This is the first in a series of blog “snapshots” of how Mercy students benefit from using iPad technology (and other tools) throughout the school day.

I had the opportunity recently to witness Ms. Moore managing a perfect lesson with a class of interested and fully engaged students. Her scheme was to have students use earbuds while watching oral interpretive speeches. They “split-screen” their iPads and took notes following authentic guidelines like these: http://www.ncfl.org/orginal-oratory

Ms. Moore

The students accessed all materials including the links to the YouTube videos in  Schoology. They used the popular Notability app. This lesson had the advantage of achieving 100% thinking and participation before the students shared their ideas orally.

A screen shot from Ms. Moore’s lesson

According to Dept. Chair, Ms.MacDougall, students in Acting One and other performance groups use iPad apps to assist with script memorization. One of these students- Grace Hannah- shared her enthusiasm for Memorize Anything and gave me a demonstration. This app assists with memorization by allowing the performer to hear her own voice read a selected passage over and over again. The student can select the length of the passage, determine how many words or phrases to mute, and even change the speed of the delivery. Grace found the app so personally helpful that I urged her to add it to the iWizards iPad Tips and Tricks, so that other could benefit from her experience.

Grace working with Memorize Anything

Grace had another tip to share as well. She could practice taking script cues from the Quizlet app, the flash card app. Quizlet is a popular app with our students for test preparation. However, Grace has imaginatively added it to her retinue for script memorization.

It was really fun learning about Mercy technology from Grace and Ms. Moore.

Larry Baker, Cross-posted to Inspired by Connectivity