Backing up Book Creator to Google Drive

In our school we share 2 carts of iPads with 600 students. Although we do A LOT of work around digital citizenship and the respect of other people's work, we still have the occasion when work gets deleted. Book Creator app has the ability to upload it's files to Google Drive and then download them again when needed.

When students put a lot of effort into a project, the worst thing to happen is that it gets deleted. This tutorial will hopefully fix that.

iPad for Video Recording

One of the greatest uses of iPad in the classroom is for recording video. In our school, we have been trialling a green screen. Our students' are loving it!

We have been working on developing a standard workflow when recording and video on our iPads and then editing on a computer. Here's what we have come up with so far...

   

On the iPad

1. Record video using iPad
2. Connect to CBE LAWN network (for our district)
3. Log into Google Drive App.
4. Create, or find shared folder that whole class can access. This is a good idea as one person can remained logged in to save time. They can then upload multiple videos.
5. Upload video to the Google Drive shared folder
6. Delete video off iPad once uploaded

On the Computer

1. Log into Computer
2. Log into Google Drive in Safari
3. Find the Shared folder
4. Access the uploaded video files
5. Download to computer and begin the editing process.

All done without wires!

The nice thing about this workflow is that when one iPad is being used, it can speed up the process without having plug it into a computer after every video has been recorded.

Collaborative Research, QRCodes & Google Docs

One way we have experimented in using the new CBE GAFE (Google Apps For Education) Google docs was to create a Google form to collate the collective research efforts of an entire class. This way, we could collaborate to gather a lot of information (about Ancient Greece). 

Students who researched online would just open another tab or separate web page to access the Google form. For those who were using text books and other non-fiction books from our learning commons, we assigned a QR code to the form and students opened the form using a QR reader on the iPad. This allowed then fast access to the Form so they could easily enter their information like everybody else.

Like I have mentioned before, we use the QRafter app for our iPads but there are many free QR readers for iPads and other other mobile devices. A bonus to the app would be the ability to create QR codes too - In my experience, this is usually a paid feature or upgrade.

The form was a simple way to collate information that the students gathered. We used a drop-down choice for the research category so we could easily sort the information afterward. After the information was gathered students then used the collaborated information to create their own project of choice about democracy in Ancient Athens.

Below is the collated information we collected: