Although not officially supported, if you connect a USB microphone to the USB dongle of Apple's iPad Camera Connection Kit, the iPad will recognize the microphone and let you use it in any microphone-supporting app.
Bluetooth accessories for streaming audio to your stereo, such as Belkin's Bluetooth Music Receiver, also work well, letting you watch video or play games on your iPad's screen while the audio plays through your big rig.
Before using iPads in the classroom, there are a few seemingly little things you'll want to know and address before your students arrive. You'll need to answers questions from "How many devices can share an Apple ID?" and "What apps should be installed" to "What are some simple ways to get started?" Jeff Dunn in this blog post answers these and other common questions that educators ask on this subject
What needs improvement:
time getting the Ipads distributed and back
ear buds/headphones (Right now we are sharing the ones that were supplied, but for sanitary reasons, I have gotten admin. permission to send home a request for students to provide their own)
In this blog post, David Andrews, a teacher in the United Kingdom, writes about the pros and cons of using iPads in the classroom, rather than laptop computers. Among the benefits, he writes, are usability, superior audio-visual tools, electronic books and tools that enable creativity. The downside, Andrews writes, is that the devices are not compatible with Adobe Flash and Javascript, do not facilitate multitasking and have poor word-processing capabilities.