Oct. 6 & 7 In-service Bristol Bay

On Monday and Tuesday my school had two full days of in-service. We had an Apple Trainer at our school for those two days. Since our school is participating in a one to one program this is always valuable training. We covered several topics including imovie. The topic I found most useful was Apple Remote Desktop (ARD). I have had ARD on my school laptop since last year and never really figured out how to use it correctly. I have used synchronize in our computer lab and had no problem with that, but ARD for some reason has been a problem. I was successful in following along with our trainer in the use of ARD. Now if I can just implement what I learned in my classroom. I know what I have to do is set up class with the lists of my students computers in it so I can keep an eye on them during class. I know there are a few others who are watching computers even those not in their classroom. That is good because the students know that even if I may not be watching someone else might be. I didn't get a chance to go back to ARD once classes resumed, but I do know that I have to make it a priority so that I will be able to view where my students are when I have them working on their computers. I want to always be able to make sure they are on task and if not I can capture a screenshot of a student off task or even on an inappropriate site. We were told a story of students chatting about smoking pot that was captured by a screenshot. I don't believe they did that again and everyone in the school knew about it so everyone got a clear warning to be responsible. We also covered iworks including document shortcuts, picture placements, and educational uses of iworks. I only got a hour of instruction on using imovie, but a little is better than none. I learned how to split videos in imovie, how to put in titles, and dub sound in. I really want to learn how to use this because our school also has a subscription to Discovery Education Streaming. Many of the videos on Discovery can be edited. I can have a student take a video use the clips and place in their own narration covering a plethora of topics. I wanted to do that last year, but never had a chance to get to it. I do use many video clips in my presentations though to enhance and illustrate the concepts I am teaching like mountain building and biomes. It is an exciting tool that I want to utilize in as many ways as I can and with the one to one program it is possible.