Leaving St Catherine's?

Students who are leaving St Catherine's at the end of the year (boo hoo!) and are not enrolling elsewhere at another BCE school, you will lose access to your BCE student account (including LIFE, email, MySite and School Portal) after December 31st, 2015.

Bye bye BCE student accounts!

So.... If you are moving on to another Catholic primary school in Brisbane, or a BCE secondary school such as Clairvaux Mackillop or Seton College, then you can relax - you will keep your BCE student account for as long as you are enrolled at that school.

If you are moving on to a State or other independent school such as Villanova, Loreto, St Laurences, All Hallows, Redeemer Lutheran or Lourdes Hill (for example), you will no longer have access to your BCE student account after the last day of 2015. We recommend that once school finishes, you retrieve any files, messages or information currently stored with your BCE accounts that you want to keep, as soon as you can and definitely before December 31st.

You are also advised to change the primary email address on your Apple ID, if it is currently your BCE student email address. You can change the primary email address on the Apple website.

We're sorry to see you go!
Come back anytime, we'll always be here...

On FIRE with Popplet

Following a school incursion about Fire Ants this year, students in 4 Blue were asked to record everything they learned in a Popplet mind map. Here's what Cleo says about the project:

"This popplet had to include Appearance, young, a fun fact, animal group, habitat and what the fire ant eats. I think Popplet was the best app to use because you can see all of the text without going from slide to slide. And Popplet is one of the apps that you can brainstorm or mind map on. I loved doing this project!"

Click to enlarge Cleo's Popplet mind map about Fire Ants:

Popplet about Fire Ants by Cleo in 4 Blue

Keep Your iPads "Holiday Safe"

Today, Brisbane Catholic Education staff informed schools of the following:

In the process of delivering the Virtual Classrooms Activities in 2015, the Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner has become aware of two apps that are causing some concern for school communities. These apps are Animal Jam and Subway Surfer. These apps contain an in-built global chat facility, which enables anyone in the world to make contact with users of the apps. The potential for children to be exposed to phishing scams, grooming and cyberbullying is substantial.

 

The Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner maintains an excellent resource page that assists parents to better understand these apps, along with a range of others that may be of concern for young users. 

Do you retain control of your child's Apple ID? 

Do you have some system in place at home whereby you can evaluate apps for potential issues before your child installs them? 

Are you aware of what apps your child is using on their iPad? 

Once school ends for another year and the lovely long Christmas holiday break is upon us, children may be given extended access to iPads and other devices for recreational purposes. Please ensure that you have safety measures and responsible use practices in place at home. Remind children about measures they can take when using screens and digital devices, to maintain their own online safety, posture, muscle & eye health and privacy of information.

New-look Login for BCE

Tonight, rather than catching up on the latest episode of The Block, Brisbane Catholic Education's Information Services team will be finishing an upgrade to their web portals for school users.

The improvements will make the systems even less vulnerable to unauthorised access and therefore, safer for all.

The two major changes that students and parents will see from tomorrow (Wednesday 21st October) are:

1) A new login page for BCE online services. You will see a background image and the following prompts:

New login screen for BCE services

No prizes for guessing that  you have to click/tap 'Brisbane Catholic Education', then follow the instructions. Usernames and passwords will not change.

2) You no longer need to use ‘catholic\’ before your username. This requirement has been removed to make the login process simpler.

New App Required for Library Sessions

Tellagami is a wonderful, creative way to communicate your ideas. Create and modify a male or female avatar which will speak with your voice. Add a background to match your message and you can create a very engaging little video.

Mrs Hegarty would like to use Tellagami with you in your library sessions in the next few weeks so please make sure you have it installed on your iPad and ready to use. It's FREE!

Tellagami

You are invited...

Year 4 children have been invited to join the school’s Meraki Mobile Device Management account. This will enable the school to assign school-owned apps to students during particular units of study.

To complete the process, students must accept the invitation (via an email sent from “Cisco Meraki”) and sign in with their Apple ID. They may require parents' assistance with this if they do not know their Apple ID password. Parents, we would appreciate your help with this before next week when the students will begin a literature study using the book app, Dandelion. As the school has already purchased the book app, we don't want parents to have to pay for extra licenses. Via Meraki, students will have the app assigned to their account for as long as they need to use it.

The email looks like this:

You need to click the smaller blue "invitation" link at the bottom of the email.

The App Store app will open. When you see the window below, tap "Sign In" to sign into the App Store with your child's Apple ID.

Next, enter the Apple ID password.

You will then be asked to review Apple's Terms and Conditions.
Scroll to the bottom of the window to find the Agree button.

You will need to confirm your agreement by tapping Agree a second time.

The window below confirms that you have joined the school's Meraki account and your child is now ready to be assigned school-owned apps. Simply tap "OK".

Thank you parents for your assistance with this process, during your busy family routines.

Maths? ...'Snow' Trouble

Watch out Year 4 families - did you know your children have been planning a family ski trip? Well, if you have to learn how to calculate values, why not make it part of a real world scenario? You never know, all those costings may come in handy.

