"The e5 Instructional Model was recently introduced in Victoria and Vermont Secondary College has been trialling it for the past 12 months. We are also on the first phase of a 1:1 iPad program beginning with Year 7 in 2013. As one of the Teacher Librarians I am keen to evaluate and recommend resources of any sort to support quality teaching and learning so last year I began reading blogs about apps for education."
"Touch devices--such as iPods and iPads--represent a fundamental change in computing. They are unobtrusive, powerful, and intuitive devices that support authentic acts of learning through exploration, collaboration, consolidation, creation, and communication. Although the ideal may be a 1-to-1 deployment, even a single device can have a positive impact. "
"One of the things we need to be doing as educators is to critically evaluate the resources and learning experiences that we provide for our students. This is even more important when we are spending vast sums of public money to implement new or innovative hardware devices into our schools. At the moment only short term studies have been released showing the benefits or not of using 1:1 tablet programs. There are few that are easily accessible to teachers or that outline specific strategies for implementing tablet programs.
It would good to create a collection of these if people are aware of them. Send them through and I will add them to this article. These could even be cited when making the argument for implementing such programs.
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"Regarding our 1:1 iPad Program commencing at the beginning of 2012 in our year 6 and 7 cohorts, i have attached all relevant documents which have been part of informing parents and our community about our iPad happenings so far. All documents are in PDF format and can be downloaded."
"The iPad looks amazing when projected onto a large screen. The students in a 1 to 1 iPad classroom gets to see the apps at work. Have a look at the list below to see if any of these might be useful in your classroom. If you have others that should be added to this list please leave a comment with the name of the app and we will add it to the list."
"Finally and I think perhaps more importantly, they introduced the new iBooks Author app. An app which gives educators the power to create their own interactive learning experience for their students, the like of which we have haven't really been able to put together before.
The following hits are reasons why iBooks Author tied with iBooks2 is a complete win for schools, particularly in 1:1 type scenarios."
"According to Apple, schools are using iPads to administer tests on a regular basis now. I can see this being helpful in 1:1 classrooms and those looking to make tests / pop quizzes a bit more interactive.
But, a big problem with giving tests on iPads is cheating.
Luckily, Apple has added in some controls to Guided Access that lets teachers turn off the ability to use Safari to look up answers while taking a test. In fact, you can disable and enable all sorts of custom controls. You can use 'Single App Mode' where a student can ONLY use the app that's delivering the test."
"iTunesU offers schools, especially secondary schools, a platform for delivering and creating course content with the iTunesU App. Schools looking at a 1 to 1 iPad program should explore the content available."
"This school year I joined the staff of a 1:1 high school here in Philadelphia. Students at the school have access to their own devices, which they take home with them. Although I've taught for many years in classrooms where each student had a school-issued device, the experience of my new students taking their devices home has forced me to reflect on the issue of distraction. How do we teach students to integrate technology into their schoolwork and their learning while also making sure that they're staying focused on the task at hand? "
"Back in November my class received 10 iPads from our technology department and we were told to "have fun". Our district has gone 1:1 in the secondary schools, be we are only one of two elementary classrooms that recevied iPads. Of course I was thrilled, but then I realized that I would need to spend some time thinking about how to successfully integrate them in to our daily routine and find apps that would fit our curriculum. "