The new iPad

New iPad. I looked at the new features for the new iPad and it’s amazing how Apple engineers were able to produce this amazing product. The resolution that this new iPad is comparable to today’s latest LED HDTVs.  Which is one of the most talked features about the new iPad, its resolution and the speed of the processor.  I like to comment on this new gadget since people just go by the marketing and don’t realize the major upgrades.  Apple spends millions of dollars in marketing to advertise their products, but regardless of that they have developed quality products in the last 10 years and the products speak for them selves.  I am not a mac fan, but I have tried their products and I know they are expensive, but it’s worth it. I am a linux user and mac are linux-based, that’s why I decided to try apple products. Please check the following article where they talk about the new iPad  and give a pretty decent review about it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304459804577281472610072322.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

SmartPens - State-Of-The-Art Technology

Pen and pencils are still used by students from K-12 to higher education.  Digital pens are another state-of-the-art technology available for students.  Now we have Digital Pens, there is this in particular called LiveScribe smartpen that captures not only what you write down, but also it records audio. There are several digital pens out there, but some of them require special paper or they are not very accurate. LiveScribe smart pens transfer all you write or draw to your computer and it allows you to create notebooks to organize your notes.

This technology can be used from K-12 to higher education.  Since this can be sued for both Educators and students, I have the flexibility to demonstrate its use for the students and for the teacher; first I will start of with the scenario to integrate college students. 

Subject: Writing

Learning objective: Students will be able to store their notes digitally in their computers and be able to access them anywhere any time.

Checkout the following video on how the smartpens are used in K-12 education.  This is an awesome technology that can tremendously help both students and teacher in Technology Education.  It’s a great learning tool. It can improve student learning offering a better understanding of what teachers are talking about. 

For educators using the same technology they can create what is called pencasts.  Which is a digital version of the class you are teaching capturing both notes and audio.  You can use the pencasts for any topic from math problems explanation where you can actually draw formulas and all the fancy symbols to chemistry classes where you can write chemistry equations.

This smartpen is like a computer in a pen, it can even translate.  Please checkout the following link where you can see all the different examples on how pencast is currently used.

http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/solutions/k12/pencast.html

 

MathBoard - Technology Education

Student learning can be highly supported by technology.  Mobile technology can tremendously help technology education teachers and students, through the different educational applications developed for tablets.

Subject: Math

Grade level: 4^th

Topic: basic math operations

Learning objectives: The students will be able to perform and practice integer operations on a mobile app called MathBoard ( or Desktop Version, if iPads are not provided by the school district).

This is a great and a very interactive mobile application for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division operations.  It can be customized depending on the math operation you would to practice, this mobile app makes math fun. 

 

This is an application developed for the iPad and is a fantastic math-learning tool for kids from kindergarten all the way up to elementary school. MathBoard allows generating up to 250 questions per quiz.  Each quiz can be time out.  You can also save the quizzes, so you can replay them and go over them with your students about the mistakes made.  MathBoard is a LanSchool EdApp certified.  Mathboard is designed as quiz, so you can practice and test students. Please join me to view the following video on how MathBoard is being reviewed. You can see how it works.

I could use MathBoard to randomly give a pop quiz to my students and time them to see how long does it take them to complete a 10-question quiz. See the scores and then I will be able to see how my students do in arithmetic operations, as well as more complex operations.  This can definitely help math teachers to practice with students.

MathBoard is also available for Mac users as software. You have the same functionality as the mobile app, the only difference is that you run the software from you computer rather than from a tablet.  You can also view how the desktop version works in the following video.

  Desktop Version:

1. Tablet computers are very popular, but are they classroom ready?

Vineet Madan, Vice President of McGraw-Hill Higher Education eLabs, argues in this Mashable article, that tablets are ready for the classroom.
While the article focuses on higher learning institutions, the examples would work just as well in K-12 classrooms.

http://mostateteachers.typepad.com/missouri_state_teachers_a/2011/05/6-reasons-tablets-are-ready-for-the-classroom.html

2. What do you do with a Digital Pen?

This technology can be used by students with disabilities for note taking, writing, reading, mathematics,
and virtually any content area. Using the pen for augmentative communication, as well as in-class assessment
is discussed. Teachers can use a recording digital pen to create a “pencast” of a lecture. The
pencast could then be available for repeated viewings by students who require repetition for learning
or those not available when the content was covered. The chapter concludes that the recording digital
pen’s applications and usage will expand as knowledge of the device increases.

link to PDF document

Visual aid in Education

I am the person who in a classroom will use a lot of media to teach, I will go from pictures, PPTs, videos, animations, you name it. I think that the human being understand better through images and retains most of the information when is presented visually. A perfect example would be a movie, how many of us we are like, have you seen this movie? Do you remember when “this” happened? And we start remembering the entire movie, and that’s because we have stored those images and video sequences in our head.  For instance, I bet that those who have read Harry Potter movies would remember more by watching the movie that actually readings from the book.  I am not currently a teacher but as student I can say that I learn  more from visual materials. 

  We can make use of visualization tools to help our students to understand better a certain concept. 

Another important aspect of visualization with these technologies is collaboration. With the use of Web Video conferencing we achieve another level of student sharing and collaboration.  As IT manager on a university I have experience even in Math classes how visualization technologies aids student learning. With the use of smart-pens, or digital boards such as Smart Boards, and sketch/drawing tools, student and teachers can draw mathematical equations and explain the process in writing but “digitally” where this can be later uploaded to a shared space for the teacher to evaluate or simply it can be posted for sharing an example on how to solve a math problem with the rest of the class. 

I love mobile technology and I can see a great trend with this technology in Higher Education, students now use their tablets or iPads to go over assignments, do research and even communicate with other in webinars or other video mobile conferencing tools available for these tablets.

PowerPoint news and alerts

1. Best Presentation tips. This web site will aid you while creating your presentation. these are simple but very helpful tips.

• http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html

2. PresenterMedia will provide you with resources to enhanced your PowerPoint presentations, you get animations, templates and clip-art for your presentations. All you need to create stunning PowerPoint presentations. Download PowerPoint templates, animated clipart, presentation graphics, and HD video backgrounds. Experience the future of PowerPoint with our New Animated Templates for PowerPoint.

• http://www.presentermedia.com/

Take a few moments to go over these sites; I’m pretty sure you will find something useful out of these sites.

Blogs and Alerts

MS Share Point is a very powerfull collaboration application. You can give it the use you want. For educational purpose I think it can help a lot on the document sharing for this case. I found this very useful tutorial that might come handy.

http://www.sharepointhosting.com/video_tutorials.html

I think everyone have heard about Google Docs, but maybe not all of us have had the time to play around with it. Please feel free to read and view the tutorials in the following website, after going through this you will be able to understand better how Google Docs works.

http://sites.google.com/site/gdocswebquest/