I read an article from Cindy Lee of Ainslee Labs about teaching time to first graders, and about how the way we teach them using conventional clocks often causes confusion about reading time on analog clocks. This is because it is difficult for children to see why we read the hour hand as a certain time when it has moved from the previous hour and is heading towards the next hour. My first graders have always been confused about “what the hour hand says” once the minute hand has gone past the half hour.

Cindy Lee created a color-coded “separated clock” which used a different color between each hour, for example, red between 1 and 2, blue between 2 and 3, and so on around the clock, so that it was very easy to see which section belongs to which hour. She made this clock available to her readers. That’s great, except that my teaching clocks at school aren’t presented in that format, so how could I use it with my class? LoiLoNote School came to the rescue once again!

I made a color pdf of the clock, uploaded it to my LoiLoNoteSchool account on my desktop, put it in my math materials folder, and accessed it from my iPad. Using Apple TV, I was able to present it to my students using my SmartBoard in a large, clear version that they could all see at the same time. The first day we all worked together with my copy on the SmartBoard screen. The next day, they all had a copy to work with on their iPads individually through LoiLoNote School!

LoiLoNote School offers me a way of sending materials I want to share with any one or all of my class directly to his/their iPads. It offers me flexibility and creativity as well as saving time and improving the quality of teacher materials. I am discovering that using LoiLoNote School is limited only by my imagination. It’s making me look at my curriculum in an entirely new way.