Slow start in September

After being trained, we set out to register our itouch carts as well as load one application, USA factbook, on each device so that on Constitution Day the students could perform a scavenger hunt to learn about the Constitution. We had several issues syncing the devices. The devices seemed to sync effortlessly with the first application, but later when we tried to add several other applications- Word Warp, Math drill lite, Discovery Channel and Numbrix- the application would appear to sync but then when we touched the icon to run the app the app would flash and then revert to the home screen. We worked on this for several days before finally calling Karen to come out and help us. With her help, we discovered the macbooks were assigning each user their own itune library. Therefore, we decided to just have one teacher log in and do all syncing. This however did not fix the problem of the syncing. After a call to Apple and a subsequent email we may have found the answer. All devices have to be turned off and then synced. We are not sure why this works but for now we will take it! We have successfully synced 40 itouches with four applications, and the syncing process is getting easier! We have decided however to designate certain days "sync days" due to the time commitment needed to make sure they work. We want to ensure student time is not wasted troubleshooting the devices!

iTeach room/ Lightbulb lab- Based on Kevin Henkes’ book- Lilly and the Plastic Purple Purse : We have set up a project room in an extra fifth grade classroom. We chose 5 fifth graders to help illustrate the book using iMovie to show to the younger grades. We used a Flip camera to take digital stills of the book and have been working for 2 weeks on coordinating the audio to go with the slides. It has been a challenge aligning the audio with the book slides. The other fifth graders have chosen books for their book clubs and we plan on letting this first group of fifth graders “teach” the others how to make a “movie” of their book using iMovie.

Mentoring aspect of grant- We are waiting on the cases before we begin moving the devices about the school. We will report on this later.