Snow or no, here's wishing all our families a safe and happy holiday break!

Year 4 Rocks!

Year 4 have been enjoying using their iPads to explore topics and demonstrate learning this term. Caitlin (4 Blue) has used the Explain Everything app to talk about the rock she collected from Bulimba Creek:

Explain Everything is an interactive whiteboard app which allows students to upload and annotate images and record their voices. It can be very useful, particularly in subjects like maths, English and science, to have students explain their thinking as they draw or work through problems on the iPad screen.

New App for LOTE Lessons

Sensai has found a great new FREE app to help you learn Japanese. She would like all students to please install the app, called Kana Tutor, on their school iPads. It would be fantastic if you could all have this app ready to go for this week's Japanese lessons.

Kana Tutor by Twin Pines Software

Social Media Policy at St Catherine's

We have been seeing a few social media apps popping up on children's iPads at school. A reminder that as all children in our school are currently under 13 years of age, no current student should be using Social Media sites or apps such as Instagram, Facebook or Kik.

Our 1 to 1 Parent Handbook - Policy and Guidelines contains guidelines for Acceptable Use of ICT to which all parents and students have signed their consent. The Student Agreement for Acceptable Use of ICT Resources (page x. of the Parent Handbook) clearly states in Section 3, Point 4:

"I will not hold accounts or participate in any social media sites intended for people 13 years and older (such as Facebook and MySpace) without express written advice from my teachers to my parents/guardians that such an account is required for learning and teaching purposes."

We ask parents to ensure that social media apps are never installed on school iPads while your children attend St Catherine's. The actions of even a few students and families can affect many others in our community. We thank you for your prompt attendance to this matter.

[Image Source: "Social Media" by Yoel Ben-Avraham via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0]

iPad Holiday Tasks: "Spring Cleaning"

Even though it's not Spring in our hemisphere, it is certainly time for a clean out of your school iPad. Many of our 1 to 1 students have been experiencing sluggish iPad performance and some of their apps are refusing to start up altogether. The most common reason for issues like this is that your iPad is crammed too full of "stuff".

Please take some time on the holidays to check your Usage. Delete photos and videos you no longer require and, definitely before you come back to school in term 2, uninstall the games and movies you've been using over the break.

Remember, the iPad is first and foremost a learning tool for school. You may enjoy using it for recreation on a rainy day, but games and movies should not be taking up valuable space and preventing optimal performance for your learning tasks.

How do I check out what's taking up most space on my iPad?

Go to Settings > General > Usage

Now tap "Manage Storage"

This screen will tell you how many Gigabytes of storage space is available on your iPad. Regardless of the total capacity of your iPad, you need AT LEAST 10% of free space for the device to run properly. When you use an app, it uses the available free memory to work.

Check out the list of apps you have installed. The apps taking up the most space will be at the top. Usually, Photos & Camera app is near the top of the list.

Go to the Photos app and delete any photos and videos you no longer need. You can connect your iPad to a computer and upload any photos and videos you wish to keep.

You can tap any app in the list to delete it from your iPad. Deleted apps will still be associated with your Apple ID. This means you can install them again without having to pay.

Last minute holiday tips...

Remember never to leave an iPad in the car if it's parked in the sun. Overheating can ruin your battery and shorten its lifespan. If you are going away and won't be using your iPad, leave it in a cool, safe place. Your iPad prefers to rest at half charge (50 - 80%). Turn it off completely so the battery won't run flat.

We look forward to seeing both you AND your cleaned out iPad back in Term 2, ready to learn and perform at optimum level!

A Window into Year 4

Time for a sneak peak into the Year 4 learning spaces to see what's been happening...

ABC Splash is a wonderful website with Australian content mapped to Australian curriculum. Students watch engaging video material and use questions on the site to guide their thinking and response to the material. This week Year 4 have been watching a video about why plants make fruit. Check it out here...

 

Posters and Step-by-step guides on display help students become independent in their learning, and find answers for themselves. This means the learning of others is not disrupted and students become accustomed to a range of troubleshooting strategies and ways to seek help.

Apps are not used in isolation. Students learn how their apps can work together as tools or steps in a workflow. Magnetic app icons help the teachers demonstrate or suggest a workflow.

Students exercise more autonomy over their learning when they can choose their learning space. A cosy nooks with back support provides a distraction-free zone for independent work.

Learning is social. Students can work together in comfort, sharing ideas and learning from each other's responses.

iPad Support and Technical Help

Well it's taken a few weeks but we have almost all of our new iPad recruits set with Apple IDs, Mail passwords, Paid apps etc. The children look like 'old hands' already as you move through their learning spaces at school.

We make every attempt to support families with technical issues and troubleshooting at school, but sometimes we strike a problem that we simply can't fix here. After all, we are educators and not mobile device technicians.

So, where can you turn when you need some 'expert' iPad help? Apple do provide excellent support options which some of our parents have already found very useful. You might like to add the web links and phone number below to your Contacts. ...You never know when you'll need them!

