Holiday iPad Tasks: "Spring Cleaning"

Even though it's not Spring in our hemisphere, it is certainly time for a clean out of your school iPad. Many of our 1 to 1 students have been experiencing sluggish iPad performance and some of their apps are refusing to start up altogether. The most common reason for issues like this is that your iPad is crammed too full of "stuff".

Please take some time on the holidays to check your Usage. Delete photos and videos you no longer require and, definitely before you come back to school in term 2, uninstall the games and movies you've been using over the break.

Remember, the iPad is first and foremost a learning tool for school. You may enjoy using it for recreation on a rainy day, but games and movies should not be taking up valuable space and preventing optimal performance for your learning tasks.

How do I check out what's taking up most space on my iPad?

Go to Settings > General > Usage

Now tap "Manage Storage"

This screen will tell you how many Gigabytes of storage space is available on your iPad. Regardless of the total capacity of your iPad, you need AT LEAST 10% of free space for the device to run properly. When you use an app, it uses the available free memory to work.

Check out the list of apps you have installed. The apps taking up the most space will be at the top. Usually, Photos & Camera app is near the top of the list.

Go to the Photos app and delete any photos and videos you no longer need. You can connect your iPad to a computer and upload any photos and videos you wish to keep.

You can tap any app in the list to delete it from your iPad. Deleted apps will still be associated with your Apple ID. This means you can install them again without having to pay.

Last minute holiday tips...

Remember never to leave an iPad in the car if it's parked in the sun. Overheating can ruin your battery and shorten its lifespan. If you are going away and won't be using your iPad, leave it in a cool, safe place. Your iPad prefers to rest at half charge (50 - 80%). Turn it off completely so the battery won't run flat.

We look forward to seeing both you AND your cleaned out iPad back in Term 2, ready to learn and perform at optimum level!

A Window into Year 6

Time for a sneak peak at life in the Year 6 learning spaces...

Students may choose to read eBooks during silent reading time. eBooks have additional functions such as iBooks' built-in dictionary, highlighting tools and a Search function to look for words and terms in context.

Some eBooks also have multimodal features such as image manipulation and video features to assist with comprehension of meaning.

Kira has provided this retrieval chart. She has used one of the graphic organisers in the Tools4Students app to organise her ideas and information. These notes can now be used to structure a piece of writing or oral presentation, or to make a more informed judgement about an issue.

The SMARTboard allows teacher and students to access and annotate documents while the class views the processes being demonstrated.

Students can use the whiteboard to share their thought processes as well. Often students will capture a photograph of the whiteboard for later reference.

The SMART Notebook app allows students to view the teacher's lessons on their iPads as well. They can review the content as many times as they need to, away from the classroom and outside school hours.

New App Required for LOTE

Our lovely LOTE teacher, Mrs Amy Flynn, would like to use a free app called Kana Quiz in her Japanese lessons with years 4, 5 and 6. Would you please assist your children to install this app at your earliest convenience. Unfortunately the app called Fotopedia Japan (published on our free apps list last year) is now only available in the United States but Sensai will be able to keep her classes very busy and engaged with Kana Quiz.

Here's the icon and a link to the app on iTunes:

Kana Quiz (FREE)

The iPad as a READING Tool

Parents, despite what your children may tell you, they will never have to be on their iPad for school purposes for extended periods each evening or weekend! Homework which must be done on the iPads will rarely exceed half an hour and don't forget, you can use a 4-finger swipe (upwards) to check which apps are running at any time. If most of the running apps are games, then chances are homework has not been the main priority in the last little while...

However, one activity that can often be enhanced by a digital device, is READING. Nothing will ever replace the look, feel and smell of a real life hard copy BOOK. But a few digital enhancements can make reading on the iPad an especially valuable experience, especially for developing readers.

[Image Source: news.blogs.slv.vic.gov.au]

For children who have difficulty reading subject-orientated texts, or website content, the iPad also has a useful "text-to-speech" function which will literally read any selected text to them. Admittedly the 'voice' is a little robotic and sometimes makes pronunciation errors, but this feature can open up a world of text for children who would normally be dependent on a real life adult to read to them.

To turn on "text-to-speech", go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech. Turn Speech Selection ON. You can adjust the speaking rate here as well. With Speech Selection turned on, when you select text in an app (such as iBooks or on a webpage in Safari), you will see a Speak option (see sample below).

Screenshot from iBooks

We published the following post about the iBooks app a couple of years ago for our first iPad classes. We're posting the information again here as it has some useful information about borrowing eBooks from the Brisbane City Council libraries. If you would rather hear about this process in person, staff at any of the Council libraries will be able to take you through it. Our own lovely Teacher Librarian, Mrs Monique Hegarty plans to show the students how to borrow books through Brisbane Catholic Education's Overdrive account. However, they need two (free) apps to access these books: Overdrive and Adobe Digital Editions:

Overdrive

Adobe Digital Editions

The children can also widen their literary experience by listening to audio books. This is not 'cheating'. It is a valuable experience for students approaching the latter half of their primary years to be able to enjoy a book in an area of interest, even though decoding the text may be beyond their current reading skills.

