Week 2 MobiMOOC

Hi MobiMoocers - I am not at all sure where I should have posted my mLearning project so will put it here :-)  already posted it on the wiki for week 2 but obviously no-one found it there :-) Hope that is okay!! My Learning Project  Define your objectives: Why do you want a mobile learning project? I am still exploring the possibilities of mLearning and take every opportunity of trying new things out for the primary classroom What unique result do you want to achieve? To motivate pupils to explore local history and get involved with researching, finding and sharing information in groups to make presentations for school assemblies.  How you will know when you have met your goals? On presentation day and by talking to the pupils and their teacher How will you evaluate your effectiveness? By talking to the pupils and their teacher and looking at the pupils’ work, how they worked, the motivation levels etc. all anecdotal Define your audience: For whom is your mobile initiative intended? Primary school pupils at a local primary school What user support do you need to provide? Nothing extra to normal classroom support, I doubt that the pupils will be phased in any way Define your budget What do you need to get the project done? How are you going to fund it? How long will you be able to sustain it? Apart from my time the project is already funded – the school have 30 iPod Touches for the class. The class have the iPod Touches for 12 weeks, this will be a small project within that time Identify your Instructional strategies Is it an interactive team / community network? No Is it a broadcast distribution framework? No Is it for formal learning programs or informal learning assets? It will be informal learning, assessment will be by outcomes i.e their presentations Who is going to produce the content (e.g. is it going to depend on community or commercially produced content)? I will do the research and produce the content Where is the content going to reside? N/A Who is responsible for placing content in repository? N/A What content distribution methods will be used (e.g., web delivery, copyright, registration for use, charges, etc.)? I will distribute the qr codes What content management mechanisms need to be in place? None How will you assess learning? I will teach the pupils only how to read the qr codes and let them explore the local are 5. Identify your stakeholders Primary school children, their parents and their teachers Identify the technology Who will provide the service? School wifi What kind of reception technologies will be used? iPod Touches with QR code readers What content creation tools will be used? Any of the presentation / story making apps or Quick Office on the iPod Touches – pupils make their own choice What network will be used for distribution? School wifi / DropBox What security mechanisms will you have in place? The county filtering system What kind of user interface will you use? The iPod Touch and an Interactive Whiteboard What user support will you provide? Normal classroom support – I do not anticipate that anything extra will be needed Determine Intellectual Property My own – shared freely with the pupils and anyone interested under s CC license. I am still experimenting with mLearning and examining what excites pupils and motivates them to really get involved with a project.

Folk Songs on the iPad :-)

I have been playing with Garageband on the iPad for the last two days.  I need to learn the program properly so that I can make podcasts and more with it but even though I have had a Mac for a couple of months I have not yet devoted any time to it finding it much easier to return to the well known Audacity for sound work that I have had to do - mostly because of time constraints!

I thought using the app version of it on the iPad may give me some insight, it seemed a good plan as we have had a few days of beautiful weather and it was great to be able to start the learning journey outside. However I was not bargaining on finding and getting hooked, within seconds, on the acoustic guitar synthesiser  which sounds very realistic. I was so delighted with it I starting to work out the chord sequences of dozens of old folk songs.

It has a full range of keys both major and minor and a preset selection of finger picking rhythms which seem to be set in a straight 4 time, any speed but not any time signature, not that I have found so far anyway!! Consequently I abandoned the presets but am enjoying playing myself.

Having a few iPads in schools would give children comparatively cheap opportunities of playing a large combination of instruments together. With preset chords it should sound lovely and allow pupils to add real instruments with with an in-tune chordal accompaniment. We have had the drums being played on a class set of iPod Touches but Garageband opens the field much wider. I am not sure yet whether the built in recording facility would be useful in this situation but I guess not as it would only record what was being played on one iPad.

Here is a You Tube example of a piece of music composed on the iPad - somthing like this but with  real instruments, flute or clarinet for eample playing a main melody would be great in school giving great opportunities for improvisation too.

Teachers who use songs in class to aid teaching such as those who teach languages to very young children would really find this app useful - not having to carry a guitar to and from school, having it on-hand at any time and so easy to play - simply a dream :-)  Not only that it is very easy to record a song so that the teacher could just start it playing then be with children doing actions or whatever without having to play at the same time.  I would have loved this at school!!

There are a few blog posts to share ideas for this very new capability
http://meganaiemma.edublogs.org/
http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/garageband-for-ipad-first-hands-on-review-397287/3#content

From the comments on the following blog clearly not everyone shares my opinion… http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/garageband-for-ipad-7-things-musicians-need-to-know-391104

Experienced musicians can get quite an amazing sound from this app, my favourite so far is this version of Let it be but the walk through here  and other demos may be much more useful!