Today I review several informative lesson ideas provided by Apple Distinguished Educators that will be very beneficial to use in my classroom. To find the 30 inspiring ideas for teachers, you must download the free app iTunes U. In this app, you will be able to search through many apps for both teachers and students. Once you click on the For Educators icon, the apps will be limited to lesson ideas, apps for your classroom and so forth. If you click on the Inspiring Lesson Ideas category, you will see the 30 courses provided ranging from art to math and several other subjects.

There were several courses that really interested me, my top four are; The Leaf Walk Field Trip, Endangered Animals Writing Project, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Organic PE: Basketball. Of these four, I will be going into further detail about The Leaf Walk Field Trip.

In this lesson idea written by Douglas Kiang, it is focused for a middle school age group science lesson. The lesson plan begins with the students choosing leaves either off the ground or by taking them off of branches, as long as they are as flat as possible. Once the students have found a fair amount of leaves, or enough for your project, they will use the app LeafSnap which is available for free from the App Store. I downloaded this app and it is a fun, educational, way to identify leaves and provide information on those certain leaves. It is important to use this app near the location you found the leaf since it tags the location.

When your students are finished identifying several leaves, the next step in the lesson is to create a book with the information found from LeafSnap. Although there are many apps to create a book, this lesson plan suggests Book Creator. In the book, many things can be added besides the leaves themselves. You could add many facts, the tree which they come from, and so on. This lesson plan suggests to include the map where it was found and optional drawings of the leaf.

I found this series to be very educational and it gave me a better understanding of how to create lesson plans and gave me many ideas on what I could include in my classroom. I really enjoyed The Leaf Walk Field Trip lesson plan because it is definitely a lesson I could use in my classroom for one of my horticulture classes. Overall, I found these lesson ideas to be extremely interesting and they will definitely help me in the future.

From the wide variety of lesson choices in the Apps in The Classroom iBooks, I chose to read and review Sketchbook Express lesson plan. Sketchbook Express is free to download and is available on the App Store. A few benefits that this app gives to students is that it gives students the opportunity to create projects, use a wide variety of tools to create any art style, or use it to create their project into a book. For teachers, this app could be used to make the art project they created and turn it into a lesson plan or for step by step instructions.

In this book, it explained how the app works and gave demonstrations of lesson plans for all ages ranging from 5-18. Not only is this app compatible for all ages, it is also able to be implemented into any subject category such as math, history, science and of course art classes.

One of the things I really liked about this app was how it allows you to use your creativity to utilize it in a classroom or as homework. I could easily see myself using this app in my classroom to show detailed parts of a plant cell for a soil class or for an animal science class to show detailed drawings of animal parts or cuts of meat. I definitely plan to use this app in my class because it gives you the opportunity to create a lesson that not only has art incorporated into it but you can also give students the hands on opportunity to learn within the classroom.
Overall, I was really impressed with this app it gave me a new outlook on ways to use art as well as giving me several ideas for lesson plans which I could incorporate this app.

One best thing is a series of books that are created by Apple Distinguished Educators also known as ADEs. There are several books that are available ranging from lesson plans to using iPads in the classroom. Today, I chose to read Digital Feedback: Using iPads for Assessment by Daniel Toms.

In this free to download iBook, it gave s a wide variety of tips and tricks for using iPads in your classroom to give students feedback and assess their work. I thought it was very interesting because teachers are often going feedback by writing on papers, and handing them back to the students. However, if you use iPads to give your students’ feedback, it will give them the opportunity to take the feedback into consideration as well as allow you as the teacher the option to watch the progress of the student and track his or her improvement.
Mr. Toms gave three apps that he uses for giving his students feedback at Harrogate Grammar School. The three main apps are Showbie, Explain Everything, and Notability. These apps all give the opportunity to show the feedback that the teacher has given to the students and allow them to keep a record of their assignments and see the progress.

I thought this book was very informative and I can definitely see myself using it in my classroom. The one thing I really liked about these apps is that they range from free to very affordable and you are able to create a class so that you and your students can personally keep connected with their progress. I believe that this would be extremely beneficial rather than giving back papers with your feedback and grades because you could have your students view the feedback and it would allow them to keep looking back and tracking their work rather than throwing their test away and not remembering what needed improvement.

This week, I decided to read a very interesting blog that gave me a new understanding of how to deal with certain situations that I may face in my classroom; lack of motivation. In this blog, How To Motivate Unmotivated Students by Michael Linsin, it gave me a completely different idea of how to help motivate my students, much different from what I would have thought to do. One of the tips that Mr. Linsin suggested when dealing with a student who lacks motivation was to focus on the work, not the person and the person will soon blossom. This in particular really stuck out to me because I would have thought to focus on the student. However, in this blog, it tells us how unmotivated students can tell when the praise is fake therefore it is crucial to focus on the quality of the work and let the student know when it is done correctly.
Mr. Linsin explains how unmotivated students do not want to hear the same instructions repeated with using different words, they are capable of completing the assignment it just is a matter of time until they will realize that it is up to them. Once the student realizes that you are not pushing them continuously, and they are relying on themselves to get it done, they will give in and essentially give more than what you were trying to get them to complete.

As a teacher, when the student begins to give in and complete their work, it is important to notice the improvement but not to say anything. Mr. Linsin explains how giving students too much praise will result in them stopping and it will result in you starting over from square one. It is important to keep in mind that all students are not the same and some students who are having problems with motivation may require another type of encouragement. However, this blog gave me several ideas on how to work with unmotivated students and allow them to complete their work successfully.

For week 6’s blog reflection, I decided to read a blog by Steve Wick through Recharge Learning. This blog was called Learner Centered Classrooms and Google Apps for Education. In this blog, Mr. Wick explains how he went from using Microsoft office apps and resource to using Google and how much easier it is to accomplish things in the classroom by allowing him to open up his classroom and be willing to learn more things.

I thought it was very interesting because I am used to using Apple products to create activities and complete assignments for my classes so I had never really thought about switching over to using primarily Google or Microsoft products. However, this blog was extremely helpful and allowed me to see the different opportunities that other sources have to offer. One of the things that I really enjoyed in this blog was how Mr. Wick gave links to check out some of the resources that Google has to offer such as classroom resources, collaboration and communication, tools for science and tools for reading.

As I am expanding my knowledge in teaching information, one thing that continues to stay with me is that being open to trying new things is extremely important. I think this blog is a prime example and it is encouraging to see that other teachers are so willing to share this information with others.