Technology Tuesday!

I have never done a technology post before...mostly because I've always only been OK at technology...I always seem to take the long way to get anything done (if you know how to do what I am sharing in a more efficient way, please please please let me know!) I have been so excited to post about this topic for over a week...I just couldn't get around to putting it all together until now!

We have 2 iPads in my classroom and I love them for a variety of reasons.  Mainly I love that my kids can have fun while working on educational apps and that the iPad seems to be a high quality reinforcer for most of my kids.  But after what I discovered a few weeks ago (and I am about to share with you), I am SO MUCH MORE EXCITED about my iPads!

Ok...so I found out about this on Pinterest and then revamped it to meet my needs!  Do you ever buy or make really pretty colored worksheets, only to realize that the only way your kids will see them will be in black and white?  WE teachers don't have money for color copies!!  So, with this app I am sharing with you today, you can download your worksheets onto your iPad (hello color!) and have the kids complete them on there!  Fun, motivating, and interactive all in one.

Before beginning, I uploaded a PDF document I wanted to try out onto google drive.  This app also supports dropbox as well as a few others.  Today, I am using my newest science unit on Landforms (available on TPT) to show you how this great app works.

Here we go.  Go to the app store and download the Good Notes app (I did the Free version).

Next, click on the + sign in the upper left corner.  I clicked on Google Drive (but you could use whichever works best for you).

After doing that, I was prompted to log into my google account.

Once I logged in, all of my google drive documents showed up. I clicked on my Science Landform PDF. 

A screen like this will pop up to show you your PDF is downloading.

 And then, TA-DA!  Here is my PDF sitting on the bookshelf!

There are a few features of this app...I'll go across the icons on the top from left to right. The first icon looks like a grid.  When you click on this, you get to see an overview of all the pages in your document.  

Next to that is a + sign.  When you click on this, you can add photos, bookmark, or add a text box.  This is probably the most useful for me (especially for those kiddos who struggle with writing!!!!!).  So, when I added a text box to this comprehension sheet for our landforms science experiment, it popped up no problem, along with the keyboard.  I simply typed in my answers.  I used the highlighter (more on that later) to circle the correct answers as well from the multiple choices.  

You can also just hold down your finger and the text option comes up.  Click on that, and an instant text box will appear.

I'm skipping over the shape icon and zoom icon.  To find out more about the parts of the app I did not cover, go here for a user guide.  Next up, the writing utensils.  You can use a pen, highlighter, or eraser.

When you hold down on the icon of the pen, a menu pops up where you can select color and thickness.  I chose red to do this matching sheet.

The highlighter pretty much works the same way, just gives you a thicker line.  I used that one for this tracing worksheet.  The eraser icon allows you to erase any lines you drew by dragging it over them.

Next, if you move over to the icon of the 3 dots.  You can hit "clear page" which erases everything you have done (so you are ready for the next student!).  You can also click export/print to save the work and store it away.  The "email" feature did not work for me for some reason.   However,  I did find a few ways to save the students work.  First of all, you could just take a screen shot to save it.  Then email it to yourself or a parent.

Or....you can click export current page (or all pages),

Then choose google drive (like I said earlier...the email option didn't work for me).

Next, click OK.  

Then, depending on how you want to organize your documents, you can create folders or just upload the document to your drive.  I created a folder (on google drive) for each student so that when this option pops up, I can find the student's folder (see Suzy Q in picture below).  Next, it opens the Suzy Q folder and you simply click upload for your current document to be added to her folder.  

To try all this out with my kids, I brought the iPad to summer school to have them work on it.  My students had so much fun doing their "science work" on the iPad!  Here is one of my students graphing using the highlighter and answering the questions with the pen functions.

And here is my student working on a matching sheet and a word search.  I cannot wait to use this app all next year!  Sorry for the extremely long post, but hopefully you find it helpful!

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