Techno.

How am I using my iPad so far?
1)Socratic circle "outer circle" notes. Have one student record his or her notes on the big screen. Other students can keep up with what questions were just asked and there is a record for students who are absent.
2)Teaching theme. Define theme for students. Have students brainstorm abstract nouns that relate to the novel (fear,love,isolation, etc.). Pass the iPad around and have students add one noun to the group list. From there, have students turn the words into themes (isolation results in savagery). Again, pass the iPad around to share the themes. From there, have students write a theme paragraph...
3) Magnet/found poetry. Touchwords,poetrymagnets, verses poetry, and poesy are all FREE apps. The first three lend themselves to found poetry...very much like the magnet poetry you find on fridges. The last could be used as a team game/review/assessment?? Place students in groups of three. Each team must put the words in the correct order, identify any literary devices, and provide an explanation of meaning/significance.
4)Stickpick. Mix up the students you call on to ensure equal participation. Includes Bloom's taxonomy question stems.
5) Doceri. NOT FREE. Install on both your iPad and desktop. This will allow you to control your DESKTOP from your iPad...WIRELESSLY! You can also annotate documents on the projector. Want a free version? Teamviewer. Its functions are more limited, though.
6)Prezi viewer. View your prezi's on your iPad. What is a Prezi, you ask? A free, web-based presentation thing-a-mabob. It is somewhat like PowerPoint, but it utilizes zooming instead of switching slides. Check it out.

That's all so far.

Ideas I have for further use...active reading/annotation, thesis creation & review, peer review, research on the fly, ??? Suggestions???

If you have ideas or cool websites, post them!

When it rains, it pours

People have most often associated me with the following terms: OCD, obsessive, perfectionist, reliable, organized, punctual. This week, the first week of school I might add, I have broken every preconceived notion that might be associated with my name.

We started the week with a printer meltdown that had me using my favorite four letter words before 7:15 in the morning. As the day progressed, I was informed that I made the most significant of all grading errors...an error that will required 120 hand-filled forms and hours of computer updating. Surely it can't get worse. But it does. Why? Because when it rains, it pours. Next, our ninth grade volleyball coach quit a few days before tryouts. Guess who gets to help cover tryouts AND have her own practices? Yep. Me. To top it all off, on the fourth day of school I told multiple students to "back off," "leave me alone for a minute," and "stop talking to me right now." Nice first impression.

It is actually raining right now (which is nice since I haven't watered my flowers or garden since Sunday). But what I noticed is that it wasn't pouring; it was more of a light sprinkle. As I trudged down 440, I started to think about my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. Maybe it isn't pouring after all. Sure, things are not going smoothly. That doesn't mean, however, that it is all bad. Case in point, the 250 minutes spent watching my students work together to answer this question: "what does it mean to be human." It was awesome. They were arguing, collaborating, stretching their minds. Sure, there were some dark clouds (cough, cough *grade change forms) hanging over my head. But I seemed to forget about those worries when I was listening to my 15 year-olds struggle with the most difficult question ever asked.

Moral(s) of the story: no one is perfect; learn to value what really matters; Saturday is always right around the corner :)