Clearly, being able to effectively incorporate technology into your lesson plans to engage students and help them to express themselves, be creative, collaborate and look at things from new perspectives is one of the best tools a teacher can have. iPads have amazing functionality that is so intuitive for even the very youngest of children. Even my two year old son knows how to turn it on, and navigate between apps. I have seen him sit, absolutely glued to his games for counting, shapes, colours, animals and the alphabet. My mind began to whir as I thought of the possibilities for literacy and numeracy in the K-8 classroom.
How relieved I was to learn that the focus of the day was not going to be on “which apps to invest in” (there are a million great blog posts, infographics and Livebinders out there curated by experts on this very thing). What we narrowed in on were very basic iPad 101 things and then a detailed explanation of some instructional strategies to become expert at.
Topics we discussed for iPads and young students:
- iOS6 functionality
- Finger swipe actions or “gestures”
- organizing apps into folders
- Settings
- Wifi
- Naming your iPad
All of these things are linked above for further information.
However, there was one topic which really captivated me and had my mind running all over the place for the multifarious ways it could be used in the classroom and this was Airplay or Screen Mirroring
What Airplay allows you to do is to send a signal from your iPad to the computer that is hooked up to your digital projector - thus allowing you to control your projection screen from anywhere in the classroom. Using Apple TV and an HDMI cable or programs which you can install on your computer like Reflectionapp.com or Airserverapp.com you can display multiple devices (say 5 different iPads) side by side up on your SMARTBoard or other interactive whiteboard (or even plain old projection screen though you won't be able to control your iPad by touching the projection screen in this case).
Many teachers are nervous about “letting go” of control and allowing students the autonomy to choose what they will be working on or how they will self-regulate using such technology. I am one of those teachers. However, this functionality showed me that if you can engage students in a task using tech tools to make the job easier, the finished product look better and have the experience of using it be pleasurable and, heck, even fun! Then why not?
These apps also allow you to record what is happening on all screens as a presentation which you can then save and export (upload to YouTube or embed on a class website).
The teaching idea that immediately struck me was for literacy - the retell (beginning, middle, end) for primary students. If you were to give students 1 iPad for every 5 students you could, in groups have the students be responsible for one part of the story, and using PuppetPals or Toontastic along with Airplay and iBrainstorm you could allow the students to bring their part of the story to life and support their metacognitive awareness by having them document with words and pictures the process they followed to create their retell. When all of their productions are finished, you can play them up on the screen - movie time for the kids! Who doesn't love to share their creative work with their peers - especially when it was fun to create and fun to watch.
Of course, I would have to play around with this to finesse the process and even pick and choose better suited apps, perhaps, but what matters the most is that I now have an awareness that this exists for students and teachers, that it triggered a million and one neat ideas that I can’t wait to try, and that I have that passion and desire to find out more. On the anniversary of Steve Job’s death one year ago today - I have to hand it to him - he is one genius. The iPad is already starting to revolutionize learning in classrooms in Ontario. Will your classroom be next?
