Bitsboard is a must!

Hello again!

We are Marta and Amaranta and we will like to talk about ipads, the new trendy electronic devices in classrooms. In our context, almost all children know what an Ipad is and how to use it without us having to explain how it works detaily. However, it is true that teachers can help them to get to know more advanced skills that this tool can offer us. The world of apps has grown considerably for the past five years and currently teachers are lucky to have a plenty of online resources that enable students to review and learn new content, play games in groups, take up new linguistic activities, save time...etc as well as develop their digital competence!

In this post we would like to present you an amazing app we have discovered recently called: BitsBoard, the top 5 education game in the US app Store. Bitsboard is a free app for Ipads that includes a variety of different mini games -such as flashcards, matching and multiple choice games (called “photo touch”) and some others where students have to create words (“called word builder”)- on subjects at different levels of difficulty. This is a simple app, easy to deal with and, consequently, it can be used by children of any level, from ages 4 and up. In addition, teachers and students can also create and customize their own games, taking advantage of the available templates of “boards”, in order to use them as teaching tools.  

BitsBoard APP

ACTIVITY:

Target audience: Initial level of primary education (2nd year).

Bloom Taxonomy: (LOTS) Identify,remember, understand

Placement in curriculum: music (CLIL)

Aims of the game:

• To be able to learn the names of 12 instruments and their spelling.
• To be able to classify 12 instruments in their corresponding families (wind, string and percussion).
• To be able to use Bitsboard app.

Language:

• Vocabulary related to musical instruments: piano, guitar, violin, drum, harmonica, xylophone, maracas, accordion, flute, recorder, harp, clarinet.
• Expressions: belongs to, go together.
• Spontaneous language used by students in class.

Competences involved:

• Linguistic and audio-visual: through that sequence of activities, students will they develop the reading and the listening skills. All the activities have the option to include sound hints that say clearly the names of the instruments whenever you need it. In addition, one of the aims of these activities is to have an idea of the spelling .
• Musical: in these games students are learning some musical instruments that belong to the wind, string and to the percussion families.
• Digital: students have to be able to use Bitsboard in their Ipads.

Development:

• In order to detect our learner’s previous knowledge about the topic, we will carry out a “review game” (called like that) from Bitsboard. There is an image of one musical instrument and students will try to remember its name. Then, they will click on “tap to see the answer” and will self-assess their previous knowledge by answering the question: “How well did you know this?” and the possible answers are “not well”, “somewhat” and “very well”. Consequently, we could see what is the level of the class in this topic and students could review and acquire the vocabulary.
  
  

  

  Check previous knowledge
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Then, we will play a game named “Pop Quiz” to learn it better and review the names of the 12 musical instruments and focus also the attention on their spelling. This game consists of a multiple choice where it appears an image of an instrument and, below, two or more written names of instruments. 
  
  Afterwards, next step will consist of classifying every instrument in his family. For that, we will play a game called “Related items”, in which students have to drag an instrument next to another from the same family (p.e., the violin and the guitar belong to the wind family).
  Afterwards, next step will consist of classifying every instrument in his family. For that, we will play a game called “Related items”, in which students have to drag an instrument next to another from the same family (p.e., the violin and the guitar belong to the wind family).

  

  Related Items

  

                        Pop Quiz: What do you think?

Finally, to assess if students have achieved the objectives established, we will put into practise a game called “True or False” in which students will work both on the names of the instruments and on the spelling. The game is the following: it appears the picture of an instruments and below one name written. The student has to decide if the text matches with the image and, also, if the text is well written. In case both things are good, they click on the tick (true) but if one of those things is wrong, they click the cross (false).  We will give them more than one opportunity to do so they can practise it before the definitive one.

                  

Assessment: Is "Meracas" well written?

Feedback provided by Bitsboard: every time a child does an activity correctly, he/she receives a positive feedback comment (orally), such as “Well done!, “perfect”, “wonderful!”, etc.

