Embarking on iBooks

Fresh off the plane from an intensive week of learning at the Apple Distinguished Educator summit, my adventurous spirit took over and I dove headfirst into a project today. No need to waste time teaching as I did, only need to use time in the new ways I learned from the amazing teachers from South East Asia, Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand.

As we begin the last two months of school, I took my two prep periods today to quickly craft up an iBooks project. After a conference, I always come back overwhelmed and then eager to dive in. Thus, it seems the first day back always becomes the first day of a new project that I figure out and learn alongside my students. Sometimes this way of operating is scary, but more than not it is quite freeing as my students becomes teachers with me. 

Prior to break we finished a unit on introductory geometry. While at the ADE institute in Bali, I delved into create a unit around geometry that utilizes iBooks. In two hours, I put together a quick step-by-step way of implementing this iBooks project. We utilized the following apps and hardware: 

• iPad


• Skitch


• iPad Camera


• MacBook


• iBooks


• GarageBand

Be sure students take photo in the right orientation either vertical or horizontal. 

Overall, I wanted to focus on bringing the languages together that we have at our school. In my classroom, we have Korea, English and Arabic as primary languages. Rather than taking time to create an iBook only for my class, I wanted to focus on creating something that would allow other students to learn basic geometry vocabulary in multiple languages. Thus, the tool we create in my class becomes a tool other teachers can use and download in their classrooms.

As of now, here are the steps. Note that this is truly a work in progress: 

1. Take a photo with Skitch or another photo editing software


2. Draw the shape with a color on Skitch


3. Email the Skitch photo to you or your partner


4. On paper write out definitions of the geometric shapes


5. Write out description in English


6. Write out description in Korean


7. Write out description in Arabic


8. Return iPad and get a computer.


9. Open Garageband.


10. Select podcast.


11. Save it as 5cLanguageiBookShape


12. Do three separate recordings so that you have three individual audio files not three recordings in one file. 


13. First record in English, second in Korean, third in Arabic.


14. Open the iBooks template I Airdropped to you.


15. First thing you need to do is save it as a template


16. Then once you’ve saved it as a template close the window.


17. Now, select new from template chooser


18. Next, save your new file as 5C Names iBooks Geo Shape


19. Finally, replace the content in the book with your own content from the folder you’ve placed the information in on your desktop. 

Starting our#iBook on geometry using #skitch #ade2014 #kispd #zaichcrewz

Not too shabby! Wish you were here@pzaich

Every #toilet should have this #touchscreen #rating #singapore

Min Jun totally rocking his student lead conference #kispd #zaichcrewz #kisslc

Creating comics about historic novels #edtech #kispd #zaichcrewz

Kiddos #email each other #photos for @comiclife project #kispd #zaichcrewz

Using #tedtalk to teach #climatechange #kispd #zaichcrewz

Practicing for student led conferences #kispd #zaichcrewz

#kispd book fair #zaichcrewz

If I weren't a teacher...

We all contemplate occasionally when we are loosing our patience or simply want a break, what we would do if we were not enriching the lovely minds of children. For me, this revelation usually occurs when I am cooking. I love to cook and to bake.

Every Sunday I try to spend time in the kitchen, relaxing and wondering if I could do this all the time. It is a wonderful thing to know what helps you relax. Right up there with baking are the following: baths, reading, walks, and naps. But I am pretty sure that as a second career I can’t choose napping. So just as a fall back in case my love for teaching abandons me at some point, I’ve decided that the following career will be excellent: baker, writer, tweeter, professional lover of life. The last piece is key and really should not even need to be typed. Sometimes I just get swept up and away by all the little stressers of teaching and of life.

Baking whisks them away and yet I know that no matter what I do for a living they will be there. Those little pesky stressers that I am really in control of. So dear self, love life not matter what you are doing. 

Lemon poppyseed muffins #yum #food #baking

Google Teacher Academy. 50 innovative teachers. 2 days. Sydney, Australia. Having just applied to the Apple Distinguished Educator program, I thought why not, I’ll shoot for the moon and try to do the GTA application too. Maybe a bit insane as that would be two intense professional development sessions in about 3 months time, but why not? 

Putting forth effort and time, I was thoughtful about my essays, diligent about my video and purposeful in my blog posts. I knew that I had for sure done my best on the GTA application.

The part that was most difficult for me was the video. Creating content for only 1 minute of time was difficult to say the least. That being said, I really pushed myself to utilize every second. Folding in Google tools as well as others, I strived to compile a comprehensive video that targeted the innovation in my classroom through the use of technology. 

