Mac's iLife In The Classroom

MacBook's iLife suite can help make some great productions for students in the classroom.  iMovie, iPhoto, and Garageband are very powerful tools and offer some fairly elaborate features that not only make it fun for the user, but can make a well crafted product.  Do NOT let these programs scare you.  Once you learn a few basic steps, you or your students can create a very nice product with minimal involvement.  

Using the iLife suite in the classroom for class projects or a final portfolio of what they learned, not only creates interest and engagement from the student, but allows students to learn about the content in ways that lecture or worksheets can not.

Students can create "movie trailers" as a book report; a handsome photo album of their collected images of 911; create a podcast as if they were reporting live at the Beach of Normandy; use their iTunes library to store important documents or podcasts from iTunesU.  With a little creativity you can do so much more using this collection of media producing software.  Because each of these programs are in one suite and are Apple products, they sync and work with each other.  So if I am creating an iMovie and need some images from iPhoto or some music from iTunes, I can access these right in the iMovie program.

With any of these applications, I consider myself almost-pro if not pro.  I can assist you with creative ideas on how we can use these applications with what you are doing in your classroom.  I would even love to make a class visit and walk your students through some of the basics and advanced features of any of these programs.

Please contact me at any time - nasonb@sad1.org

Using Voice Recording Apps for Verbal Practice in a World Language Classroom

Here's an easy and useful way to have your students practice their vernacular and pronunciation for those teachers and/or students who use iPads in the classroom.  Find a reliable audio recording app that allows the user to share the final product via email.  Below are a couple of recommendations.  Student pairs can be handed the iPad device, record their conversation in their learned language and save their recording in the app; or email the final product to the teacher.  The teacher can then review the student's quality of pronunciation later at a time when it is more convenient, so they can manage the class or work with another group of students.

Not only can this be a fun and convenient way to assess a students performance, but it can be less intimidating for some students than speaking directly to the teacher or the classroom and can therefore build confidence within the leaner.

Here's another creative idea that works well with naming objects.  Some of the recommended apps below not only record audio, but utilizes your 5-megapixel camera for adding snapshots to your notes.  Have your students take pictures of objects in the classroom, hallway, or any where you would like them to.  Then have them attach an audio recording to the note in their learned language with their chosen camera snapshot .  This is another fun way of allowing them pick the objects and label them with their recorded voice.

Here are a couple of apps that I have found that can execute this job and are fairly cheep.

Audio Memos (FREE or $0.99) - Very simple interface and easy to use; one step record

• Students can email as well as store their recordings in the app.
• Students should label their recordings with their name to recall them later
• This app actually provides a URL with which you can remotely access your saved voice memos online and download them to your computer
• The only difference between the FREE version and the $0.99 version is
• You can send email up to 15MB of audio (free version should be more than enough for the classroom assignment
• The app will continue to record when you are multi-tasking out of the app
• USB file transfers
• Application lock code
• Search/filter your recordings

Audioboo (FREE) is an iPhone app, but works in the iPad device.  This is an online application that has an iOS app.  Simple operation - record and publish.  Teacher can access the published recordings from the Audioboo site.  Students will have to make sure when labeling their recordings with their name that they do NOT use their full name because the published file is on an open forum and their name will be available to public.  Students should use a teacher-given nickname or their first initial and last name.

Voice Recorder for iPad ($0.99) does the same as the $0.99 Audio Memos app; easy and clean user interface.  It, also, allows users to upload their recordings to YouTube and Facebook and allows the user to add notes to their recordings.  You can, also, trim the recordings within the app.

AudioNote Light (FREE).  The extras to this package is that it is designed as a notetaker with audio recording capability.  The notes taken are synced up with the audio recording, so you do not have to search through the audio to find key points, but you can locate them by the links in your notes.  Pretty nifty and maybe more than you need, but for the teacher who has everything, you may not have this.  There is a lot more to what this app offers and perhaps it could serve as a multi-purpose tool for the teacher as well as the students.  Their $4.99 version, of course, does more.

My Favorite All-in-one:  Noteability ($0.99) is similar to AudioNote in that it is a notetaker with handwriting capability and audio recording ability.  Noteability syncs with Dropbox and your iTunes account.  Students can record and you can either email or sync them to your iTunes library for later grading.  This app is one (as mentioned above) that will allow the user to import a photo from their iPad photo roll to the note.

Another of my favorite apps:  Evernote (FREE) is an all-in-one notetaker, data collector, bookmarker; you name it; it is designed to be your personal digital notebook.  Evernote, like Noteability, will crate notes using audio recordings as well as imagery.  You could set up notes in advance with your selected images and have your students record their pronunciation of that object.  Since Evernote is an online cloud storage system, student names are not protected or secure, so make sure you are using code names, nick names, or first initial and last name.

There are hundreds of audio recorders and notetakers with audio recording, however here are a couple more recommendations that can do these features I have mentioned:

Draw Pad Pro ($1.99 w/ $0.99 upgrade for audio recorder)

Handwriting/Notetaking apps from appadvice.com.