ipads new to our school

on monday of this week, our school received three ipads that we had ordered. since then, we have been investigating the use of ipads in school. i have received many helpful hints and ideas for apps that were "must have" from my PLN. granted we are only in day 3 really of the testing but i have a few early observations.

#1. what good is an ipad as an instructional device if i can't show the app through a projector to all my students? i mean, there are some really cool apps out there but it doesn't make one bit of sense if i can display those apps to a crowd. gathering 24 students around the ipad just doesn't work. come on. there has to be an easy way to mirror the ipad display.

#2. tweetdeck on the ipad is about as cool as it gets. can't say enough about this app. it just works the way all things should work on an apple product. apple spends a large amount of time thinking about design and making things intuitive on their own software. tweetdeck has taken this into account and the app is just smooth.

#3. when e-textbooks on the ipad become as cool as wired magazine on the ipad we will no longer have students overburdened and weighted down with book bags. i need a team of software people over here right now. let me design an e-textbook for us history that is native to the ipad and i will put every other textbook company out of business. for sure.

like i said, we've only had these things for a couple of days and i'm sure that there is much more to learn. i'm sure that some of you out there will let me know if i am in error with any of the above. so far, i can see many uses for the ipad in education but i don't think we have even scratched the surface of the way this thing should scale in usage. once software types really begin to figure it out, every student in america is going to want one of these and schools may be willing to buy them for them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

back to school

ok, so i know i have been slack in the posting department as of the last few days but it is because we haven't been in school. we had the martin luther king holiday off on monday and then tuesday and wednesday we were off because of the semester change. so today, we are back. in full force. ready to kick some butt. we have spent the last two days grading and planning and trying to gauge where we are with regard to our school improvement plan. in other words, busy, very busy. now the students are back with us and all the gnashing of teeth (jw speak) and complaints and soul searching between the teachers have taken a back seat to the needs of the kids. this is one of the neat things about this school. i work with a staff that is full of hardworking, caring people. we look at our ourselves, self assess, judge where we are and how we are going to get where we want to go. there is a lot of self-doubt and passion and general craziness as we strive to be better teachers in a bet
Read more

facebook (or the social web)

i read and hear a lot about social networking these days. you know, all the cool kids are doing it. the kids have myspaces, and facebooks, and nings and maybe even a few of them twitter and skype. but the majority of teachers out there don't do any of these things. i understand the reluctance of teachers to get involved. there is so much of a demand on the time of teachers already. but i wonder how much of it is also just a flat-out refusal to learn something new on the part of some people. you would think that teachers would be the first in line when there is learning to be done. unfortunately this is not always the case. i also wonder where the line should be drawn between students and teachers. many teachers have no problems letting students into their on-line world. i personally, do not add students as friends on facebook or whatever until they are no longer students. a class ning of course would be excepted from this but i can't have a class ning because we block
Read more

whoaoo, listen to the music...

when i was a surly teenager, back in the mid eighties, my parents used to bust into my room and yell at me to "turn that music down." i would sit in my yellow bean bag, which sat on my yellow and orange shag carpet, and listen to loud rock and roll while i was doing my homework. they would say "you can't possibly be able to think while that music is roaring in your ears." but i could. at least, i could do most of the kinds of work that my teachers were assigning to me. look this up in the book, fill out this worksheet, yada, yada. now fast forward some twenty odd years later (and they were odd), and i am a teacher and i sometimes play music in the background of my class while students are working on things independently. i also allow them to listen to their own mp3 players or ipods while they are doing independent work at their seat. it doesn't bother me. my rules are that that i shouldn't be able to hear it and when i or someone else is talking t
Read more