Guided Access

How to set up and use GUIDED ACCESS on the iPad

1. Tap on your Settings icon.

2. On the Sidebar on the left, tap on General.

3. On the main screen, scroll down and tap on Accessibility.

4. Scroll down to the Learning section, and tap on Guided Access.

5. Tap on the on/off button to turn Guided Access ON.

6. Tap on Passcode Settings

7.  Set Guided Access Passcode.

8.  Type in a 4-digit passcode, and then re-type it. NOTE: IT IS VERY IMPORTANT

REMEMBER THIS PASSCODE. You will need it every time you want to end/disable

Guided Access. If you lose this passcode while Guided Access is running on an app,

YOU WILL BE LOCKED in this app until you are able to type in the correct code.

Using GUIDED ACCESS:

1. Choose an APP for which you want to assign access restrictions. Tap and open that APP.

2. On your device, “triple-tap” the Home Button:

3.  Tap the Start button in the upper right corner.

4. You will briefly see the message: Guided Access Started. All the restrictions

that you have set will then be applied to the app.

ENDING Guided Access:

1. Triple-tap on the Home Button of your device.

2. Type in your 4-digit passcode.

3. Tap the End button on the upper left corner of the screen.

4. You will briefly see the message: Guided Access Ended. All the restrictions that

you have set will then be cancelled.

 

Turn YouTube into a Classroom with eduCanon

This is a truly great site to use and best of all, its free.

My Experience with eduCanon

I opened up an account to play around with the platform, using one of my own videos, and here’s what I can tell you: It’s easy, and it’s fun. In less than half an hour of watching a few tutorials and reading the information on the FAQ page, I got the hang of building a lesson. (Click here to view a sample lesson I created.) From that point on, it was a piece of cake. The whole time I was building my practice lesson, I kept thinking, This is so cool. And once I got past the learning stage, I started to realize all the possibilities this platform opens up. Everything on YouTube. Everything on Vimeo. So much we could all do with that!

Here are some of the best features of eduCanon:

Embed questions at specific points. You decide exactly when a question will pop up during the video. Even better, students will not know when a question is coming. This means they really have to pay attention!

Teachers can monitor student results. When you sign up as a teacher, you create class lists, then assign lessons to these classes. As students complete a lesson, you are given a question-by-question breakdown of their responses (see sample below — green is correct, red is incorrect). This allows you to see in an instant which students are having trouble understanding and which concepts need re-teaching.

EduCanonBreakdown

 

More than simple multiple choice. When building questions, you have the option to add explanations that will pop up when students choose an answer. This means even getting an answer wrong is a learning opportunity. In my lesson builder below, you can see I entered explanatory text to appear for every answer. (By the way, these only pop up after students commit to an answer.)

EduCanonBuild02

 

Robust re-takes. Students can re-do lessons, but eduCanon offers a way to make the process more than a simple guessing game. If a student guesses the correct answer the second time around, you can set it up so they are prompted to type in an explanation for why this is the correct answer.

EduCanonPartialCredit

 

Did I mention it’s free? The site developers are committed to keeping the essential features of the site free. They are working on a premium offering at an introductory rate of $40 per year which will include features like open-ended questions (the free account only allows multiple choice), gradebook download of student scores, and access to a library of lessons created by other teachers, but the basic platform will remain free.

Give it a try!

We’re fast approaching the time of year when anything new will be a breath of fresh air for you and your students, so this is a great time to try eduCanon on a small scale. My advice would be to choose a topic that you have coming up in a month or two, find a video that would support that unit, and experiment with building an eduCanon lesson around it. Maybe you’ve wanted to try flipping your classroom, but didn’t know where to start. This would be a great first step.