My first full week of iPad implementation is complete. In between chatting with returning students, troubleshooting, syncing, reading, researching, planning, cleaning, and a hundred other things...I'm teaching with iPads. No, really-- I. Am. Teaching. With. iPads.
You might need to pinch me, just so I can wrap my brain around that fact.
In the past few years, I've been learning to teach online and have done what seem like a million staff development hours on COOL LEARNING TOOLS ON THE INTERNET. I've used what I had available--one iPad, a smart board, and some aging laptops-- in order to make my class as engaging and relevant as possible. While they have been better than nothing, the smart board is actually old technology and the laptops--well, some of them might have been older than my students (ok, not really, but close). And regardless of their age, they ACTED like they were from sometime last century. They were fickle and didn't work all that well with new internet-based gadgets and apps. Never mind that I wasn't allowed to update any plugins without driving the stack of them over to the IT department. Ridiculous. It was really frustrating and I felt like we were stuck watching the 21st century speed by us while learning opportunities and students were being LEFT BEHIND. We were drowning slowly in our own inefficiency...And then, suddenly, there was Mr. King.
After taking over mid-year, and beginning his first full year with us, my principal put iPads into our hands as teachers. He got us the adapters for use with LCD projectors; he fought the county for our ability to have control over downloading and apps. He got us training and made it seemless. He gave us a special account that we could use to pay for any apps we thought we'd need. He gave us room to use them as we wanted with no pressure other than the request to show him that we were using them. When he came to me and proposed a class set of iPads, I think I died and went to heaven, just a little bit. (My principal ROCKS!)
I spent all summer researching and reading and trying out different apps. I started following other blogs, registering for a scoop.it weekly digest, investigating and following online magazines with any interest in iPads. Ok, I know. I am a little bit obsessed. It just that it is a bit daunting to have such a big investment riding on my shoulders. I want to do it justice.
I'm striving for substance not quantity. I really want what my kids do to be RELEVANT. The iPad, after all, is a TOOL.
If you want to look at my first week plan, you can CLICK HERE. I updated it, but like a novice, didn't save to a permanent file so I am trying to get back my changes...stay tuned. I have been using Edmodo (more on that in a later post), Youtube, Dropbox, Skitch and Quizlet, among other resources. To call my brief foray into using VoiceThread an EPIC FAIL might be a bit harsh and will require a tweak or two. I plan on trying again this week. My kids used some storytelling apps, including Sock Puppets.
It is pretty amazing to watch EACH student engage with the material in a personal way although it is somewhat messy. At any given moment some kids are finishing an instructional reinforcement video on Youtube while their colleagues are recording a soundtrack for their Sockpuppet cartoon. Others are trying to best our Scatter champion on Quizlet and still others are practicing vocabulary through the dictation feature of Speller. It can be loud but it is very cool.
Before you accuse me of being a Pollyanna, not everything has been stellar. Although everyone has been very forgiving when something didn't go as planned, being one of two teachers implementing iPads has helped. Mr. P. and I talk or text several times a day to discuss how things are going. I've been struggling with document management, especially since two or more students share an iPad over several classes and each has access to the work completed by the others. He's been having issues with annotating presentation slides and note-taking. When he tested the Notability app, he went a long way to solving both of our issues. It is already Dropbox-friendly, so we had our kids set up their own Dropbox and had them share a folder with us. Adding a step to our process in class-deleting work saved in the app and on the photo stream, once it has been saved to Dropbox, has helped with document management. Still working on the grading and return of said document--but I have to save something to focus on THIS WEEK, right????
Still. Overall, I am really pleased with how our first full week has gone. Just in case I really am dreaming, WAIT UNTIL NEXT FRIDAY TO PINCH ME, OKAY?
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