Friday, November 20, 2015

SimpleMind and Notability to "Show What You Know" for Three Branches of Government


To allow students to "Show What They Know" in seventh grade, Mrs. Burch provided students with an introduction to the SimpleMind app and smashed it with Notability.  Google Drive and Canvas were used to finalize the workflow of product to instructor.

The SimpleMind app is a tremendous app that serves as a "graphic organizer" with multiple options for colors.  This was the best app for creating a web graphic so students could describe the Three Branches of Government.

We found that when we smashed the SimpleMind app into Notability the students were able to include images of topics described in the SimpleMind app.  Students were also able to add hand written annotations using tools in the Notability app.

As students took more than one day, we were able to export the Notability and SimpleMind creations to students' Google Drives via the app.  This allowed for students TO NOT need to same iPad each day of creation as the Notability app allows for importing of content from Google Drive.

As part of the assessment, Mrs. Burch chose the creativity portion of the four c's standards to assess along with the content.

From a tech coaching aspect, I (the tech coach) taught the the features of the app and the workflow needed completely to the first group of students.  During the second group of students, Mrs. Burch taught the features and workflow, while I was in the class for support.  It was a great interaction between Mrs. Burch as she was able to teach almost all aspects of the project while asking a few questions of me in front of the students if needed.  For the remaining two classes I was not in the room, but followed up with an email to see how the day progressed.

Overall, Mrs. Burch and myself believe the process worked well.

View the images of students working
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...