Control your SMART Board with your iPad

Recently I have had a few teachers ask about how to use their iPad to control their SMART Board. The desire to be able to interact with SMART Notebook lessons while being mobile is with merit. If a teacher simply uses Airplay to project their iPad screen through their project, then they aren't able to take advantage of the interactive features of the SMART Board... namely in SMART Notebook lessons.  So here is one possible solution:

Use the Splashtop Remote to display everything from your laptop, but control from your iPad.  It is a free setup as long as your iPad and your laptop are on the same local network (in other words, both are at school, rather than one at home and one at school, etc.) Here is what you should do:

1) On your iPad: Download the Splashtop 2 Remote Desktop - Personal app from the App Store. Create a free splash top account and sign in. 

2) On your Mac or PC: Download Splashtop Streamer (Personal edition) from the web and install.  Sign in with your same account.

You should get an email alert that your splash top account is being accessed by a new device.

3) Back on your iPad: you should see a connection to your laptop on the main screen of the Splashtop app. 

If for some reason it has a satellite icon on it, that means that both devices aren’t signed in to the same network.  Once they are, you should see a connection without a satellite icon.  Click on that and wait a minute or so. Now you should be able to tap on your iPad and have it control all your “clicks” on your Mac. So anything in SMART Notebook will work just like you are physically standing at your SMART Board, but you can walk around the room. 

An alternative is to buy the SMART Notebook app for iPad.  It is currently $5.99 in the App Store. But then you are loading your Notebook files into it, and I’m unsure as to whether everything converts perfectly or not. I’d try the Splashtop setup and please let me know if it works or not. 

Writing Poetry with iPad

The following are some simple ideas for teaching poetry writing lessons with iPad apps.  All apps are free, unless otherwise noted.

Rhyming Poetry

Try the Rhymer's Block app to create a new piece of rhyming poetry. Use the Prime Rhyme app or the RhymeZone website as a reference to find rhyming possibilities. 

Acrostic Poems

Use the Acrostic Poems app or the online interactive from ReadWriteThink to create this simple introductory form of poetry.

Name Poems

Another great introduction to poetic forms is creating a name poem. Here is one online generator to quickly prompt this kind of poetry. Also consider trying this Name Poem app.

Found Poems

"Found Poems" are formed by finding words within prose and reassembling them in order to form a new poem. Students can use an app such as FridgePoems to practice reassembling random or suggested words. Then take a piece of prose (a famous speech or passage from an essay, for example) and create a found poem with the Word Mover app.

Point-of-View, Personification, or Persona Poems

Chatterpix app- Students write a poem in first-person point of view. They then take a photo of the “narrator” (it could be an inanimate object or a historical person or a photo of anything they find online).  In the Chatterpix app they draw on where the “mouth” is and then record themselves reading their poem, making the photo come to life and look like it is speaking.  Alternatively, they could use an app such as PhotoSpeak if their poem lasts longer than 30 seconds.

Oral Fluency Poetry Reading

GarageBand app- Students record an oral version of any poem they author, reading with expression of course!  Export the audio recordings with Share > Export Song to Disk and then collect all students’ poems in a playlist, Google Drive folder, or put on a website for others to listen to.

Illustrating Poetry

Use a drawing app like Doodlebuddy or Paper by 53 and have students create a Sketchnote of their poem.  Alternately, even simply illustrating an image to go along with their poem would have value.

Syllable Structure Poems

Use this teacher-created guide for iBooks to expose students to some poetry formats with set syllable structures (including haiku, senryu, tanka, and cinquain) and then use an app like Haiku Poem to create their own.

Concrete Poetry

Students create a concrete poem built out of the shape of their words.  A favorite app for this type of poetry creation is TypeDrawing, however it is a paid app.  Another option (also not free) is the app Path On.

  

Diamante Poems

Use the Diamante Poem app from ReadWriteThink to create this diamond-shaped, set structure poem.

Poetic Symbols

Use the Adobe Voice app and bring poetry to life with the images in the app's symbol library.  Add your poem with a voice over and you easily have a finished multimedia project.  Note: the student example below is not necessarily a poem, but gives you an idea of how simple to use the app is.

Poetry Video Remix

Create an iMovie from a published poetic work. The following example created by students is a interpretive remix of the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

Figurative Language

Find examples of figurative language in modern day song (like the example below, created by students with the Keynote app), in books, or other existing works.  Students can create a compilation of figurative language examples or simply author their own.

Additional iPad apps for exploring poetry with students:

• POETRY from the Poetry Foundation
• Poetry Creator
• Famous Poetry
• Poetry Daily
• Poetreat

What additional ideas for teaching poetry writing with iPad do you have? Please share in the comments below!