Kodiak Conference Shannon's Plan

At the Kodiak conference, I spent the two days with Sally Eberhart.  The first day we looked at how to use Keynote and the second day we dove into Apple's iAuthor program.  Of the two,  I am going to focus my time on iAuthor, simply because I do not have Keynote loaded on my computer!  Sally was a sport about this, and I did gain a lot of information from the first day of the conference, but it is definitely iAuthor that I continue in my teaching practice.

I plan on implementing iAuthor in several ways.  First, in my classroom, and then I hope to expand on what I have learned by sharing what I know with other teachers in my district.

In the classroom, my first project will be a collaborative one.  The past several years I have done a project about living in Metlakatla.  The students all write about what a unique place it is (even if they don't think of it that way). We have several focus areas and I use this project to teach many of the social studies literacy standards.  Currently, they are putting their projects into a newsletter format, but I have really wanted to create a more interactive project that could be shared with people everywhere.  IAuthor will be the perfect format to make this happen.  I hope to eventually partner with several other schools, so that the students can share their experiences.  By making the books virtual, we can share and receive information about living and going to school in many different environments; comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences.  With this particular project, the students with all compile different sections and we will work together to put the book into one ibook that will be shared publicly.

The next step in implementing iAuthor will be to have the students create their own books, or a book created in a small group.  Since I have my students two, sometimes even three years, I will be able to scaffold the project so that they can gain mastery by the time they leave middle school.

Once I feel more comfortable using iAuthor and teaching it, I hope to share what I know with other people in my district.  Annette Island School District is blessed with a tremendous amount of technology, and teachers are always looking for new ways to add technology effectively into the classroom.  I see iAuthor as a way to share what we are doing with each other and the world!