S'More Tech Summer Camp, Day 23 (One iPad)

Hi campers!

I hope you had a safe and sparkling Fourth of July! We will continue this summer camp through Friday, July 13. I feel like everyone is challenged to find enough time to try some of these ideas and really get to know them before we go back to school again.

So....without further ado....let's get back to talking about what you do if you only have 1 iPad in your library, and you don't see a cart full of iPads in your near future. Like me.

Today, let's talk about using the solo iPad for whole class instruction. Assuming that you already have a  multimedia projector and a big screen or wall to project things, on...then you just need one more little thing:

This is the handy, dandy Apple VGA adapter. For just under $30, it allows you to hook up your iPad to your projector so that the whole class can see what's on the iPad screen. Once you have this, you can...

1) Create a Tacky Wales story as a group. The Tacky Wales app has both a free and a paid version. Students provide nouns, verbs, and adjectives to create a Mad Libs type story. Other free apps similar to Mad Libs include: Wordventure and Sparklefish. This could be a fun part of a fiction discussion.

2) Get Weird But True with National Geographic. This app costs $1.99, but it is great! It has weird facts, strange sound effects, and the weird-o-meter, to let you rate how weird a fact is.  I would use this as part of a lesson about the non-fiction Dewey numbers. You could show a fact up on the big screen, and have students figure out what part of the library that fact would be in. 

Here's a screen shot of one of the weird but true facts. Librarians, name that call number! After showing this fact, you could have a student find the cat books in your library.

3) Stack the States or Stack the Countries: Are you helping to fill in the social studies gap at your school? Getting ready to start a research project about states or countries? These apps (free for the lite version, 99 cents and $1.99 for the full versions) have cool animations of states and countries. You answer questions about either states or countries, then literally stack them on the screen.

4) Visit the San Diego Zoo: Is it time for another animal research project? Or are you introducing a class to the animal section of your non-fiction collection? Take a trip to the San Diego Zoo with this app and its great photos!

5) Draw on an Image: With Educreations, Screen Chomp, and Show Me (all free apps), you can use your iPad as a whiteboard or upload an image to draw on. You could save a page from a subscription database and then use that page as the image that you draw on. Let students come up to the iPad and use a finger to underline a treasure word in the text, when you teach trash and treasure note-taking.

You can record your drawing and discussion (use the red "rec" button that you see) on Screen Chomp, then post it online for students who missed the lesson or need a refresher.

Want more ideas? Here is a Slide Share from Tom Barrett showing more than 103 interesting ways to use the iPad in the classroom.



So many ideas...so many possibilities. Make sure that you choose one of these ideas and make a slide for it in your summer camp scrapbook!

And if you know about another great way to use an iPad in the library, please share it in a comment!