A topic on my mind this week, as I head to an Apple training on using the iPad in the classroom, is the use of / use for / usefulness of the iPad in the classroom.
My thoughts, before attending, are on the criticisms I've heard and read, that the iPad is not for content creation, but just consumption. However, only having had an iPad at my disposal for one afternoon before attending tomorrow's training, I have only personally used it for one thing, which was in fact content creation, so I am skeptical of the skeptics.
An officer in the high school Ski & Board Club was able to use the iPad to record the names of members that were paying the club dues, as they stood by the door to the room the 200-some club members were entering. The iPad enabled the student to be mobile, while providing us with a list to cross-reference with the Google Form we used to collect membership information. Simply typing names may sound like a pretty small deal, but it was a very important solution to a potential problem that came up today, and one that would have been much more awkward had it been completed balancing a laptop or tied to a desktop.
2 comments:
I just finished a study on using interactive books on the iPad with 4th-8th graders. We are working on the article about it, but I think there is a lot we need to consider about how we as teachers model for students how to read from these devices.
Post a Comment