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Lately in class I have been using the SpellBoard app by palasoftware. I’m finding it quite a brilliant addition to our class tools for students with poor spelling. There is also a companion version for the iPhone and iPod Touch – SpellBoard Buddy and a full Mac version which I haven’t yet used or needed. There are hundreds of spelling apps out there, but there are four really great things about SpellBoard that make it awesome for our particular adult literacy context: 

• Users (students and/or teachers) can create their OWN spelling quizzes/word lists
• Users can share their quizzes with other students with iDevices via Bluetooth (iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch)
• The interface looks good and is not at all childish.
• The apps allows for sharing – multiple student profiles can be used on the same device

Let me tell you how it works. When you first open the app, you are presented with a blank slate and need to either create a quiz or share/load a quiz from elsewhere. In most cases I have chosen to create quizzes myself, as I like to focus on current themes in my classes, so tend to want to select vocabulary appropriate to that.

For example,  we are in the middle of the State of Origin series at the moment. I’ve quite a few students in my class who are Rugby League mad, so over this period of time their has been some focus on the games. I put together a slideshow with some newspaper articles; some info about ticket purchasing and pricing;  and a YouTube video of some great State of Origin moments and saved it as a pdf to be opened in the GoodReader app (another of my personal favourites and one that is used constantly in class). The students annotated their own copies of the text on each individual iPad while referring to a paper-based booklet of comprehension, punctuation, free writing and spelling tasks.

The spelling task used a quiz created in SpellBoard using words from the newspaper text. Each student Studied the Quiz and practiced before Taking the Quiz. They then came up with their own list of words they associated with State of Origin, checked the spelling with me and created their own short quizzes to swap with each other.

Creating Quizzes

1. Tap Create Quiz and give it a name. You can choose a level from 1 to 12, but I usually just leave them all at level 1.
2. Tap the + icon to add a word. I like to use both Speak Word and Speak Phrase options.
3. Type in the correct spelling.
4. Tap the microphone and say the word clearly.
5. If adding the optional phrase containing the word, type it in and record the phrase.

Sharing Quizzes

• 1 to many iDevices: When I create the quiz, I tend to choose the Save Quizzes to iTunes option because I can connect my iPad to the server, drag the quizzes from under SpellBoard in the File Sharing area to my desktop then sync it to the others. This is one of the options under Share/Load from within the app.
• 1 to 1: When a student creates a quiz and wants to share it with their peers, Connect via Bluetooth works well. Both devices need Bluetooth switched on and they are usually very quickly able to find each other and accept the invitation to share. A copy of the quiz can then be transferred from one device to the other relatively quickly.
• A quiz can also be emailed then loaded to an iDevice via iTunes.

Studying and Taking a quiz

• Study: Quizzes are studied by tapping Study the Quiz. The word is shown and spoken individually and with the phrase if you have chosen this option. They can listen to this as many times as they would like. The student is encouraged to write the word on the iPad screen in the space provided. This is an important spelling strategy. While in study mode the student can also connect to Wordnik to get a definition of the word and can also look at synonyms and antonyms of the word. The quiz can be studied over and over again and can easily be transferred to other iDevices over Bluetooth to take home.
• Take the quiz: The word is played and shown as a gap within the context of the phrase (if that option was recorded). Just like in the study section, the student can try out the spelling by writing, but needs to tap and use the keyboard to enter their answer. Scores are kept in history, so students can take the test multiple times and track improvements along the way.

Like anything on the iPad screen, results of a quiz can be retained and submitted with their work by taking a screen capture and printing, via email or by sending the completed quiz results to the cloud.

Limitations

This app would not be suitable for people with hearing impairments as the quizzes rely on users being able to hear the spoken word individually and within a phrase.

App reviews

SpellBoard is currently $5.99 in the Australian iTunes store. I was surprised to see that reviewers have only scored it three stars, but I’m wondering if what makes it perfect in my context (being able to create highly contextualised word lists) might make it time-consuming or high maintenance in others. Still, people tend to only bother providing feedback when they’ve been disappointed, so it made me realise I should make an effort to provide positive reviews when I come across something I find really good, so I’ve added my own review accordingly.

You might also be interested to know that the same developers make MathsBoard. I haven’t used it yet, but am interested to see if it is as useful and works in the same way.

Love to hear from others about what you think of SpellBoard or if you know of another great spelling app.

