Over the past few months, iPads have exploded throughout schools and classrooms. Their flexibility, versatility, and mobility make them a phenomenal learning tool. In webinars and blog posts, we have talked about the iPad as....
November Appy Hour did serve up a taste of applications that enable note taking, formatting citations, and streaming news
want to filter them out to the departments and people who might make the best use of them.”
collection of more than 150 apps culled from Diigo lists, curation sites such as Scoop.it, and Twitter, via #edapps and other hashtags. Her own favorite apps include FlipBoard, EasyBib, and Evernote [all cited in SLJ's productivity apps feature by Linda W. Braun].
Inquiry is a dynamic process of being open to wonder and puzzlement and coming to know and understand the world. As such, it is a stance that pervades all aspects of life and is essential to the way in which knowledge is created. Inquiry is based on the belief that understanding is constructed in the process of people working and conversing together as they pose and solve the problems, make discoveries and rigorously testing the discoveries that arise in the course of shared activity.
“Is this the best use of our funds, or is it simply a tool to engage and motivate our students?”
“Of course, technology has that capability, but is that always the best angle?”
In September, Virginia announced the purchase of 350 iPads for 4th, 7th, and 9th graders in four counties to test the use of the device as a 1-to-1 computing tool in social studies classrooms.
th and 9th grade classes used gaming and assessment applications
Pearson
personalize reading assignments based on proficiency,
e-text feature
most teachers and students supported continuing the pilo
Pearson officials say their material would be more refined a second time around after learning their own lessons about designing content.
that can lead you to want to overload the presentation.”
Teachers in the pilot also reported having to learn on the fly.
For this to work, really, next year, you need to have a team—one or two or three teachers—who will just sit down and go through this and put stuff on there that’s going to matter,” he says. “Trying to do it during the school year is just crazy.”
Excluding the fad factor, experts say there are legitimate reasons for educational interest.
iPad to help highlight key vocabulary words
some apps to help students understand fractions and decimals
definitely a work in progress
The question may be whether the iPad is best suited as a 1-to-1 device or to be shared as part of a stable of digital classroom tools.
students can choose which device to use for an ongoing book-publishing project
students rotate between workstations
34,000-student Irving Independent School District, where all high schools follow a 1-to-1 computing model, about 10 students and 20 administrators are testing an assortment of tablet-computing devices to see how they would meet their daily needs
administrators
tablets to access their calendars and email while on the run through campus, as well as how to use their touch-screen capabilities to check off rubrics for teacher evaluations like they would with an evaluation form.
"The attached document attempts to highlight those areas by calling out six of the 32 anchor standards where these concepts are described and looking at how they progress over the K-12 grade span through the lens of 4 particular grade levels."
All classes begin with a discussion about what research is and why we do it and how we do it. Each grade will be using their research and applying it to a larger question or problem. For instance, rather than having my third regurgitate answers back to me about animals, they will use the information they find to answer the larger question. (i.e. "Your parents said you can have any pet you want. What will you need to keep the pet?")
a brief exploration of the history of writing technology, we will immerse ourselves in digital environments, analyzing the role of gender, race, economics and other ideologies of power in creating the material forms and tools that allow us to communicate in the contemporary moment.
What might tablets enable for education in the future? Companies like WizIQ see the iPad (in the near term) as a chance to rev up the educational experience for students with electronic assessment tools, real-time collaboration, and 24/7 access to resources.
Popplet is an interactive bulletin board. Think bulletin board meets sticky note meets technology. Popplet is a combination between a sticky note, a bulletin board, and a multimedia library. Whatever you would write on a sticky note or tack on a bulletin board, you can put on a Popplet.