Using iBooks Author, crediting images, making great resources.

Here's a video I made about the iBook I've created for my students for studying Macbeth in 2012. I'll let you know how they enjoy / hate it. I'm hoping they like it, and I'm hoping to make more, but I also aim to also enable some further means for students to interact with the ideas and content we cover in the course. I used the iPad app Disp Recorder to record the screen of my iPad, and record the voice over. There was only a glitch when the keyboard came up to show how to take notes, but otherwise, I'm happy with the quality.

It was a simple process to export the video to my picture roll, upload to my Vimeo App, and from there upload to Vimeo. In the morning it was available, and I'm embedding it in the blog from my iPad. So many content creation possibilities now with iPads, limited mostly only by our imaginations.

Macbeth iBook Tour from Jennifer Mitchell on Vimeo.

Teaching Teachers iPad EdTech - Weaving a multi-stranded base of support.

For the past eight months I have been teaching both young students in a Literature course for International students, and conducting regular Professional Development training sessions on new educational technology for teachers. If had I imagined I would be able to easily transfer my teaching skills across the divide between teaching young people and teaching teachers, I would have been seriously mistaken. Fortunately, as I began my second training role I was completing a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching, the focus of which is teaching adult learners in tertiary settings. I had already come to the realization that some of the philosophy underlying adult education theories, such as the belief that adult learners are both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to learn for 'higher reasons,' concerned with their professional identities and personal development, could not necessarily be taken for granted. Teaching already established teachers new things is a deeply challenging task; one which needs careful and nuanced planning and delivery.

Why the iPad is a great constructivist tool for education. A case study in Literature.

My most visited post ever was from March 2011, when I wrote about Teaching with iPads - beyond the shiny surface. I think I gave a good run down of some of the features which make it a useful creation tool for teachers and students, but I think I diverged somewhat from my major interest in this blog, social constructivism. So here I am endeavoring to bring these two interests together in considering why, and how, the iPad can contribute to a pedagogy based on the principles of social constructivism. Of course, I am not claiming one 'needs' an iPad to achieve this - that would be silly.

Teaching with iPads: Beyond the Shiny Surface

I have to admit right up front that I am not disinterested in seeing the very positive aspects of teaching students with mobile technology - and iPads in particular. My role as an Education Technology Manager in an iPad Project needs me to be an advocate for the investment in time, money and resources so far expended. But before I took on this role, I was teaching Literature to nine different tutorial groups of English language learners a week, and I used my iPad in almost every class - sometimes frequently, other times not at all. If you are interested in reading more about this pilot, look at the blog, and the recent report on the six month pilot, here.

My use of the iPad in the classroom has been wholly dependent on the learning task I have designed. It is never just about using the technology, and any good teacher will tell you that about any learning technology. The number of times I have read negative comments from people on blogs, and in response to positive articles about iPads in classrooms, arguing that the iPad is just a shiny toy deployed by Apple to take over the world, are not comments from teachers who have actually made a good effort to teach with one.

Here are five of the top reasons I love teaching with the iPad, and just a note, we have a reliable dedicated WiFi network for the iPads at our college.