April 12, 2014
My two daughters both got iPad
Minis this year for Christmas. My
youngest, who is in seventh grade, has started taking hers to school to use in
her social studies and language arts classes.
My oldest, who is a sophomore in high school, doesn’t take hers to
school but tells me that they have them to use in several of her classes. The use of iPads in my daughter’s educations
got me thinking about how iPads might be used with younger students as well.
In the article titled “iPads in Primary:
Does 1-to-1 Make a Difference?” http://plpnetwork.com/2012/07/02/ipads-primary-1-to-1-difference/
Kathy Cassidy discusses the benefits of each child in her first grade class
having their own iPad to use in the classroom.
She starts by talking about the responsibility of making sure that
having an iPad for each of her students will make a difference in her
classroom.
“If they become a babysitting
tool, then I have failed.”
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Most children these days have used
some type of technology device by the time they are in preschool. Cassidy says “Technology, which they already
use in various forms in their life outside of the classroom, is a normal and
intuitive part of their lifestyle. Like most of the rest of us, when they use
technology, they are engaged!” I agree that
using technology is a normal part of life for children today and it makes sense
to carry that into the classroom. I
think the real challenge is to make sure that the use of an iPad is really
enhancing the child’s education and not just changing the format of teaching
from paper to electronic.
When we are at home and my girls
are working on homework we are often all sitting at the same table. When they are using their iPad to do homework
we have a headphone rule: if what you’re doing requires sound then you need to
have your headphones on so it doesn’t bother anyone else. In the article Cassidy talks about this very
thing and how she was worried that it would negatively affect the collaboration
between her students when using the iPads.
She goes on to explain that is has had quite the opposite affect and
says that “…there is more collaboration and authentic problem-solving happening
in my classroom than there was before we obtained our devices.” At first I found this hard to believe, but
the more I thought about it the more I realized that my girls do the same
thing. If they come across something
that they think is really cool they immediately take of their headphones and
beg their sister to “come check this out”.
Cassidy talks about how having the iPads has
helped take away some of her frustration with not being able to give every
student instant feedback. She provides
some amazing
links which demonstrate how the students use the iPads to show their
learning with videos, pictures, or a screencast. She also talks about how having individual
iPads for each student has made it much easier for them to pursue their own
interests through video using Discovery Education which is service which provides all types of
digital content. She touches on is how she uses the iPads to allow the
students to find and watch videos of their recent connections with other
classrooms around the world. She is also
planning to use the iPads themselves to connect to other classrooms using Skype or
Facetime in the near future.
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places at once.
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The last topic that Cassidy
mentions is management of the devices themselves. She says “Truthfully, management of these
devices has proven to be more of a hassle than I had anticipated…”. I hadn’t really thought about the management
of the devices themselves. When I found
this picture I realized exactly what she was talking about.
As I looked further I also found that Cassidy had a solution
for this issue as well.
This article showed me that using
technology such as an iPad can promote student learning by providing
applications which are fun, creative, and engaging for the students. The use of
iPads in the class room can also provide a variety of technologies (games,
videos, pictures, etc.) that will enhance the content instruction and advance
the students’ technological literacy. This reading has made me stop and consider
ways of using technology that I hadn’t thought of before. It has made me realize that when I get to the
point of searching for a teaching position that the availability of technology
to use in the classroom will be very high on my requirements list. As I continued to search I found many videos on iPads in the classroom. This is one that gave me lots of new things to think about.
References:
1. “iPads in Primary: Does 1-to-1 Make a Difference?” article
2. iPad as a babysitting tool picture
3. Syncing iPads picture
4. Neat iPads picture
5. Neat iPad chargers picture
6. iPads in the Calssroom video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzSNdxsfk0Q
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ReplyDeleteI really liked what you added about using Ipads for "really enhancing the child’s education and not just changing the format of teaching from paper to electronic". While I truly feel there are endless benefits of using technology in the classroom, I believe that sometimes technology can be used as a "babysitting tool" as you had in posted. As educators, we need to assume responsibility in using technology as a tool to facilitate learning instead of simply amuse our students. It sounds as if the iPads in this classroom are actually helping to start up some of these critical thinking conversations between students. This is very encouraging to hear. I think that the part of the challenge with using new technologies in the classroom is to find a common ground between amusing the students enough to engage them, and then forcing them to think for themselves in challenging ways.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a great topic. I know my three year old loves the Ipad and wants to use it every chance she gets. I make sure that she uses it for only educational activities, that is why I like the quote “If they become a babysitting tool, then I have failed.” With all of this technology so easily accessible people need to be mindful of what their kids are doing on the internet. I think the issue with managing the devices may be tasking but in the long run still will save teachers a lot of time. In the article I read using technology in the class room, it discusses time saving grading applications for teachers.
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