Monday 31 January 2011

iPads Apps for Jakarta World Academy

We are preparing the image for our first trial use of iPads at Jakarta World Academy. I have selected a few apps from my own image to test use at the school. Here are just some from my selection. The age range for these apps are K1-Gr 1.

JWA Apps

Monday 24 January 2011

Weebly Portfolios


The Grade 4 and 5 students at SWA have been trialling the use of Weebly portfolios. Last quarter the Weebly sites were started and the expectation this quarter is for all subjects to have a page for portfolio work.

At SWA the Grade 4 and 5 students are in the 1:1 laptop program. This gives them easy access to be able to create most of their school work in a digital format. It is a natural extension to make the portfolios in digital format.

Originally the students made their portfolios in either Keynote or iWeb on the laptops. This made it difficult to access in that students had to have their laptops in order to see the portfolio. By having the work online, it has allowed parents to keep up to date with their child's work as often as they like.



What's Good About Weebly
Weebly allows the teacher to access the student websites from inside the admin controls for editing. It also allows for a class password to be used which gives extra privacy for younger users. It has an easy drag and drop interface which is simple for even the most tech-challenged to use.
I personally like that students can upload a video directly to their sites without having to host it elsewhere and embed it. Weebly is also integrated with Scribd.com so that Word or Pages documents can be directly uploaded to be embedded in the page. There are many options for photo displays with galleries or simple photo+paragraph choices. For more information - check out the video overview of the site