This is the first in a series of blog posts written by Apple Distinguished Educator, Trainer, and Showbie Champion, Joe Moretti.
Schools looking for an effective implementation of technology to enhance their teaching and learning often fail to establish a clear base line of operation for the technology.
In response to this, I developed a 3 app strategy as a bottom line for minimum effective use of technology in the learning space.
The diagram below shows the minimum triangle of effective use of technology.
Broadly speaking: concepts need to be introduced or taught, work needs to be set and content produced with a feedback mechanism available throughout the process.
I use Book Creator throughout the different year groups — even up to exam class age — for content creation. Book Creator is capable of producing extremely simple and extremely sophisticated documents (see image example below).
Explain Everything is a powerful, easy-to-use whiteboard tool. At its simplest, it allows you to create animated annotations while recording audio and exporting to video. This facilitates the explanation of ideas, understanding and concepts for teachers and students alike.
Showbie sits within this framework as the digital hub for any classroom activity. Teachers can set work, giving information and guidance in a variety of forms, text, image, audio and video. Students are then able to save their work at any stage of the learning process (creating a record of progression) and use similar tools to convey understanding and questioning.
Showbie offers limitless file back up for student work, and it’s accessible from any type of device. Students simply log in to view their work making it ideal for shared iPads and 1:1 programmes alike. Not withstanding that, Showbie can be accessed from home if desired!
A great new feature that has been added to Showbie is Groups. Easy to set up and manage, Groups allow you to add any combination of Teachers, Students and Parents. You could for example create a subject group for teachers, or a group for a residential trip, or a brain storming exercise in class.
This is one of 20 videos available in the app ‘Tutorials for Showbie’ available for iPad and iPhone, covering everything you need to know to use Showbie effectively:
Establishing this ‘base line’ 3 app solution makes IT integration accessible to all teachers, avoiding the over load factor of a large app profile. Anyone can manage three applications! From here, teachers are able to extend their digital practise when the need arises.