Bye for now!

Late in 2010, when iPads were first coming out, I got together with a couple of my colleagues and devised a plan to approach management with the idea for an iPad trial in our Adult Literacy and Numeracy classrooms at Brisbane North Institute of TAFE. We were so excited when our idea was supported and a Steering Committee was established to guide us on our journey. If you are interested, here is the Prezi I created to present to our Institute Executive with the hows and the whys about our proposal. Some things have changed and morphed a bit since then, but it's a reasonable snapshot of what we were thinking when we started this in August 2010.

In Australia, we sit within the Vocational Education and Training Sector (VET). We operate completely independently of primary, secondary and tertiary/university education. I believe in the US we would be known as a community college. In the VET sector, students can be from 15 to any age and coming to study anything from A to Z that’s available across a huge range of Cert 1 – Advanced Diploma qualifications within the Australian Qualifications Framework  (MCEECDYA, 2011). TAFE Institutes are public Registered Training Organisations that exist within this framework. Brisbane North Institute of TAFE, the home of this trial, has 7 campuses on Brisbane’s northside with over 30 000 students. This trial commenced at Bracken Ridge campus where we teach, amongst many other things, adult literacy, numeracy and general education courses.

Adult literacy and numeracy

Did you know that in the last Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ABS, 1996) 46% of Australians aged between 15 and 74 years were assessed as having literacy skills lower than that required to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work? 18% of these Australians are operating at the lowest level of literacy on the scale and it is these Australians that struggle the most when it come to negotiating the literacy tasks in everyday life that many of us take for granted (such as reading the newspaper, sending a text message or email, filling out forms and using an ATM).

This is where adult literacy in VET comes in. Even the most basic of entry level jobs require a reasonable level of literacy, so literacy levels have an enormous impact on the ability of some Australians to earn an income and take advantage of the opportunities afforded those in the workforce. Literacy levels have a direct effect on our nation’s economy and supply of educated and trained workers. In TAFE, adult literacy and numeracy is funded by State and Commonwealth funding sources, but there is never enough to do the job that needs to be done and in recent years literacy has been a bit forgotten as Australia has focussed on upskilling our workforce quickly via supporting increased immigration of skilled workers - or at least that's my opinion!

Literacy @ BNIT

The classes we run at BNIT include Vocational Literacy and Numeracy; Access 10 English and Maths; and the Language, Literacy and Numeracy Program (LLNP). Literacy levels in these classes range from 1 through to 4 when measured against the Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF) (Commonwealth of Australia, 2011). The ACSF describes levels of performance from 1 to 5, across the core skills of reading, writing, numeracy, oral communication and learning in personal, work, community and training contexts.

So, we could have adult students working on their ABC’s and 123’s through to those reading and writing complex text and everything in between. Although the original iPad Trial proposal included an ESL class, our literacy classes do not generally contain students for whom English is a second language – most are native English speakers who for one reason or another have missed out on some of the most critical aspects of literacy and numeracy learning. What is very common amongst these students is a feeling of failure and a fear and mistrust of education and it is a major step forward for them to even decide to come. And so... we have to try and make it fun, acknowledge that they are adults with life experiences behind them and try to help them learn the strategies they need to participate more fully in our very literate world.

While there are more mature students, a great percentage of these classes contain young adults between the ages of 17 and 25. The youngest of these are typically the most challenging, as their negative experiences with education are still pretty raw and recent, and they arrive with a naughty high school student mentality, ready to get into trouble, sent out of the room, asked to be quiet etc. This can be challenging, and it takes a little while, but if they stick around long enough they come to see that they are treated like adults, it’s not school, they make their own choices about their level of productivity and are responsible for the consequences. Amongst these groups, attendance can be sporadic and it’s common for students to drop out, come back again months later, and have several attempts at completing their course.

This is where the idea for our iPad trial came in. Whilst I’m pretty sure we’re one of the first TAFEs in Australia to go down this track, I can’t say it was a new idea - trials were already underway in different parts of the world across a range of education sectors by the time we got started. There were a raft of reasons we felt this was important to look at (see the Prezi above for further information) including a need to acknowledge mobile literacy as an important digital literacy, and digital literacy, as an important part of literacy in general. Parry (2011) put this very eloquently when he said that "The future our students will inherit is one that will be mediated and stitched together by the mobile web, and I think that ethically, we are called on as teachers to teach them how to use these technologies effectively, to ensure that they end up on the right side of the digital divide: the side that knows how to use social media to band together. Teaching mobile web literacy seems to me as basic as teaching basic literacy." 