Using iBooks on the iPad

The built-in iPad dictionary allows young readers to check word meanings within the text with a quick tap (no searching for dusty dictionary volumes) and font size can be adjusted to suit personal preference. If less text on the page is less daunting for your young reader, they can increase the font size and enjoy a more positive reading experience (see screenshot below).

Screenshot showing features in iBooks

Buying eBooks and Audio books can be as expensive as purchasing the printed copies but did you know you can borrow eBooks and eAudio book recordings through Brisbane City Council libraries? Using any BCC Library card, you can log in to the Digital Media site and browse Juvenile and Young Adult titles.

Click here to browse the Digital Media Collection

You can borrow titles for up to 21 days at no cost. A borrowed book simply disappears from your shelf once the borrowing period has expired so you will have no concerns about accumulating overdue fees.

[Image Source: www.stylingyou.com.au]

Some cautions:

• Due to the wide variety of digital media file types on offer, you may need to install a couple of extra FREE apps to allow you to read or play borrowed files. Follow instructions in the Digital Collection site and be assured that Overdrive and Adobe apps are perfectly safe to download from this site.
• Parents please supervise students and check what they are borrowing. As in any public library, there are many adult titles available. The above link will take you to the Juvenile and Young Adult section but does not restrict access to these sections.
• Finally, a reminder that unfortunately it is not advisable to read eBooks in the bath!

[Image Source: techli.com]

Leaving Brisbane Catholic Education?

Our wonderful Year 6 students are due to leave us within the fortnight and we will miss you! We hope you have enjoyed learning with iPads over the past two years.

A reminder that unless you are enrolled in another Brisbane Catholic Education school for next year (such as Clairvaux Mackillop College), your BCE student email addresses will no longer be accessible to you after December 31. If you have used this email address for any online accounts, you are advised to edit your account details before this date and use a different email address.

You’ll find information here about how to change the primary email address for an Apple ID. For any other websites or online services, check your account details or preferences. 

...and enjoy your final 10 days of primary school! 

iPad Apps support Digital Technologies in the Curriculum

The Australian Curriculum includes a new learning area called "Technologies". The Technologies curriculum has been published but is currently "awaiting final endorsement". You can read more about this learning area and view the content on ACARA's Australian Curriculum website. While BCE schools are not reporting in the Technologies area in 2014, it is not too early to begin laying the groundwork for what will be expected of students in coming years and in their future workplaces.

In the video below, you will hear some of the key concepts in Technologies curriculum explained. You will also notice that many of the projects exemplified involve activities that our teachers and students are already doing. Access to 1 to 1 devices will also make the Technologies curriculum much easier to implement.

Both subjects in the Technologies learning area - Digital Technologies and Design and Technology - will be compulsory from Prep to Year 8. Concepts within the Digital Technologies subject such as computational thinking can be supported using free apps such as those listed below.

A.L.E.X.

Kodable

Daisy the Dinosaur

Bee-Bot

While the above apps appear to be designed for younger users, we encourage our upper primary students to install these apps and begin exploring the user interfaces and digital systems which make these games function. If students can be encouraged to be metacognitive about the computational thinking required for success in these apps, they will be well-equipped with the skills required to design their own algorithms and digital solutions, as covered in the Technologies learning area.

AND... (drum roll please)...

Saving the best for last...

Scratch Jnr

Probably the most valuable Technologies learning tool for the iPad is Scratch Jnr. Recently released as a FREE iPad app, we strongly encourage students to install Scratch Jnr and to begin exploring it. Based on the Scratch programming language released by MIT, Scratch Jnr. makes coding accessible to students as young as 5 years of age. Students will hopefully enjoy creating interactive stories, games and animations with the specially modified programming language, developing valuable skills for successful achievement in an assessable learning area as well as for their future. After all...

Coding is the new literacy!

Winners are Grinners : Manga High Champions

post by Axelle

This week St Catherine's had a state maths competition and, of course, WE WON.

Classes from Year 3 up have been hard at work earning points for St Catherine's.Our teachers have been setting us lots of tasks to complete as we need as many points as we can get.

 Year 6 Orange has buddied up with 3 Blue and 3 White and has been teaching them how to use manga high. They have been having lots of fun teaching the grade 3's the qualities of this fantastic maths game. The reason why St Catherine's went into this competition was because there is a fantastic reward. The best school in the state competition wins an amazing $1000 to do anything they want with on Manga High. There was also a little prize that gave the students motivation to keep good spirits and chase the finish line which were gold medals. The great prize was the best class in the school win $125 to do with anything they want. Last year Mr Palmer's class, 6 Orange, won and how they celebrated was they bought pizzas and magnums to celebrate the win. And the winning class is.............well we don't know just yet but we will know before the end of the week. Until then you'll have to wait but stick around and you will find out who wins this great prize.