My iClassroom

I am very fortunate to be working in a New Jersey high school where technology is accepted. I have a great tech department crew to back up my ever growing desire to use new gadgets, and our facilities improve with each passing year. When I began teaching in my current school district, I was a PC teacher. At the end of my first year, our district allowed the music department to create a Mac lab for our music theory program. This began my path to becoming an iTeacher.

We designed a lab of 30 iMacs and loaded them up with the latest music software and each was given a midi keyboard for the students to compose with. It was my first real experience with the Mac environment, and I soon began to see the possibilities and advantages it had over my PC word.

That summer, I bought my first iPhone. I understood that it was a great tool to use in the classroom, and it soon became my most trusted resource for classroom information. This past year, I purchased an iPad and have found that it has tremendously helped me keep my classes organized.

Each day, my students enter my iClassroom. They are greeted by iMusic playing from my iPod, they enjoy the keynote presentations and music theory games that are presented on the iPad, and they watch their teacher take attendance and tune their instruments on an iPhone. When our iLecture is finished for the day, they collect themselves on their iMacs and do their iHomework together.

As professional development credit, our school institutes whey they refer to as “flex classes.” These are sessions designed to help us improve our teaching methods and have an opportunity to collaborate with each other after school to better improve our skills. One of the courses I will be teaching this year is on iClassrooms. Since adopting the Mac platform, I have seen tremendous growth in my students. I have seen their grades rise each year and they are now enjoying themselves tremendously. I hardly have to discipline any students in class because we area constantly moving around the room actively learning.

I am not writing this article saying that by owning a Mac, your child will get smarter. My students are achieving at high levels and staying on task because their teacher is organized. Because I have adopted an iEnvironment to my classroom, I now have more time to teach my students. I am no longer coming into the class unorganized. My student no longer are watching a teacher fumble with technology each day. They see a teacher come in well prepared and ready to go with dynamic lessons and a passion for teaching.

I am writing this blog post to share how I have set up my iClassroom. The one phrase that gets passed around the iCommunity so much is "It Just Works...." I hope that by sharing some of these resources, other teachers will learn how to incorporate some of these great iGadgets into their classrooms the way I have.

Webpage

In each of my classes, I have a website set up. This website includes downloadable links to all of my handouts such as the syllabus and chapter handouts. When I took over these classes 5 years ago, I was not given many materials, and the book was so out dated, it came with a series of cassette tapes. I very quickly came to the realization that I needed to create the curriculums from scratch and that is where the website came in to play.

My websites for these classes have been created on several programs over the years. When I first created these sites, I used a Windows program called Expression Web. It is one that I would highly recommend, and still use. However, this is a program that I would recommend only if one has some keen design skills and can look at a blank page and know what to do with it. I then went onto DreamWeaver on the recommendation that it can do anything I wanted to. I must admit, DreamWeaver is a great program and it can do anything I want it to do, however, I am not equipped with the skills to know how to make it do what I want it to do. I am not one for writing in code, nor will ever be and it was just too much for me.

At that point, I switched to the Mac Platform and found a program called Sandvox. This is the program that I will probably use for the next few years. Sandvox is a simple WYSIWYG web designing tool. It comes packaged with a few dozen outstanding templates and plugins and extra templates are easily available. With Sandvox, I can easily create and maintain my class websites and upload them to my hosting provider without worrying about code or knowing anything about CSS. It is also easy to set up and maintain an RSS feed to host a blog or podcast for my students to subscribe to.

Twitter

I have a twitter account setup that is posted on the front page of each classes page. At the beginning of each school year, I talk to my kids about how I will be using twitter. Many of them have their own twitter accounts. I also talk through Twitter at back to school night and during conferences.

At the end of each class, I either use my iPhone, iPad, or laptop to record the nights homework on Twitter. This information will then show up on my website and will be distributed to the students and parents following me. I use the hashtag #NBTHSMusic at the end of each tweet to help make my feed more searchable.

I am hoping that Twitter becomes a bigger part of my classes this year. In the past, I had quite a few students using Twitter on a regular basis, but many of them did not know or understand about the many opportunities that Twitter offers education and it felt like it was an uphill climb with both students and more so, parents.

Tests and Quizzes

The majority of my tests and quizzes are done using Pages for the Mac. Pages gives me the flexibility to not only create great looking documents, but it also provides me many useful formats to export my documents to.

In addition to the test and quizzes that I create on Pages, I also use an account EasyTestMaker.com. This website allows its users to create a free account where we can create assessment material that is dynamic and engaging for the student. EasyTestMaker supplies its users with several question formats such as short answer, multiple choice, true/false and essay. It also creates an answer key for printing as well.

iPhone

For the last few years, my iPhone was my lifeline to the outside world during long school days. I use my iPhone to take attendance, keep my class records, check websites, play music, track student behavior and so much more.

In addition to being a tremendous multifunction device, it also serves as my presentation remote. I use an app called Keynote Remote in class when giving classroom lectures.

