Welcome to my blog! I am an 18 year teaching veteran. I taught kindergarten for 17 years and am moving to THIRD GRADE to live out the rest of my teaching career. I am very excited for this move. I am super excited to be working with older kids and having the ability to do more in depth technology with them. I am a Google Level 1 Educator, Osmo Ambassador and Seesaw Certified Educator. This is a place to share ideas, tutorials, favorite finds, and all things third grade! Come with me
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Where There's a Will, There's a Way
I've been using iPads in my classroom for the past 2 years and I can't tell you enough how much I love them. The possibilities are endless as to what they can be used to do. One of my biggest issues, though, was not being able to mirror it to my board without using a cable. It really limited what I wanted to do with it. I searched and searched and tried to find a way. I mean, with the face of technology today WHY wouldn't there be way? At the end of the school year my school went wireless and opened up a whole new world of possibilities for using technology in the classroom. I absolutely have to share my new favorite thing. Are you sitting down? I found a way to mirror my iPad without using a cable. That's right! Completely wireless and in the hands of students for whole group lessons. Here's how to do it. First of all you need to be running iOS 7 or higher on your device so that you have the AirPlay feature. Next, you purchase a program on your computer called Air Serve. http://www.airserver.com. It costs $12 iif you use your school e-mail and set up an educational account. It will authorize your computer, the one that is hooked up to your Interactive White Board, to use the program. If you want to try it out before you buy there is a free 7-day trial, but wait until you will be in your classroom to do the trail as it ends 7 days from download. Once you have these 2 things in place you simply start the program on your computer that is running your board, then you turn on the AirServer on your iPad, find your computer in the menu and turn on "mirror". Now your iPad is mirrored to your board wirelessly. It has totally made parts of my job easier and more fun for the students. Disclaimer- check with your IT person and make sure it's allowed before you do this. Some schools or districts might have tight security settings that could prohibit it from passing your firewall. You're welcome!
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Hi Keri,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you found a solution to mirror your students iPads! Being able to share students work on the "big screen" can really transform your classroom and engage students in a way that makes learning fun for both the teacher and the student.
I wanted to let you know that another powerful app that allows you to mirror students devices is Reflector 2. Like AirServer, Reflector 2 runs on a Mac or Windows computer and you can mirror and record multiple devices at once. However, difference is that Reflector 2 is compatible with iOS, Android and Chromebook devices. So it works really well in a BYOD and 1:1 environment. There is also really seamless device management, where you can control whose device is shown and whose is not at any given time. This works well when students are presenting or sharing their work and you need to go from student to student effortlessly. And, to protect your classroom, you have four different security options so students can't interrupt class with inappropriate material.