How will I use I-Pads in my teaching?

How will I use I-Pads in my teaching?  I am a work in progress!  I feel as though I am still at a very primitive stage in my technology skills and integration of technology in my teaching.  Thus far, I have used the i-pad to take pictures of students in programs and on field trips to share with parents in weekly communications.  In fact, the technology has already changed the way that I teach not by implementing the I-pads (yet) but by forcing me to better organize my thinking.  I have used ExplainEverything to make an appeal for greater funding for tech in our school. I have used Popplet to create a web of ideas and to find the connections, and to differentiate between the big ideas and the examples.  I can also imagine that it could be a tool for curriculum mapping or even for making family trees. Doodle is fun way for students learning the aleph-bet to practice writing.  I have also noticed that by using apps, I am learning to better use the Internet.   Becoming familiar with the I-pad, has also given me the courage to use Internet sites that I knew about but had not used such as making source sheets on Sepharia.org (my students were very impressed!) rather than cutting and pasting from Mellel.  I have been thinking about the interface between the Torah and Technology: Becoming a Digital Mensch.  I have researched and collected materials, brainstormed ideas, talked to people and created both a Popplet and an ExplainEverything on this subject.  Is it meant to be a lesson, a course, a curriculum?  And in our final session, exploring the Animator app, it occurred to me, that students could use Animator to demonstrate some of the texts in the Digital Mensch lesson such as teachings from Pirkei Avot, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" or "Your friend's property should be as precious to you as your own." Indeed, I am a work in progress!

New Reel/Movie Trailer Assignment Idea

One of my ideas for an assignment for my class this coming year is to have the students make news broadcasts or movie trailers on the iPads about significant topics in the history portion of our sixth grade curriculum. I plan to divide them into groups and allow them to choose their topics. Once they have chosen a topic I will allow them class time and homework time to do research into the event, movement, etc.
Hoping most of the reading and research will be done at home (utilizing a flipped classroom set up) and the students can use class time to interact and create their videos I would allot a fair amount of time for them to get to know the apps in the iPads and allow them time to edit their footage together. I would encourage them to utilize videos found online to splice into the footage they are shooting of their group members for added interest.  I would have the students use iMovie or Green Screen to create the news reels or movie trailers.

Once the videos were completed I would have the students share each group's work with the class and present a lesson on their topic to teach the other class members about their topic. After this work is shared with the class I would post the students work on our class' website Popplet.
The Popplet will be utilized to share the ever evolving and expanding curriculum with the students and parents. By posting the work on the website the students will be able to share their hard work with family members at home to instill a sense of pride. By consistently showcasing the work the students have done in this manner it will encourage them to put more effort into their classwork and constantly encourage them to strive to do better.

Bringing Technology Into The Classroom

During my time in the CJP TTF Cohort, I have gain so much knowledge of not only the applications on the iPads to bring into my classroom, but knowledge on ways to entirely change my classroom set up for better learning. Discussing the concept of the Flipped Classroom in our Cohort gave me wonderful ideas on ways I could entirely change my approach to the curriculum in the upcoming school year.
As an educator who has always learned best through kinetic education, finding new ways to engage my students not just through aural, oral, and visual lesson plans is always inspiring. My students are in the sixth grade and by the time they arrive at religious school have spent long days sitting at desks. Being able to offer them time to learn while still getting to expel energy is like a gold mine to me as their teacher!
I would like to design my program next year utilizing a website that will be host to a number of links and projects, but will begin with a Popplet highlighting our curriculum. On the Popplet I would like to showcase the main ideas we are discussing in class and springboard from there. On the website parents should be able to access articles to discuss with their children, students should be able to access review materials and watch videos with their families.
I would also include homework assignments and future in class assignments to help get the children excited about what is to come and allow them to collect materials beforehand while helping them develop time management skills. I would also like to include on this Popplet photos of the students in class and the work they complete. Link to the videos they make would be a very enticing way to get parents to continue to check in on the website and remain engaged with their childrens' education.

Using Technology in Course Planning

The Teaching and Technology Fellowship really allowed me to think about how I want to teach for the upcoming year.  Because the school year for the courses I teach ended during the Fellowship, I focused myself on planning for the next school year. 

As some background information, I teach at a Reform synagogue, a Pre-Confirmation class made up of 7th, 8th and 9th grade students.  The structure of the curriculum is flexible and as a faculty we look for opportunities to engage students in Jewish Learning that interests them.

Teaching two courses each year allowed me to consider many different methods.  The first course I planned out was Jews in the News which was focusing more on the content creating aspect of the iPad technology.  Students would access a webquest for the instructions on their task to create a newscast each class about a current event item in Israel or an issue that effects Jewish people.  By using articles found on the internet they would produce a newscast using Tellagmi, iMovie or the green screen application.  The newscasts would be shared on the Temple webpage.

The second course focused on technology as a way of presenting and organizing class materials.  Using Jews on television to explore stereotypes of Jews, students would view select television episodes and through class discussion look for the different ways in which Jews are portrayed.  The introductory lesson, which is linked below, provides several short YouTube clips of some of the shows we would view. Students would be asked to use those clips to brainstorm some of the stereotypes that we might be exploring.

Introductory Lesson Prezi - still in progress but a GREAT start!

During each class discussion we would take notes using Popplet so that at the end of the seven-week course we would have a web of all the sterotryes discussed and examples from more than one television show for each.

Using technology to plan out the courses was in some ways easier than I had expected.  Creating a Prezi was more challenging than I had anticipated and it took me at least 3 tries to be satisfied with what I had created. This could be due to my status as a novice Prezi user.  Its a good thing I have a few more months before class starts to make improvements!

How Different Families Celebrate Shabbat

For my lesson plan, I decided to focus on the class I will most likely be teaching next year, which is called Shabbat Club. Shabbat Club is a Friday afternoon class for kindergarteners. Although the class is not only focused on Shabbat, this is what I decided to focus my lesson plan on. I want the children to learn about how they all celebrate Shabbat differently at home. Through sharing their different family traditions students will be able to see that everyone celebrates differently and that there is not one set way to celebrate Shabbat.

This lesson will be one that is ongoing throughout the year, since it will involve each family taking home a "Shabbat box" that I put together. Each Friday evening a different family will take home the "Shabbat box" which will contain candlesticks, a kiddush cup, a challah cover, and a flip camera. The families will have the opportunity to record how they celebrate Shabbat together and show the class actual footage of their Friday night traditions. Because we are a reform community I don't foresee any issues with using technology during Shabbat.

In addition to the weekly "Shabbat box," I will ask the students for words that they would use to describe their own shabbat celebrations and together we will turn them into a tagxedo that the students can take home and share with their families. An example might look like this:

The final component to the lesson would be allowing students to each use a netbook and create a popplet diagramming how they do Shabbat at home. The popplet could look something like this:

To wrap up the lesson we would have a discussion about how our families are different and how they are similar. Students would be able to see that everyone celebrates Shabbat differently and there is no right or wrong way to do it.