Category Archives: Apple Distinguished Educator

Animating Multi-touch Books with Keynote and iBooks Author

Since Academy, I have been on the lookout for a good multi-touch book project to use animation effectively within. A GCSE PE project has given me multiple opportunities to illustrate – from movements of the joints to the way blood moves through the heart and planes and axes.

I use a lot of vector art, which I draw straight into iBooks Author since it is so quick and effective. (I draw in Keynote too, but by drawing into iBA directly, it is retained as a shape, editable, and is retained as xml so is incredibly lightweight.)

To give you an idea of how this looks in the book, I exported a couple of videos:

Hosting #AppleEDUchat

It seems like a long time ago that James and I decided we were up for hosting a Twitter chat. One of the big persuasion points with colleagues had been to show how iPad would not only benefit students but benefit teachers by saving time and simplifying processes. We proposed this as a topic when there was a call for new hosts.

In those hazy days, Tuesday nights at 8pm were #ADEchat and had formed the start of my Apple Distinguished Educator journey. It was the crux of those ‘have we met, or do I know you from Twitter’ moments at Academy.

By the time our slot rolled round, on 6th March 2018, #ADEchat had become #AppleEDUchat – but our purpose was still the same. We brainstormed six questions on the topic of Teacher Workflow with iPad, edited them with Miriam and Martin (fellow ADEs who oversee it all). Artwork arrived for each of the questions, and shiny new avatar frames. We had just enough time to figure out scheduled tweets before the big day.

Our questions were:

  1. Which apps help you to be an efficient teacher in your classroom?
  2. Do you have a different workflow process for when you work with students?
  3. How does iPad support efficient learner assessment?
  4. Share your favourite iPad based workflow.
  5. How do you encourage colleagues to embrace productive teacher workflow with iPad?
  6. We’ve seen a lot of good ideas shared. What are you going to try after tonight? Do you have One More Thing… you’d like to share?

It was a fantastic moment to enable discussion about this on Twitter, and to reach far and wide in the region. As a participant it’s a much more relaxed affair, considering questions, writing an answer, reading others, liking and replying. An hour will fly by. As a host, I was so glad to not only have James and also the scheduled tweets. In trying to reach, like, reply, prompt for more information from as many people as possible, the hour blinked by and I emerged from the tunnel vision to find a cold cup of tea beside the keyboard, which my fiancé had made for me at some point during it!

#HTINSET

Our school is part of the Harpur Trust, and at the start of January we collaborated for one Trust-wide INSET day at Bedford School. James and I were asked to present a session about the 1:1 approach at BGS. We chose to present about iTunes U and multi-touch books as our specialisms, but we needed to pitch it to teachers who were not in 1:1 environments (yet, maybe!) so looked wider to how the approaches could be used towards VLE, ePub, Chrome Books etc. to help our audience.

We had a packed room on the day, and I hope that what we shared helped our colleagues in the Trust consider how technology can improve teaching and learning for them and their students.

#ClassroomClips – iBooks Author

Off the back of ADE Academy 2017, we were encouraged to create our own series of #ClassroomClips . As iBooks Author is my specialism, I created a set of clips to illustrate some tricks.

View the rest of the set here in this Twitter thread. 

Journey’s Just Beginning

This time last week I was putting things in my suitcase, considering the British weather and casual dress code, and almost glad I was driving to Windsor and didn’t have to also worry about weight.

It was a beautiful, warm day on Tuesday when I got into the car and headed south. Not even the stop-start traffic on the M25 could take the edge off the mix of nerves and excitement at what lay ahead. The schedule looked full on – but I’d never been to a professional residential event to compare. I felt like a fresher heading off for fresher’s week, either way, hoping I’d fit in and not look decidedly dim amongst all the talent.

I’d been in the door two minutes before someone stopped me to ask if I was Kit, and the eternal question of ‘have we met before, or just on Twitter’ began! I was really glad to have participated in Tuesday night #ADEchat since my application, as I could recognise quite a number of faces both of class of 2017 and alumni. Putting them all physically in one room later that evening with both live hosting and questions on Twitter was at times mind-boggling. As the week went on, I felt I had underestimated how many people had met in person before – through working at RTCs, or from becoming AETs etc. To hear that this year’s Academies were smaller to help people network, I felt quite relieved, as although I said hello to so many people, I couldn’t help but feel I was grazing the surface quite often.

The workshops on Wednesday were one of the parts I was most looking forward to. It was great fun to try and work out how to get Spheros to flash or dance in time to music, and the long exposure light trails I’d seen in a Twitter photo were more tricky to film than code in the end. (Although we have earlier generation Spheros at school, I hope we might be able to apply the concepts with Tickle or similar, until we can budget for some updates.) The Lego robots were intriguing and I definitely enjoyed the crossover of subjects with computing.

It had been a really hard choice to pick workshops, and I was glad we were able to sneakily switch. I’d been using Clips quite a bit on the lead up to Academy, and a heads up at breakfast suggested my other shortlisted choice of Designing Educational Resources would definitely be worth going to instead. The talk was a kick up the backside for me – it was practice I knew but wasn’t putting into action. I’ve been so preoccupied with the content, accessibility and the basic design and low file size to get books produced swiftly in the first 12 months, I’ve not been pushing the boat out design-wise. With us replacing our original iPad stock this autumn (goodbye iOS 9 at last) and some increased storage on each device, I can afford to be slightly less strict with myself on the export size, and certainly I will need to start using the larger resolution images.

The showcases and stories shared from Wednesday onwards had us laughing, gasping, cheering, photographing and filming. I really hope they might be published again online as it would be very good to watch again and absorb them properly. There were so many interesting insights, ideas and experiences in there that would be applicable to colleagues across our 7-18 age range.

Thursday’s final workshop session of coding apps with Xcode was great. Although we jumped from bit to bit, it was an excellent overview and insight into what could be ahead if we are able to acquire Macs/MBPs in our computing department to trial. I’d also gone along to the fireside chat the previous day, but as we were not able to use Swift last year, I couldn’t offer experiences. However, I hope we’ll be able to integrate it as another language soon.

That afternoon I was pleased to join up with Sebah and Linda to begin a set of Clips on BookWidgets – something we each used but for different reasons! Within an hour and a half we had pulled together two clips from scratch, using Keynote for some additional content. Once the dust has settled, I look forward to figuring out a couple more to add to the collection – and BookWidgets were rather pleased at our efforts.

On Friday, with final showcases, instructions, presentations and photos it was all over, though I knew the journey was just beginning.

#BookWidgets #ClassroomClips

Apple Distinguished Educator 2017! #ADE2017

I’m in!

I let out an excited squeal when the email arrived from California. I’d just got home from school where I’d been working solidly in the Easter holiday peace when it arrived (us Digital Design Creators still toil while corridors fall quiet).

With only 9 months of work behind me when I made my 2 minute pitch video, I thought I was an outsider.

Still not come down from the ceiling – what a Monday!!