Pen & Paperless?

Paperless Essay Grading

Like Mike, I've been exploring apps for the purposes of note taking and I've been a proponent of GoodNotes mostly because I've tried other note taking apps (Notability, Bamboo) and they just don't work as well. With GoodNotes, I can mark up PDF documents, create new notes, and import photos. This got me thinking ... if I have students type up a response (essay, concluding paragraph, lab report), I can have them email me a PDF and I can grade it by importing it into GoodNotes. Here's a student example from this past month:

Now I can take this file, export and email it back to the student as a PDF without ever having to print the document. If I wanted, I could attach a rubric or any number of additional pages with comments and send them all back to the student.

Styli ---- that's right, the plural of Stylus

The next hurdle is the writing instrument. Styli come in all shapes, sizes, and degree of quality. Last month I purchased 30 styli from Amazon for about $10. As you might imagine, they didn't last very long. Students are hard on them and the quality just wasn't there.

For my own, personal use, I've been experimenting. I think I've tried about 6-10 different styli and have three that I am currently working out.

• LYNKtek TruGlide (www.lynktek.com):  $15.99

• This stylus has a microfiber tip; quite different from the typical rubber-tipped styli. Quite sensitive and responsive.

• Pogo Sketch (now the Pogo Sketch +, Ten One Design):  $10.99

• This stylus has one of the more rubber-ized tips, but it's small enough that I like its responsiveness. I've found that I have to use more pressure to get it to write, but if you're heavy-handed with a pen, this might be a good choice for you. It's also less expensive.

• The Racer (Best Stylus):  $40.00

• Certainly the most expensive stylus I've tried, but it is BY FAR the most sensitive. I barely have to touch the screen to write smoothly. This would NOT be a stylus for students, however. It comes with a cap and velcro strips to 'reactivate' the tip should it get squished or laden with finger oil.

I have always had a screen protector on my iPad, mostly out of fear of scratching the glass. However, screen protectors significantly decrease the sensitivity of any styli. Therefore, I removed mine (and it was an expensive one) and am working with these styli on the bare glass. So far the results have been fantastic. All three work well, with The Racer being the most responsive.

As far as a class set of any of these, the Pogo Sketch + would probably be the best bet. Any styli would require a bit of education on our part to ensure longer lifetimes of the pens.

They make the movies

I flipped my classroom for this unit, and decided that a good way for them to practice solving exponential equations was many many practice problems. The only problem is that there is one of me to answer a million of their questions.

Solution: each of them make one video solution of a selected problem, and within minutes we have a collection of 25 problems with video solutions on a "class page". We used the app "ShowMe" and it was virtually seamless. Patti was able to snag some good videos of the kids recording and practicing. If you want to try this, ask me for more details on creating accounts, etc.

Flipping!

As you all know I have been playing with flipping over the last year in my classroom. I did take some surveys last year, and Dave came in to my room to see what the flipped learning looked,like. Today I had a revelation as I heard some kids talking.
Students who are WEAK, but do what they are asked, love the videos because they can come to class prepared, and can replay the video if they are confused.
Students who are LAZY, always have an excuse of why they couldn't get the videos to work, and dislike the videos because they have to spend 30-35 minutes doing homework instead of racing through it during study hall or Spanish class.
Students who are STRONG in math (whether it be work ethic or pure genetics), like it because they can work at their pace during class, and they don't have to be slowed down by the kids who are slower learners.

The conversation I heard today was this:
 Weak student: "can we keep doing these videos, I like them a lot!"
Lazy/weak student: "Are you kidding, these take forever to watch! I don't like them."
Weak Student: "I really understand what is going on because I can rewind if I get confused."


WORST EXCUSE I HEARD TODAY:
Lazy Student: "I didn't understand how to do this."
Me: "So you didn't understand how to go to my website, click on two links that take you to YouTube, and copy down what I write down in the video? REALLY?!?!"

It really depends on the kids, whether or not they "like" the flipping in the math classroom. But what really matters is that it is AWESOME for providing them support on the content while they are in the classroom.  Today I had to do a mini- lesson with them and I asked a few questions related to the toes from the night before and they did A FABULOUS job! I am surprised each time I flip my classroom by how awesome it is!

Note taking

So my big adventure with iPads was using them as a personal notebook.  We all know how disorganized our students can be (just look in one of those about to explode backpacks).  So my hope was to be able to put everything onto the iPads and use them as a personal notebook.  There are of course a few problems with this:
1.  Students only have iPads when in our class
2.  Some students still do not have online access outside of school (a very small percentage)

So as I was thinking about what to use I had a few minmum requirements:
1.  Online - anytime - anywhere access. 
2.  The ability to download word/pdf documents and write on them with their iPad
3.  The ability to "hand" the documents in.
4.  Free (or minimal cost)

Here is what I have come up with:
Evernote - this app can be used on all devices ... computers, tablets, smart phones etc.  Its free (so #4 achieved) and they can access it on any device anywhere they have wifi (so #1) achieved.  Drawbacks - its a little clunky on the iPad.  You can view downloaded documents but you cant mark up documents (as the kids say - "epic fail" on #2).  The other drawback is our email server doesn't play well with emailed evernote documents.  I have found lots of emailed evernote documents in our spam and trash folders.  I am trying to have them send it to my ymail account now ... I will let you know how that goes.  A huge plus - photos ... the kids love taking pictures of what they are learning - drawback - you use up the free space quickly.
Skitch - Take a photo and mark it up ... send it to evernote (very cool)

Working on learning "Goodnotes" so far it seems like that would work for marking up documents.  I am going to try using that and having the kids send their final document to evernote and see if they play nicely.

And the journey continues ...
Mike

Video Apps

I spent some time trying each of the video Apps that Molly sent out, and so far I like Doceri the best. You can import pictures like in EduCreations, but you have a range of writing tools, and backgrounds. I especially love the fact that Doceri has graph paper back grounds available and think that will be great for when we start graphing Trig Functions!
I am hoping to have the kids use Doceri this week, fingers crossed!

iPad Maintenance

Time to Take Out the Trash

Figured I'd post again. this time about some system maintenance I've been doing on my iPads. Every device gets a little quirky if left on for too long so I took a few minutes to clean things up.

Mail

Just yesterday I decided to check the SENT email box in Mail to see how many emails had been sent. I think that ALL of the emails sent from every iPad accumulate in one mailbox ... I had over 700 messages! Most of the emails sent were photos (from the initial Photobooth bonanza) with the remainder being quiz corrections.

Apps

If you notice that Apps are crashing on your iPads, it's probably a good time to shut them all down and restart the devices. I figure it's a good thing for us to do (or have the kids do) at least weekly.

I checked to see if all of my Apps had been updated and, if they weren't, took the time to update them. After that, I quit all of them (by double tapping on the Home button, then holding down on one of the open apps at the bottom of the screen). Finally I shut down the iPads completely so that they could be restarted by the students and, hopefully, function without Apps crashing.

Kid Usage

My students are primarily using their iPads to take notes (via GoodNotes or Evernote) and to take in-class quizzes via the MOODLE. I've noticed that the web connection for the students when all 25+ of them are online seems slow, but otherwise the kids are becoming more efficient with the devices.

Carl