that, too. We then took a look at Successnet on the SmartBoard. which is the online product for their textbook. We discussed DropBox and Edmodo and I asked everyone if I was overwhelming their children with my emails and requests to join groups, etc, everyone said no, that their child has been happy to fill my requests.


 * September 14, 2012** At the end of class, I told the students to give ME a homework assignment: for me to use either Pages, Keynote or Imovie for a presentation on a math concept of their choosing. If all 21 students reply, I will go with the majority. :-)


 * October 2012** One night a student emailed me about difficulty he was having on the homework. I was able to use Notability and Email to draw out the solutions to a few of the problems, enough to get him going so that he could finish his homework! How exciting!


 * November 11, 2012** I finally got my homework assignment done (just kidding!). In all honesty, though, this past month or so has flown by. My intent was to at least update this page weekly, but now that I am in the full swing of teaching again I see how hard it is to fit one more thing in. But I will try to do a better job of it in the future :-)

In September 14th's entry, I mentioned that I gave the students a chance to assign a project to me. They wanted me to learn IMovie, but I didn't get a great response on what they wanted the IMovie to be about, so I created one as a Teaser for the first real Math Lesson from the Textbook on using Variables. It took me all weekend. Hours and hours. I wanted the perfect piece of music to go with the pictures I chose, and once I found that, it took me hours to actually get it into the IMovie. You see, I have lots of music on my personal Ipad from my purchased physical DVDs. Transferring a song to the School Ipad had me stumped. I even emailed my students as to what I should do, and they gave me a few new ideas. It turned out to be rather easy: I just had to email the file from my PC to my pv-eagles gmail account.

Clearly, I am not as good at making IMovies as my students are: they can create something that will WOW me during a class period or two. When I came back to school on Monday, of course they wanted to see mine. They liked it, but it took about a minute to play, and took me hours to create. But I learned a great deal, and came away with a real appreciation for the knowledge that our students already have concerning these IPads.


 * November 11, 2012** This past month we have been setting rules and procedures for our Ipad class. I have to be very clear about when I expect students to be doing their Math work, and when they can use "waiting" time to play games. "Waiting time" is that time that occurs when a student has finished the work and has checked it over, and is waiting for other students to finish so that class can re-start. Parents are permitted to allow their children to put games on their students' IPads, so we as teachers have allowed those (as long as they are educational games) to be used during wait time. Wait Time is usually only about 5 minutes or so: any longer than that and I would encourage students to go to a Math App, like Math!!! and practice skills, or visit Edmodo and join in a conversation there. If parents prefer that their child not play games, they should delete the ones they don't consider to be educational, and they should let me know that they would prefer that their child not play games.

I do want to say, however, that there is quite a bit of Math underneath all the fun in many games. I wouldn't want to restrict those games, because those games can be excellent at teaching our students "How to Think" and "Problem Solve." Some of these games are found on my website at Good Games for Math

Surfing the web and YouTube are not allowed unless it is Project-Driven.


 * November 11, 2012** After much trial and error, and student input, we have decided to use Dropbox as our storage place for the items I want to pass out to the students, like worksheets (Practices), Lessons (pages scanned from the students' textbox, and Notes (notes that I create that get right to the concepts needing to be taught). Parents can also access these pages, if they have their child download the pages from Dropbox.

Day to day Apps we have used: Notability, NeuAnnotate, IMovie, KeyNote, Pages, Doceri, Safari and Dropbox Upcoming projects to end a chapter: Don't Lose Your Balance, Currency Events.
 * November 11. 2012**

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 * November 19, 2012** We finished Chapter 2, and started our Project called "Don't Lose Your Balance." This is a several day project that I expect to finish up tomorrow, and then spend some time allowing students to display and share their work by using our newly installed Apple TV. The project entails having students create their own balance scale and using coins as weights to demonstrate solving equations and inequalities. The document that shows the project outline is here:

And here are a few pictures of the students working on it!

Minecraft Coordinates, Minecraft House, Doceri Solving Equations