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Use Devices Use the iPad in the Classroom Use Your Interactive Whiteboard in the Classroom Use an iPod Touch in the Classroom Ideas for Class Blog Posts Use Mobile Phones in the Classroom

We set out to help teachers improve their classroom practice, through collaborating and sharing expertise with teachers around the world …

We wanted our students to have regular opportunities to share, learn and collaborate with children around the world, helping them to discover our common humanity …

We set out to create a community which fosters global dialogue and discussion between teachers and students …

The problem, I began to realize, was my own understanding of how the iPads should be utilized in the classroom. I had seen them as a supplement to my pre-existing curriculum, trying to fit them into the structure of what I’d always done. This was the wrong approach: To truly change how my classroom worked, I needed a technology-based redefinition of my practic

Redefine with a goal in mind. When rethinking your curriculum and classroom, identify the goals you have for yourself and your students. I focused on two important goals: increased differentiation and robust, efficient assessment. Next, I asked myself, "Can the iPads help me reach those goals?" Realizing that they could, I redesigned my classroom practice around the goals, with iPads as the infrastructure. Here are a few examples:

Brooklyn: How to snuff out brewing fistfights before the first punch is thrown, how to coax adolescents crippled by low self-esteem into raising their hands, how to turn every curveball, even the biting insult, into a teachable moment.

Use digital technology and communication tools to access, manage, integrate and evaluate information; Construct new knowledge; Communicate with others effectively.

The iPad is far superior to the workbooks- instant, self correcting, gives immediate feedback, kids progress at own levels and can be working at differentiated levels.

Other curriculum areas we use the iPad in are science (as a journal to record our observations) to check the weather, Social Studies- we tweet other kindergarten classrooms and find them on maps and the globe and learn about their lives; comparing similarities and discussing differences and even collaborating on play projects.

Mr. Wesch is not swearing off technology—he still believes you can teach well with YouTube and Twitter. But at a time when using more interactive tools to replace the lecture appears to be gaining widespread acceptance, he has a new message. It doesn't matter what method you use if you do not first focus on one intangible factor: the bond between professor and student.

Integrating technology into classroom instruction means more than teaching basic computer skills and software programs in a separate computer class. Effective tech integration must happen across the curriculum in ways that research shows deepen and enhance the learning process.

Model it, live it, talk about it. It's all "using" technology.