One Best Thing - Space Explorers Workbook

I’m finally ready to share my One Best Thing project resource with you all. Space Exploration Pages Workbook that incorporates digital skills and creativity. Leveraging the Everyone Can Create projects as well as out of the box functionality.

Version 1.0

This project stems from an example I created to support staff in their professional development in my current role of as an Education Officer with Education Scotland. During a 4 part CLPL course that we run, This is Digital, we spoke about a Planning, Learning, Teaching, and Assessment cycle, and one of the aspects to this was that a well planned resource can help not only with student learning and engagement but with assessment strategies and establishing success criteria. I created a Pages Workbook that essentially acts as a 1.0 to the resource I’m sharing with you today. I populated this workbook with digital literacy examples using out of the box features and apps, and also created spaces for teacher feedback and evaluation.

Staff attending these sessions were not necessarily all iPad users but it was enough to spark the ‘art of the possible’ in their practice and reception to the aspects laid out were very positive. Especially when the digital examples were shared, allowing pupils the ability to share their knowledge in a way that makes sense to them. It was enough to make me think that this might be a resource that with a little refinement and polish might have an impact on teaching and learning and take it in a direction that my colleague George says, is more than simply using markup to draw a face on a bin, as it puts the digital literacy into context and has an ability to take all aspects of iPad use into account, in my opinion it’s something that hasn’t been easily possible since the introduction of the iPad.

Putting the new version together

As I started to create this document I felt it was important to show the various strings to the bow that the iWork suite has, including the recent update that allows USDZ and SVG files to be included natively. As many of you who know me well (Miriam) can testify to, Space is not only a passion it’s an obsession so anything that include some of the amazing resources that are out there for students to explore ‘hands-on’ then sign me up. I’m also a bit of perfectionist and never happy, constantly tweaking, changing, updating, adding new assets, creating new assets and so on and so forth. It can be blessing but 9 times out of 10 it takes me about 50% longer to complete resources like this.

Layout

I’m a big fan iconography and think it is a great accessibility tool as it gives students a visual guide to what type of activities students can do on each page/section. I also took inspiration from the amazing Kurt Klynen and the multiple Playgrounds that we participated in over lockdown. I wanted the workbook to have a natural flow and progression of skills making use of apps such as Keynote, GarageBand, iMovie and the Everyone Can Create projects.

For each of the activities, I laid out a context beforehand, giving the pupils a scenario and then set a task that builds on it. The Everyone Can Create projects are an excellent way to leverage these activities and make this book more project based, topic focused rather than a one and done style of activity.

Final thoughts

I am really pleased with how the final workbook has turned out. It is by no means perfect but it certainly makes for a great example of what is possible using out of the box features and a small set of core apps. In a climate where budgets are being scaled back, resources are thin, teacher workload is high, a resource like this can be a great way of covering skills that pupils need for life, learning, and work. Collaboration, communication, and innovation. It might not always be aspirational but its practical and thats the main thing.

I hope you enjoy this and if you have any comments or room for development, please share them below. If you want to have a look at the 1.0 raw version you can download it here

My thanks to my long suffering partner in crime Miriam Walsh for always being my beta tester and sounding board.

Bonus

I like to create assets, so for each of the characters, I used Linearity Curve which is a great Adobe illustrator alternative on iPad. Works great with an Apple Pencil or trackpad. Now that iWork can import SVG files directly it means that all aspects of my workflow are catered for on iPadOS.

CALL TO ACTION

Please let me know what you think in the comments below. Try and think about this

Essential Question: “How can an interactive workbook like this, be effectively used to engage learners who are disinterested or lacking motivation in particular topics?”

Attachments

Space_Explorers.pages.zip

Download  (222.2 MB)