There was also a concern that TAFE, being one of the pathways post-secondary, will end up in the not-too-distant future with students who have been exposed to mobile learning and will arrive in our classrooms with certain expectations about what learning is and how it is delivered.

Why iDevices?

Amongst the biggest influences on our decision to think iPad was that iPhones were fast taking over as the mobile device of choice amongst our students, our campus was newly wired for wi-fi and so iPod Touches were suddenly useful and appearing in classes as well. Many students seemed to have or want one of these iDevices, and if they didn’t there was a good chance they had a smartphone of some other description. I’m not sure what the stats were for iPhone use at the time, but in Feb 2011 iOs devices had a staggering 74% market share in of Australia (Perez, 2011) so it's not surprising they are infiltrating our classrooms. There is also mounting evidence globally such as the 2011 Horizon Report (The New Media Consortium, 2011) demonstrating that mobile learning is here to stay. What an amazing opportunity for education and a hook for us to hang literacy on! We felt that this could be the thing that could help us increase engagement and thereby positively impact on attendance, retention and completions.

What the iPad offers us

• It’s very easy for students to master. Most already know how to use it because they are familiar with it via their phones, but if they don’t, they pick it up quickly. That means there is no learning to use the technology hurdle to get in the way.
• Always at your fingertips, anywhere, anytime and always socially connected learning.
• A vast array of learning apps with content at levels suitable for our range of adult learners yet not necessarily too childish to use. 
• Accessibility options that are free, built-in and are not uncool.
• It’s fast to turn on, fast to log on to the wifi network, fast to log off and the battery life is incredible.
• Tools and learning strategies that students can learn to use in class, download to their own devices and carry with them in their pockets (when was the last time you saw someone carry around a dictionary and a calculator?).
• It’s also been an amazing professional development opportunity for us as teachers, but more on that at another post!

The trial parameters

We’ve kept it pretty basic – 3 teachers, 25 iPads shared across 5-6 classes, 4 days per week. Phases of the trial explained as follows:  

The aim of all of this, as stated earlier, is to increase engagement and improve attendance, retention and completions. At the time of writing we are in the middle of Phase 3 and seeing some really positive improvements in the way the students are interacting with the devices and general class dynamics. It’s still early days in terms of hard data about these areas, but it certainly LOOKS and FEELS like we have engagement and hopefully this will be played out in the numbers when they are assessed at the end of the year. Eight months in, we have encountered many hurdles and found ways around and over them. There’ve been some ups and downs, but overall, it’s been a really positive experience for everyone involved.

More detail about specific aspects will be provided in other posts. Thanks for reading!

Kristy

Notes

ABS (2006), Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey, 2006. http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DOSSbytitle/2D7F8204FEA1D124CA2572E9008079F1?OpenDocument

Commonwealth of Australia (2011), Australian Core Skills Framework, http://www.deewr.gov.au/SKILLS/PROGRAMS/LITANDNUM/ACSF/Pages/default.aspx

MCEECDYA (2011), Australian Qualifications Framework, http://www.aqf.edu.au/

The New Media Consortium (2011), 2011 Horizon Report, http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2011/

Parry, D. (2011), Mobile Perspectives: On teaching Mobile Literacy in Educause Review, vol. 46, no. 2 (March/April 2011), http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume46/iMobilePerspectivesOnteachingi/226160

Perez, S (2011), Mobile Operating System Marketshare, Feb 2011, in ReadWrite Web Mobile, http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/02/mobile-operating-system-market-share-feb-2011-infographic.ph

We were staying at our unit at Mooloolaba over the Easter holiday break as I was to attend the 2 day Slide2Learn conference at the University of the Sunshine Coast. My husband took my iPad, in a red leather case, to do our grocery shopping (I had my shopping list in the ShopShop app on the iPad). He accidentally left it sitting on the red children's seat of the shopping trolley, returned the trolley to the trolley return and drove off without it! 

