mguhlin

iPadifying the Writing Workshop – Part 6

Note: This blog entry is part of a series entitled, iPadifying the Writing Workshop.


#5 – FACILITATE ONLINE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE WRITING
“Writing to an online audience allows one to start a conversation with a world of readers. Who wouldn’t want that?” When I first started facilitating writing workshops, one of the best sources of insights for students came from the students themselves. Facilitating large group share provides students a place for them to find out what others think of their ideas. When writers gather to share their thoughts, there’s magic in the air. Each of us is writer, reader, audience member, active participant in learning. That’s important because teachers cannot offer ALL the feedback students need.


However, online discussion forums through Edmodo and Schoology, attached to wikis, or with blog postings and comments CAN facilitate student to student interaction independent of the teacher. Edmodo allows teachers to create a rich, safe environment with ample “brain food” for learners.

Some workflows to be aware of:

Book Creator App Sharing:
  1. If you’re using the Book Creator app to create multimedia ePub ebooks–they contain student videos, audio recordings–then you will want to publish to GoogleDrive, Dropbox, or some online location that allows you to store ePubs. 
  2. Then, get the “shared link”–that’s the link to the ePub file–and share it with you class via GoogleSites web page or Edmodo. 
  3. When students or others click on the ePub file link shared from your favorite cloud storage location, they will be prompted to “Open In” and they can choose apps like iBooks, Readdle Documents app, or if they intend to edit/remix content, BookCreator.

PDF Sharing and Annotation:

If student work is created in PDF format, consider using the Paperport Notes or Evernote app to offer feedback on that PDF.

Evernote

  1. To organize student work for PDFs, you could have students email PDFs of their written work to Evernote to your secret email access, ensuring they put @notebookname (for an existing notebook) in the Subject line, as follows:
  2. Subject: Title of Project @NotebookName #tag1
  3. If annotating in Evernote, you can record audio feedback to the student writer then share that note with the writer.
Some other Evernote tips:
  • This only works for existing notebooks and tags.
  • You cannot create new notebooks or tags with this feature; they must already exist
  • In the subject line, always put the note title first, then add any notebooks or tags
  • This feature will not work for notebook names that contain an ‘@’ or a ‘#’, and it will not work for tags that contain a ‘#’ in their name.
Paperport Notes

  1. PaperPort Notes (free iPad app) allows you to annotate PDFs. There are many PDF annotation apps, but PaperPort works quite well.
  2. Once you’ve annotated, you can share the annotated PDF file back to the student.


Video Creation App Sharing:

Apps like 30HandsLearning, iMovie, Tellagami, and the iPad’s Camera empower you to create video. You can share those videos in various places, such as YouTube, Vimeo, Dropbox, and to a limited degree, GoogleDrive.  

  1. After you create the video, 
  2. Publish or send the video to your storage location of choice.



Collecting Student Ideas or Feedback on a Product:

  • Use Edmodo to quickly collect student ideas via the iPad. It’s social media aspect enables easy sharing and polls.


iPadify Tip #5: Figure out the workflow for publishing and collecting student work ahead of time based on the app your students are using. If you want to get global feedback, consider publishing to a GoogleSites wiki announcement section (provides you with an RSS feed that others can subscribe to) that has comments turned on, a blog (e.g. Blogger, KidBlog are two possible choices) allowing comments, or Wikispaces.com site which features a discussion area.

Check out Miguel’s Workshop Materials online at http://mglearns.wikispaces.com

Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

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