Apple iPad Support Website

Apple Education Telephone Support: 

Call 1300 968 979

Hours of operation:
9am - 9pm Monday to Friday
9am - 6pm Saturday

More Online Support

If you're just after a quick answer, or you'd prefer to email your support request, use this website for iPad support.

New App Required for LOTE

Our lovely LOTE teacher, Mrs Amy Flynn, would like to use a free app called Kana Quiz in her Japanese lessons with years 4, 5 and 6. Would you please assist your children to install this app at your earliest convenience. Unfortunately the app called Fotopedia Japan (published on our free apps list last year) is now only available in the United States but Sensai will be able to keep her classes very busy and engaged with Kana Quiz.

Here's the icon and a link to the app on iTunes:

Kana Quiz (FREE)

R - E - A - D on your iPad!

Parents, despite what your children may tell you, they will never have to be on their iPad for school purposes for extended periods each evening or weekend! Homework which must be done on the iPads will rarely exceed half an hour and don't forget, you can use a 4-finger swipe (upwards) to check which apps are running at any time. If most of the running apps are games, then chances are homework has not been the main priority in the last little while...

However, one activity that can often be enhanced by a digital device, is READING. Nothing will ever replace the look, feel and smell of a real life hard copy BOOK. But a few digital enhancements can make reading on the iPad an especially valuable experience, especially for developing readers.

[Image Source: news.blogs.slv.vic.gov.au]

For children who have difficulty reading subject-orientated texts, or website content, the iPad also has a useful "text-to-speech" function which will literally read any selected text to them. Admittedly the 'voice' is a little robotic and sometimes makes pronunciation errors, but this feature can open up a world of text for children who would normally be dependent on a real life adult to read to them.

To turn on "text-to-speech", go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech. Turn Speech Selection ON. You can adjust the speaking rate here as well. With Speech Selection turned on, when you select text in an app (such as iBooks or on a webpage in Safari), you will see a Speak option (see sample below).

Screenshot from iBooks

We published the following post about the iBooks app a couple of years ago for our first iPad classes. We're posting the information again here as it has some useful information about borrowing eBooks from the Brisbane City Council libraries. If you would rather hear about this process in person, staff at any of the Council libraries will be able to take you through it. Our own lovely Teacher Librarian, Mrs Monique Hegarty plans to show the students how to borrow books through Brisbane Catholic Education's Overdrive account. However, they need two (free) apps to access these books: Overdrive and Adobe Digital Editions:

Overdrive

Adobe Digital Editions

The children can also widen their literary experience by listening to audio books. This is not 'cheating'. It is a valuable experience for students approaching the latter half of their primary years to be able to enjoy a book in an area of interest, even though decoding the text may be beyond their current reading skills.

Using iBooks on the iPad

The built-in iPad dictionary allows young readers to check word meanings within the text with a quick tap (no searching for dusty dictionary volumes) and font size can be adjusted to suit personal preference. If less text on the page is less daunting for your young reader, they can increase the font size and enjoy a more positive reading experience (see screenshot below).

Screenshot showing features in iBooks

Buying eBooks and Audio books can be as expensive as purchasing the printed copies but did you know you can borrow eBooks and eAudio book recordings through Brisbane City Council libraries? Using any BCC Library card, you can log in to the Digital Media site and browse Juvenile and Young Adult titles.

Click here to browse the Digital Media Collection

You can borrow titles for up to 21 days at no cost. A borrowed book simply disappears from your shelf once the borrowing period has expired so you will have no concerns about accumulating overdue fees.

[Image Source: www.stylingyou.com.au]

Some cautions:

• Due to the wide variety of digital media file types on offer, you may need to install a couple of extra FREE apps to allow you to read or play borrowed files. Follow instructions in the Digital Collection site and be assured that Overdrive and Adobe apps are perfectly safe to download from this site.
• Parents please supervise students and check what they are borrowing. As in any public library, there are many adult titles available. The above link will take you to the Juvenile and Young Adult section but does not restrict access to these sections.
• Finally, a reminder that unfortunately it is not advisable to read eBooks in the bath!

[Image Source: techli.com]

Welcome to Year 4 Padwise

Welcome to the St Catherine's Year 4 blog! We've been so busy in classrooms making sure all our new 1 to 1 iPad students are setup for learning with their iPads, that we've been a little tardy writing posts for this blog. We do have some interesting tips and articles coming up, and eventually there will be some guest posts from the Year 4 students, so we hope that you take a moment to subscribe by email.

As an email subscriber, you will receive all new posts in your inbox. Simple fill in your email address (in the field to the right). Then check your mail to find the verification email from Feedburner. You might even find it hidden in your Junk folder. You need to click the link in that Feedburner email to verify your email address, before you can be fully subscribed. Remember, when you receive posts to your own email inbox, you will have to "allow images" to view whatever illustrations we put in the blog post.

We hope you have as much fun as your children are having in class,
Maria and the Year 4 Teachers