Half an hour passed by the time he returned and I enquired after my iPad. He went white, jumped up, grabbed his car keys and raced out the door. I followed with my iPhone. The supermarket in question was closed. Although there were still staff inside, they did their best to avoid eye contact with us. Eventually we got their attention: they wouldn't open the door and speak to us but we shouted through the glass that we had left an iPad in a trolley.  One lady came to the door and said "the trolley attendant has already gone home. Come back in the morning and see him, he is a young Indian man”.  This was not good, a great deal of my life is on that device. I also had Slide2Learn in the morning and I needed that iPad! 

We returned to the car and discussed what to do. I remembered I had activated Find My iPhone on all of my iDevices although I really had little idea how it worked. I located the app, logged in with my Apple ID, selected my iPad and within a few seconds I could see that the app was ‘locating’ the iPad. A screen showed that I had the option to display a message or play a sound, plus there were the options to remotely lock and remotely wipe the iPad. I chose to Remote Lock and Display a Message (something along the lines of ‘if you find this iPad, please, please, please call this number’). I also chose to play a sound, thinking at the time that we could walk around the underground car park while it was playing and possibly locate the trolley. No luck there. Then we realized the map was showing that the iPad was not in fact where we were, but rather at an address several blocks from the supermarket. Someone had it and had moved it...

So – off we went in search of the address. It could have been anyone, however the most obvious scenario was that it had been found by an opportunistic trolley attendent. By the time we got to the address Find My iPhone was only able to show where the iPad had been located 14 minutes earlier – it had been turned off – the noise must have got annoying. We weren't sure how accurate the location shown was, but it was pointing between two houses. One was dark, one wasn't.

My husband went and knocked on the door of the house that was lit up. A very nice elderly gentlemen answered the door and my husband asked him if there was someone there who worked as a trolley attendent at ***** (the supermarket). The man said "yes, that would be my boarder *****, just knock on that door". He knocked and a young Indian man and his wife came to the door. My husband said "you wouldn't happen to have found an iPad in a trolley at work, would you?". The man said "No, I had a message about a lady who lost an iPad, but I don't know anything about it. If you go to *****(the supermarket) in the morning I'm sure that they will give it back to you if it has been found”. My husband said, "that's funny because it's my wife's iPad and it has a tracking device in it which shows that it is here". The man again denied knowing anything about the iPad until my husband got angry and mentioned the police. He suggested that if the iPad were to be returned now there would be no need to call the police. The man retreated up the stairs and returned with my iPad.

We had it back! My husband turned it back on, entered the passcode to unlock it and Find my iPhone once again kicked in, sounding loudly and displaying the last message I had sent to it. He turned on his heel and left the house, the Indian man and his wife following. The thief briefly mentioned a reward but changed his mind after seeing the looks on our faces. He then suggested that we provide him with our details in case he had to prove to his boss that he no longer had the iPad. There was no way we were trusting him with any information whatsoever. We left. I still can't believe we got it back. Thank goodness for Find My iPhone. A couple of other things went our way too:

•  I had registered and set up my iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad with MobileMe for use with Find My iPhone 
• The passcode lock was set to 5 minutes. More than 5 minutes would have passed between when the iPad was last used and when it was found. That meant Find my iPhone couldn't be accessed and disabled. Push Notifications was turned ON. That means that Mobile Me was able to Push the sounds and messages to the iPad straight away. 
• It was my personal iPad (a 3G model), not my work wifi-only iPad, and the cellular data was turned to ON which meant that it was transmitting over the 3G network. This could have been disabled by removing the micro-SIM, but the thief didn’t know it.
• I did not have Erase Data after 10 failed passcode attempts activated on the iPad. I gave serious consideration to doing so remotely while we were looking for it but never had to in the end. I don't know how many failed passcode attempts were made while it was in the thief’s possession, but if it were more than 10, then I would have had a blank iPad to take to Slide2Learn.

So, the moral of this story is activate Find My iPhone. It mightn’t help in all cases, but it sure did in this one. I do tend to turn my cellular data on and off when I’m not using it, but I think, from now on, I’m just going to leave it on. Oh, and yeah, don’t loan your iPad to your partner without supervision!

P.S. No – I don’t work for Apple – I’m just a teacher using iPads in classrooms. This turn of events and the awesome stuff I witnessed at Slide2Learn prompted me to start this blog. I hope you’ll return for more. I plan to share what I learn about the pedagogical implications (or in my context, the androgogical implications) of iPads in my classroom along the way. More context for our iPad trial at BNIT in my next post.

Bye for now!

Kristy

@rubyjeansmith