iPad in the Classroom

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Permalink Reply by Tricia Sommerfeld on October 19, 2011 at 9:41am

I agree Cara! I think that they are a great asset to those who have trouble with visual aspects of the classroom environment. IPads are portable and this helps those students who need visual supports (i.e. daily schedules, calendars). They also allow for non-transient messages for students who need directions in a fixed location or who need directions written. It helps the teacher because they save paper with simple downloads of their class notes to the iPad.These devices also provide auditory information for students who thrive off of auditory and visual cues.

 

I can't believe we are just now using iPads for the benefit of students in the classroom! These tools are great additions to classrooms everywhere and for every age.

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Permalink Reply by Azael Barrera on October 17, 2011 at 6:43pm

Hello all. I will share here what I shared in the other forum on ipads in the classroom. I think iPads and other fast response tablets can be a big asset for education, but most particularly at the grade levels where visual and tactile learning is developed most. At some moments students may become distracted by apps not related to the class, but that will depend how engaging you make the class. One thing we do is use the iPads as shareable whiteboards, we discuss a problem or situation and they go to work in their iPads, in the end they share wirelessly their result with the others. Now, you must have a precision stylus to do so (I introduced to my class the Accu Pen by DAGi and the Jot Pro by Adonit, I also share instructions for them to build their own styli (one challenge is to see who comes with the most precise one at the lowest cost or craftmanship and materials). So, it is a matter or full engagement, appropiate tools and apps, and skills development activities, and iPads or any other tablet could become a good teaching enhancement tool in the class and out of class. For lower grade levels the iPad apps are very good for visual and auditive learning, for upper levels there should be room many room for creativity, so at this point I recommend Windows tablets so they can create things, lots of them and not be limited by small ipad apps. I am still waiting for an Android tablet app capable of helping to develop content that will keep up with upper grade level creativity, because cost is also something to consider: some usable Android tablets are now coming below $200. And on having ipad, tablets or readers replacing books, I still think students should use their tactile learning skill and touch the paper of some precious memorable books, no capacitive screen will replace the feeling of the paper fiber on my kid's fingers, not yet.

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Permalink Reply by Jayne Bowen on October 20, 2011 at 4:44pm

I agree that the younger students find the iPad so user friendly and benefit from its apps, however, my 8th graders are using it to check definitions, foreign language apps, geometry, trig, and so many other educational apps. Sure, every now and then they created a rollercoaster track or play Angry Birds, but that's still engaging learning. I found an app called Sound Drop that incorporates music and geometry...very soothing, exciting, and it's the educational marriage of two disciplines.

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Permalink Reply by Azael Barrera on October 23, 2011 at 8:13am

Good point Jayne. There you have a good example (using iPad apps to check definitions, etc). I wonder -have not seen them yet- if those geometry, trig apps allow the user to create things or are just presentations of the subject, perhaps interactive and/or animated. If the later is the case, then the iPad is downplaying its capacity and becoming another book/text/story reader/observer, perhaps with more animation and engagement. This moment could be a crucial time where apps need to be more than interactive info providers/players, we need to have apps which make you able to construct ideas/conceptual descriptions/interrelations and see what happens and then go the next step, that of analysis. I hope soon we will have those apps or will have to setup a group of us to sit down and make them.

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