Fast finishers students: Taking into account that Bitsboard offers much more minigames, the fastests students can explore all of them and play freely whatever game they want related to musical instruments.  

Classroom organisation:

Students will have the option to play the first three games individually or in pairs. Despite the fact they choose to play in pairs, each student will use his own Ipad, but they will discuss the answer all together first. It is important to make them remember that all the members of the group or pairs need to touch the ipad and select an option so they can alternate turns. The last activity, as it is the assessment, will be played individually.

Classroom management:

Following the tips that we have learnt in the ICT lessons, we would ask students to set Ipad aside when they didn’t need them to avoid classroom management problems. When we are telling them the instructions of the activity, we would say “Ipads facing at me”, so we can make sure that they pay attention and don’t get distracted. Moreover, we would ask students for assistance if we need their help or we get stuck (Experts TIC) In addition, at random points during the session, we will ask students to flip their screens of the Ipads so we could check that they are doing the task proposed. We believe that it is always important for the teacher to have used the app before and have tried to create a game to foresee the problems that can arise.

Added value through ICT

• Gives extra motivation for children. Children love using Ipads and show other kids their digital skills.
• Visual support that help them memorize better the vocabulary, good for different learning styles.
• Save time.
• Can be saved and repeated whenever they want.

Session 5 (14/04/2016)

written by Anna Solé Tusal and Ferran Rodríguez i Díaz

Today's session is about iPads and its different applications in Infant and Primary schools. Some of us are having our first contact with iPads, so there are a lot of new things we need to explore. The classmates who know how iPad's work will be helping the rest. Therefore, we are learning in a cooperative way. 

first contact

Now we are discussing about the pros, cons and purposes of the use of iPads in class. Some pros are that iPads are fun, interactive and nice; this device can develop and improve the ICT competence of our students. The cons we see are the lack of iPads in the school; the inappropriate use some students would do of the devices and of course one of the biggest cons are the battery issues. 

We also talked about the "What for?"; they are useful for designing interactive and motivating activities; iPads provide a wide variety of high quality visuals and are also good for a recreational use. 

We are discovering some apps we never heard before. They are apps designed to help teachers manage the class. One is called "ClassDojo", it is an easy app that will let us administrate the positive-negative points every student deserves (this can be considered behaviorist, but the app is good and motivates them a great deal). The other one is called "Classcraft"; the purpose is similar to the last app but from a different point of view. We are also talking about Book Creator, BitsBoards, Puppet Show, Tiny Tap.

Finally Miriam and me have created activities using the different apps we discovered in class. An example is BitsBoard, which is is a simple True/False game about the different spaces of our university.
This game can be listed in the Understanding and Applying steps of Bloom's Taxonomy, because it will have the students thinking and relating all the vocabulary they know. In the activity, they not only are tested in the vocabulary itself... they will have to pay attention on the spelling as well; some of the words are tricky and have been misspelled.

The target age for this activity in particular would be 9-11 years old. They not only are able to identify the different vocabulary worked in class, in addition they are able and ready to check the spelling as well.

Once again, ICT takes advantage on old/classic activities. We all know how to create vocabulary-check activities on paper... but now we are able to do them with ICT tools as the iPad. With this, you are bringing innovation and technology to the classroom. The students will enjoy more the activity and will improve their tech skills.

Here you have a couple screenshots of it:

We really encourage you to try these kind of apps; they are really useful and engaging for children!! We believe it is very important to instill in children the desire to learn in a different way, why not through ICT support?

Ferran Rodríguez and Anna Solé

Saint Patricks Day

Hello girls!

In this entry I’m going to show some resources that I used with my pupils to work Saint Patrick's day.

I created a power point slide collected some of the resources that can be used to work Saint Patrick's in Primary 5.

First of all, this celebration can be introduced by a video about a Leprechaun, helping the teacher to create good atmosphere to start talking about Saint Patrick. Then I thought it could be good to show another video explaining briefly the legend.

