For this project, I first needed to download the iTunes U app. This app provides iTunes U provides everything an educator needs to bring their classroom together. I clicked on “For Educators” icon. This icon took me to a different page with gave me diverse books and resources to use as an educator. I explored the books that were under “Using Apps in the classroom”. This particular collection gives educators books which provide information on apps they can utilize in the classroom and how they can implement these apps into lesson plans. I clicked on the “See All” and was able to view all eighteen books this section provided!

 

 

The three books I specifically explored was Photographing History: Archiving With Apps, Student Authored Portfolios: Archiving Learning with iPad, and Explain Everything Lesson Ideas. I used Explain Everything for my Interactive Whiteboard Apps & Screencasting project!  I enjoyed reading the book “Student Authored Portfolios: Archiving learning with iPad”. I believe in an active learning environment for my students rather than solely direct instruction. Students will enjoy what they are learning when they are learning it for themselves and are able to apply what they are learning actively participating and engaging in the material.

This book suggest having students create a blog. They recommend two blog site teacher can use, but I favor Edublog. Giving students the opportunity to create their own blog gives them ownership of their learning! It inspires students to do their best work also! I would use this app in the classroom, because I think grading students on their blog and portfolio that they make is more representative of what they know rather than grading them over memorizing material for a test. I would have them create various projects reviewing a history book, creating a history video, making a history project, etc. There are diverse ways I could use implement information in this book into my classroom. This book is a great resource for educators regardless of their subject emphasis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used the app iTunes u to find several resources I can use as a teacher. Once I got this app, I opened it up and clicked on the icon “educators”.

 

Once I clicked this, I was sent to a different page which provided me different sections to be explored like inspiring lesson ideas, using apps in the classroom, teaching with iPad, etc. For this assignment I looked through the inspiring lesson ideas. This provided me with 30 diverse courses I could subscribe to! I was particularly interested in three courses: It’s All Geography to Me, Building Self-Advocacy, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  I was surprised at how many of these courses I could use in my own classroom for social studies. When you subscribe to a course it provides you with videos, books, documents, apps, images, materials, and web links to use for the course. These courses are a great resource to implement in the classroom regardless the subject.

 

 

I chose the course It’s All Geography to Me to subscribe to. This course was specific to teaching geography for the first time to seventh and eighth graders. The instructor of the course, Mr. Keith Heggart,  does not solely use direct instruction but encourages active engagement with the content the students are learning. Isaac Pineda, author of the One Best Thing iBook “Student Authored Textbooks: A Student’s Perspective on History“, promotes this type of teaching strategy. He states, “By allowing the students to engage in active learning it gave them the power to research, question, and investigate. It gives them ownership and allows them to engage in inquiry-based learning.”

The home page of the course provides an overview of the course, instructor information, outline of the course, pedagogical philosophy, about the ADE Program, and about lessons for the classrooms. Understanding and implementing this course in my classroom would be easy and perfect for my philosophy for teaching! Geography can sometimes be a hard subject for middle schoolers. I would use lesson ideas from this course by giving my students the opportunity to create their own field report of areas I have assigned to them. This would give them the ownership of choosing what they want to study and create an individual motivation to learn.  This course is a great resource that gives me various ideas to utilize in my classroom!