Well, March 8th rolled around and I received a, “Thank you very much, but…” email in my in box. A bit discouraged at first, now I’m not upset or bitter in the least. Rather, I was a bit relieved in a sense because I knew that doing both ADE and GTA would be CRAZY with all caps, yes. That being said, I would still LOVE to participate in GTA in the future—BIG TIME!

So, if you were accepted to GTA first off CONGRATS! So excited for you. I would love feedback on my video that is posted above so that next time around I can really Bring it with a Capital B!

Any tips or comments? 

Thank you in advance!

Duck and cover for #nuclearbomb lesson #kispd #zaichcrewz

Using Skitch to find Geometric Shapes

Skitch is a wonderful FREE app that allows you to annotate a photo. 

Steps: Beginning our geometry unit in my 5th grade class, I wanted a fun way for students to discover geometric figures in the world around them. Rather than simply locate a square or a triangle around the room, I thought that it would be awesome if kids used Skitch on the iPad to take fun pictures of shapes and then call out those shapes using the apps graphic features. Additionally, students wrote the definitions of the words on the photos as a way to document their knowledge. 

1. Download Skitch on the iPad from the App store. 


2. Open Skitch


3. Make an account or don’t, either way works. 


4. Take a photo


5. Use the features to write on the photo, to call out items, etc. 


6. Take a screenshot on the iPad of the photo if you didn’t make an account. 


7. Log into Google Drive on the iPad


8. Click upload, upload the images from the iPad to your Google Drive (wonderful feature of Google Drive on the iPad). 


9. On the computer, have students share images with you. 

Pluses for activity: I liked this activity for a few reasons: it got kids up and moving, had them working together, realizing that geometry is all around them and we could finish a pictures in about 15 minutes. 

Application: Additionally, Skitch has quite a few applications: finding a picture from Google and annotating it, taking pictures for a photography class and annotating, documenting a science experiment etc. 

Collecting the Photos: I did not have students make accounts. Instead I had them take a screenshot on the iPad of the image. Then they uploaded it to their Google Drive and shared it with me. This was a much easier way to get the photos to me as I didn’t want to take the time to make accounts.

Feel free to reply with your ideas on how to use Skitch in your classroom. 

Use #skitch to find #geometric shapes #kispd #kisipads #zaichcrewz

Showcase student work with QR codes

Teachers and parents love paper artifacts—myself included. We love being able to bind a student’s artwork into a lovely laminated book and place it ever so sweetly on their desk for open house. Yet, with so much done digitally, it seems that showcasing student work needs to move from printing that digital artifact to bringing it to life in another way. 

Currently, my students are writing poetry. In the past, I have had students type their poems online and print a hard copy out and illustrate them. They turn out beautifully, as seen here, on some of my student’s blogs. That being said, I constantly and trying to move to a paperless classroom. Therefore, I wanted a way for my current poetry unit to meld the thrill of a paper anthology with the digital world. 

Student using iPad to annote a poem with Penultimate app. 

Two products sprouted from this endeavor. Number 1: Using iMovie or Educreations, I had my students create videos of themselves recording their poems. My first batch was done using Educreations, which is a screencasting tool. They were instructed to take a picture of something that represented their poem and then record themselves reading it. Check one out here! 

My students have blogs, so I also created a page on my website, here, with the Educreations embed code, which they then added to their blog page. Check out my how to video on teaching students how to add html to their blogs for a youtube video (works the same for educreations) here. 

Ultimately, I wanted to post QR codes around school with the videos of their poems linked. Once the first batch was done on Educreations, I realized that because it is flash based, it won’t play on an iPhone or iPad. So, my second try was to use iMovie on the iPad because it is much simpler than on the computer and thus students can create their videos much faster. Check out all the videos created so far here!

Once students made the video on iMovie, I exported it to our class YouTube channel. Then, I took the URLs linked to the videos and created QR codes for them. I printed the QR codes and placed them around the school. 

QR code linked to a studnet’s poem, check it out!

My goal was to showcase poetry in a different way and QR codes have an amazing ability to do just that. A QR code is a matrix barcode that when scanned, links a user to another page. Making a QR code is easy. Using a QR code generator website such as QR Stuff or QR Code Generator, you can make a QR code for free. Simply use a url, test, photo etc. that is house on the web and public to anyone. 

Feel free to share any creative ways you have found for using QR codes in your classroom. Also check out my previous blog post on using QR codes for a photo learning segment.