Calistoga+Implementation

Calistoga began the year with full class sets of i-pads in 4 Kindergarten classrooms. These were provided through a partnership with Napa Learns which is a Foundation dedicated to improving achievement in schools in Napa Valley. Napa Learns and Calistoga Unified School each made a significant committment to the ipad program. IInitially we loaded apps recommended by Kim Floyd who taught the Digital Summer Bridge Program at Calistoga during the Summer of 2011. She had implemented i-pad learning in her classroom the previous school year using 2 i-pads and used a class set of i-pads provided by Napa Learns to teach a summer class of students that had had no prior preschool experience.

These Apps were: Footsteps to Brilliance Alphabet Tracing Shape Puzzle Drawing Pad BB Magic #1 (Bob Books) Toy Story Digital Book 123 balloons hd Alphabet fun Crayola Color studio Finger sketch Teach me kindergarten Montessori crosswords Word magic

The bread and butter App for our implementation was Footsteps to Brilliance. This App was highly regarded for its rich text, rhyming and for its comprehension activities for students as well as teacher resources. The App has 18 books that can be read to students or students can tap individual words. The books all have excellent animations and students regularly returned to familiar books to reread them. Teachers felt the books were a little bit long. At 24 pages it was difficult to complete a read through of a book in one small group lesson.

Teachers used basically the same introductory process to teach i-pad care and handling to students. The introductory whole class lesson and small group lesson can be accessed on this site.

Teachers began introducing new applications one at a time until students were very familiar with each one. At that time we felt that students could be independent with i-pads and we created a simple method to structure independent use of the i-pad.

=Topics=
 * Introducing iPads to students
 * Read one of the Footsteps to Brilliance books
 * Miranda and Pam have done this and will write a lesson plan to describe their process
 * In groups of two students to one teacher and one i-pad introduce one of the apps. possibly Footsteps.
 * In small groups of 4 or 5 students to one teacher and an i-pad for each student, introduce one or more additional apps. poosibly alphabet tracing and shape puzzle
 * Timetable
 * Room 3 & 4 read a book __second week__ of school. Room 1 & 2 read a book the __third week of school__.
 * Room 3 & 4 begin partner introduction step second week of school. This step was skipped in Room 4.
 * We are reinforcing the care and handling of the iPads, tapping and sweeping. The timetable was slowed to a halt because of a need for some normed assessment for participants in the technology collaboration. Specifically, Napa Learns would like all participants to have the same pre and post assessments so that data can be compared. Assessment date is Friday, September 16. The Peabody assessment will be administered by Americorp workers sent by NCOE. Assessment rescheduled for Wednesday, September 21, 2011. We are free to go ahead with our roll out.


 * __Weeks 4 and 5__ Teachers are introducing 1 app at a time to small groups of students. We are only opening the app, tapping on various elements of the app as directed by the teacher. Apps introduced are Alphabet tracing in all classrooms, Drawing Board in Room 3 & 4, and Footsteps to Brilliance (F2B) in all classrooms.
 * __Week 5__ Students used Drawing Board as a follow up illustration after reading a book from the "Reading in Science and Social Studies" flip chart about the night sky. Pictures were taken of students in process. All classrooms are using alphabet tracing extensively. Feedback is that students are improving in overall penmanship.
 * __Week 6__ In small groups of 4 to 5 students we read a F2B Book called Where Do You Live, then introduced the process of going to the Book Buddies and then Games. Students were instructed that they must read the book first, then Book Buddies, then Games. While reading students were instructed to Listen, tap on the illustration, go to the next page. Each classroom set up their own routines.
 * __Week 7__ In small groups students worked to read a F2B ABC book. Later in the week students did the Book Buddies comprehension activity. If they finished, they could go on to the Games. Students in all classrooms continue to practice writing the letter of the week, colors and numbers with Alphabet Fun.
 * __Week 8__ Students read the F2B ABC Book word by word and search for the word that matches the letter. They try to tap on the object in the picture that goes with the letter. They continue to practice writing colors and numbers in Alphabet Fun. Later in the week they learn how to take a photo, import it into Drawing Pad and write a word on it. Pam is looking into using DropBox to create digital portfolios for students. All classrooms are experimenting with using Drawing Pad and the camera.
 * __Week 9__ Students use Balloon Pop to discriminate colors by tapping on one color only during each session. Some students pop balloons in numerical order. All classroms will be introducing a new F2B story called Get Out the Clothes. We will be using the story to enhance the theme of Seasons.
 * __Week 10__ We introduced the F2B story "Get Out The Clothes". Students read the story and we introduced the Book Buddies comprehension activity. Some students practiced the vocabulary of the four seasons. Learning to take photos, handwriting, and introducing more apps continues in all classrooms. We will all practice taking photos and share our structure for introducing photo taking.
 * __Week 11__ Updated apps for carts A and B. Introduced iwrite app to students. Students traced the letters to form three letter words. After writing words and having the words read to them the students hand wrote the words on paper. By the end of the week students were able to use iwrite independently.
 * __Week 12 through 19__ Teachers continue to use the i-pads in innovative ways. Two classes partners with older students to create pages for a book about Kindergarten Life using Strip Designer which is a comic strip App. Older students helped take pictures of Kinders engaged in typical classroom activities. Pictures were imported to preselected formats and then older students helped Kinders apply text bubbles, thought bubbles, stickers, etc. Pam is successfully using DropBox to store photos and digital projects for individual students. At the end of the year she will create a disk for each student to have a digital portfolio. During these weeks students use i-pads independently to read interactive books, work on handwriting, phonemic awareness, reading sight words, alphabet, counting and measurement. We created printed set of the App icons for each classroom that we can place on the table to show students which Apps are to be used for that day.
 * __Week 20__ Teachers are preparing to create an "at home" project using the Story Buddy App. One teacher introduced the App whole class and one teacher introduced the App in small group. It is the first time we have worked with this App and so far we are pleased with its capabiities. You can draw or paint, add text and photos from the camera roll, move text and photos around on the pages and easily add pages to the story.


 * Parent Workshops
 * A key element to the program is parent participation. We have held 2 parent workshops. The next one is scheduled for January 31, 2012. We have had good attendance. We put i-pads in the parents hands and teach them how to use the Apps we are using in school with their children. The January workshop will allow parents to practice with the Story Buddy App. which will be used for the home project. The home project will be to show a three step process for doing something. Parents will take three or more pictures of their child doing something such as making their bed or feeding their dog. Students will upload the pictures to pages in Story Buddy and parents will type text their child dictates to them.


 * Logistics for charging/storing/securing
 * Week 5 we are experimenting with charging only once per week and timing out how long to do various housekeeping tasks.
 * Marty advised the task of plugging all of them in should take no more than 5 minutes. It took me a little longer, closer to 10 minutes to do all 20 of them, but we will continue to practice.
 * __Week 11__ By this time we all have our procedure for charging. The i-pads do not need to be charged every day, but we do plug them into the cart as often as possible as this is desirable. Unlike the old days, today's batteries like to be charged up often and continuously when not in use.

Applications we will introduce initially. Please see the complete Apps list on another page for reviews and developer information. These were all installed prior to the carts being delivered. Also installed was
 * Drawing pad - 1.99
 * Shape puzzleHD - .99
 * Alphabet tracing - Free
 * Montessori crosswords - $2.99
 * Word Magic - .99
 * Teach Me Kindergarten
 * Finger Sketch
 * Balloon numbers