Mrs.+Ball

=Mrs. Ball's iPad Page=

Welcome to my Wiki! I'm excited to be able to integrate the iPads into the new Science curriculum that is being used by all 6th graders this year. All 6th grade students will be able to access their textbook online. Our iPad class has the additional benefit of being able to download the activities into iBooks as a pdf so they can refer to them even when internet access is not available. I will help the students figure out how to do this once they receive their iPads later this week. If you would like to view the online book before then the link and necessary passwords are on my school webpage.

This year has really been flying by! The iPads have been a great tool for learning in general as well as for more specific uses in our Science Lab activities. I love how motivating use of the iPads is to the students.

Quizlet.com and Flashcardlet--The Quizlet website supports the Flashcardlet app. It's a great alternative to having my students copy vocabulary definitions. I enter the vocab on the website and the kids can just download it into their app and have instant flashcards to review. Additionally, Quizlet allows students to take practice quizzes with their vocab.

The iPad camera is so convenient for video taping lab activities! Students can record or take photos to use for themselves when analyzing data or to share with other students. We have used the video function to help the students compare the change in speed of a motor that was powered by a solar panel, to photograph experimental results and some students chose to take pictures of the moon each night (when it wasn't cloudy!) while we were studying the moon's phases.

Whiteboard and ScreenChomp were useful in combination with the Moon app while the students were studying tides. After choosing a location and finding tide tables on the internet the kids were able to take a screen shot of this data. They then opened the pictures in whiteboard or Screenchomp and were able to locate and mark the extreme tides. After comparing this data to the moon phases they were able to infer the connection between the moon and tides.

We wrapped up our unit on Space with a Vacation through Space with the goal of comparing and contrasting Earth with another planet. The students were allowed to pick the app they wanted to use for the project and most students used one of the following: iMovie, Keynote, Storybook Jr, or Photocard. They produced some amazing projects!

Notability has been a great addition to our app selection! The students have found this so much easier to use as a notebook than Paperdesk. It's easily organized and you can annotate right in this app rather than having to open a typed document in a second app to "write" by hand.

Finally, we got to use the ProScope in class to help study soil composition! It's a magnifier/microscope with different lenses to change the level of magnification. The best part is that each student can see the sample being observed right on his or her iPad by using the AirMicroPad app and can even take their own screen shots of the magnified material.

To review our unit on Soil the students used the Idea Sketch app to make a web of concepts they have learned about in this unit. The groups are now working on using screen shots from their webs along with photos from the internet to make a podcast explaining the main concepts from this unit.

The people behind Notability really impressed me last night. We make a lot of data tables in science and that has been the one thing lacking in their app, no automatic table maker. I emailed them a suggestion about including this in future updates and received a reply from a real person within 3 hours! They also requested more input from me about specific features I would like when making tables.

[|Mrs. Ball's School Webpage]