Garageband on the iPad

The assignment was simple and something that I had done for the past eight years.  The students (in groups) choose what they believe to be the top five amendments.  They must also explain why their amendments are in the top five and what the nation would be like without those amendments. 

In years past they've made posters, powerpoints, prezis, and things of that nature.  Last year (my first 1:1 year) I decided to take a different route and let the kids make podcasts.  The website I chose was podomatic.com.  I had one master account the students uploaded to but could only work one at a time when recording and uploading. 

This year my department lobbied to purchase a few iPads/iPods and I made the decision to utilize them on this assignment.  Garageband is a $4.99 app and well worth it for use in the classroom.  With the iPads and Garageband students were able to completely record, edit, produce, and upload their podcasts to iTunes which they could then pull into my iWeb website.   Multiple students were able to work at the same time and uploading took seconds.  Also, students were able to make their own original music to go with their podcasts using the smart instruments. 

Pros

• Very user-friendly for the students and the learning curve is very short.
• No disk space to worry about.
• No need to worry about copyrighted music (students make their own content).
• Easily manageable by the classroom teacher.  
• Excellent for schools/teachers that have embraced BYOD.

Cons

• You still need a main computer to pull it into your website.  
• As far as I know you cannot upload a podcast image to Garageband.

Overall I was very happy with how this assignment turned out and plan on having the students podcast weekly wrap-ups starting next semester.  If you would like to listen for yourself how things went for my students click here to view our class podcast page.  Enjoy!

Diigo Teacher Console

Did you ever try a tool or website, not necessarily fall in love with it, and then come back a few years later to find that not only have massive improvements occurred but that you couldn't wait to implement it in your class?  That is obviously where I stand today with the social bookmarking tool Diigo. 

With Diigo you can create groups, bookmark websites, share them to the group, and even highlight and annotate the websites.  You can literally bookmark an article or website and have a threaded discussion that is accessible 24-7.  This is useful for current events, primary documents, webquests, or anything you would want to highlight and comment on for your students to see or ask questions themeselves. 

I had originally gotten away from Diigo because when I created a group members didn't always see the highlights, sticky notes, or could see them but not comment.  It was very frustrating and I spent more time troubleshooting than I did anything else; which is your worst nightmare in a 1:1 environment. 

Recently I saw something come across twitter that talked about a teacher console for Diigo.  I signed up just to try it out and the results were awesome.  With the teacher console the teacher can create student accounts (massively if you want to upload a .csv file) and manage them, and email is optional.  The students simply go to diigo and log in with the name and password you gave them and install the diigo toolbar.  By they way, for you iPad folks there is a Diigo browser that you can get from the App store for free!

Once I did this my students could see everything!  Highlights, comments, access, everything was available and visible to my students.  Students don't read enough and with this tool it enables me to upload content from anywhere and discuss the material in real time from any place.  As a social studies teacher it has improved my classroom for the better and brought the news of the world to my students' screen.  Another great side benefit, no ordering highlighters and printing copies!

Here is the link to sign up for a teacher account, try it out and enjoy!:  http://www.diigo.com/education