It’s always important to work vocabulary and there’re some webpages that have flashcards and images that would be good to use to work Saint Patrick's day.

Also if we want to create our flashcards I highly recommend to use Bitsboard and play games in groups with the iPads.

Furthermore, to learn vocabulary in a more attractive way they can be playing games, such as memory, and every time they turn over a card they have to say the name of the image. (This would be a LOTS Bloom’s taxonomy activity). 

Also, learn more about the legend they can search on the Internet some webpages explaining it.

Moreover, a good and HOTS activity (linking with Blooms Taxonomy) we can tell the students to choose 6 clue words about the legend, so they will have to analyse the previous text that they have searched, and decide which words they want to use to create a crossword puzzle, introducing the word and making the definitions.

Although, it can be very creative to look for some Saint Patricks crafts, and a very useful and recommended application is Pinterest. 

Additionally, I founded lots of very interest presentations about the legend of Saint Patrick's that can be used in class without any problem, and we can edit and adapt to our needs.

Last but not least, I want to comment that before doing this subject I was interested in new technologies but after doing I have opened a lot my mind and now I have more skills and more resources to use in class, and also I’m more oriented on how to use it in a correct way and try to squeeze it to take advantage of all the digital resources.

Thank you so much!

The use of iPads as an educational tool. María and Laura posting and learning

The use of iPads and tablets as an educational tool is nowadays one of the emerging trends in society. Therefore, in the last Master’s Degree ICT class we were introduced to the use of this very sophisticated technology in schools. Maribel Benito, one of our ICT teachers, was the one leading this task.

First, she lectured us about the proper use of this resource and showed us how they use iPads in Jesuïtes Bellvitge, the school where she works. From what she showed, it looks like her school has a very carefully developed approach towards the use of technologies in the class. For instance, to deal with iPads and technologies, the school has created within its ICT program the role of technology leaders. These leaders are chosen and trained to help their classmates and teachers. They are several in each class and they are chosen among the students that are good with technologies. In regard to iPads, she told us that the real potential of this tool lies in the fact that children can easily create and share their own personalize learning materials and projects.

After this short lecture, we had the chance to explore the iPads and use them as if we were children. To do so, we used two apps, Book Creator and Bitsboard. 

With BookCreator we created a short story with photos, video, and audio. We must say that when we run out of time it was hard to stop working. It was then when we realized how powerful, engaging and motivating this tool and apps are. If you wish you can check out our creation.

With Bitsboard, we first created a series of flashcards and then some games. We found this app amazingly useful because the teacher and the students can easily create personalized flashcards with image, audio and written word. Then, ones you have the flashcards the app creates a wide range of games to work on this language.

Charter of Games

Unscramble

Wordsearch

Odd one out

Related to the application of these tool in the school, we thought that Book Creator could be used to create all sorts of stories. For instance, students could create stories for different moments of the year, like Christmas, Halloween, and Easter. Or could they do short narrations around different topics like, for example, "the story of their lives", "their holidays", "an innovative cooking recipe", or the "step by step documentation of a class project". We also thought that this tool could be used to work on the stories presented in the class. For instances, taken the story of The very hungry Caterpillar students could create their own version or make their own summary with pictures, screenshots, videos and audios of themselves while performing or even drawing the story. In this way, the story will be worked in depth and the students will have a repertory of personalize materials related to the story.

Moreover, Bitsboard could be used in the classroom, as mentioned above, to create personalized flashcards and work on language in a more meaningful way. We would do this by encouraging the class to take pictures and create their own flashcards. We also thought that we could use the games generated by this app to work in different Study Areas or to deal with fast finishers (those children that always finish earlier than the others).

Therefore, Book Creator easily prompts HOTS (High Order Thinking Skills) activities in which students can create, evaluate and analyze. And Bitsboard is an amazing tool for working on LOTS (Low Order Thinking Skills) like remembering, understanding and applying.