The best use of my phone is for communication. I keep my students contact information in an app and it is very easy for me to communicate with parents and keep them updated on classroom events and assignments.

iPad

I have only been using an iPad for a very short time. Simply put, the iPad is an amazing teaching device and I don't know what I would do without it. I have more than 700 apps on my iPad. It is a tool that I use for keeping attendance, inputting students grades, presentations, audio recordings and even video editing. Due to the abundance of apps available on the app store, the iPad can morph into just about any device I wish it to be.

In the past, when I went from class to class, I would have to pick up my laptop and all of it's cords and take it with me. It was useful, but very bulky and I found that I wasn't getting much work done because I was always waiting for programs to load. The iPad has made my commute quick and painless. I currently teach a study hall on the other side of my building. It is very simple to bring the iPad with me and navigate through the halls.

I use my iPad as an audio recording studio for my music lessons on a daily basis. Through programs such as Audio Recorder and Garageband, I plug my USB microphone into the iPad using the USB Camera Kit attachment. The iPad will record hours of content without me having to worry about too much set up.

I also use my iPad as a presentation tool. I have loaded all of my Keynote presentations onto the iPad and by paring the iPad with my projector, I can give my students a dynamic presentation with little to no setup. This not only saves me time each morning, but allows me to move quickly out of the classroom when the next teacher is trying to set up.

Cloud Computing

One of the best applications available to both students and teachers is Dropbox. Dropbox is a free file storage cloud based account that can be accessed from any device with an internet connection. Dropbox has become my lifeline between my home computer and my school machines. In the past, I have cursed every type of physical media from disks, to CD's to flash drives. I either would forget my files at home, or the media would not perform when called upon. I have never had a problem using Dropbox. I find that my students also enjoy the ease of use in the service as well. They are able to save their files at home to their Dropbox account and then access them during class.

Another online storage system that I use daily in my classes is Google Docs. Google Docs is an online "office" package where you can, for free, create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and online forms. By creating online forms, I have eliminated several hundred sheets of paper from being printed and copied. All of the Google Doc applications can then be linked to your website or embedded inside of a web page for quick access. If you have existing presentations, spreadsheets, or documents, Google Docs will upload your Microsoft Office Documents. I have converted several of my class assignments and even quizzes to Google Docs and my students love the various theme templates that are available.

Apps:

Over the years, my choice of apps has changed quite a bit. I originally searched out apps that had many features and could do many operations. I have since moved to focusing on only using a few apps that have one or two functions to them. These are just a few of the apps that I have been using every day and I would recommend them to any teacher looking to start using iPhones/iPads in their classroom.

1. Attendance: This is a great app for taking daily classroom attendance. It will import your contacts from your address book including photos and it prints out some very nice reports of your students data.
2. Teachers Assistant Pro: Every teacher needs an app to keep track of those little moments when student behavior calls their attention. Teachers Assistant Pro allows teachers to record student interactions and document behavior issues. With a few clicks, the app allows you to create a detailed record of student behavior, and if needed email the information to an administrator, or parent. This is an amazing app for both the iPhone and iPad.
3. Things: I began using ToDo applications last year to keep track of each of my classes. Originally I used one app for my entire schedule, but couldn't find an app that could help me organize all that I do in the course of a week. I then moved on to using a different app for each of my classes and extra activities. I have enjoyed using Do It Tomorrow, iProcrastinate, Simplenote and Notsey. These are all fine apps and I would fully recommend anyone try these out and take full advantage of their features. This year, I am trying Things. Things is an application that has apps for the iPhone, iPad, and iMac. The ability to sync all of your data is why I have chosen Things as my ToDo app for the year. You can leave notes for yourself, organize projects involving multiple steps, and then sync this information with iCal for an even quicker way of managing your daily tasks.

LiveBinders:

LiveBinders is my digital 3-ring notebook. It is a tool that I found over the summer and this year, I will be introducing it in my classes as a way to teach them the value of having organized research information. During the school year, my students do a lesson on Beethoven. In September, we research the history of the composer. Students, in past years, were told to search the internet for various sites on Beethoven, print them out and bring in their work for our discussions. Students would come in with several dozen sheets of paper. This research would get lost as we went through the year and by the time we reached June and were discussing the 9th Symphony, student's wouldn't have any of their research from September. This year, we are going to be creating LiveBinders of Beethoven. LiveBinders can save websites, videos, photos, and pdf files. I am certain that my students will find LiveBinders to be an easy and fun way to collect their research. These binders can then be emailed to others, embedded on a website, or easily presented on a projector. This is a great tool for teachers looking to help their students learn good researching techniques.

It is with the help of these iDevices that I deliver my lessons each day to my students. My iDevices allow my students to have an engaging, interactive, and dynamically creative teacher at their disposal. In turn, by adopting an iClassroom, I have been able to push my iTeaching to the i21st Century.