Well, a new school year has begun. The class I plan on using iPads in this year has no iPads for the moment. The students have no idea they are getting them. In fact, I’m going to lead them through the first unit as I have any other year. We’ll do some community building activities and I’ll try to learn names and personalities. We will discuss some videos, do some research, analyze some data, give presentations, take a test, etc…
So, why not hand the iPads out day 1?
Well, I don’t want the class to be about the technology.
I don’t want to draw kids during drop/add period just because they want an iPad.
I don’t want a class full of techies.
I teach environmental science, and I do want kids to take the elective because they are interested in the course. In about two weeks I’ll put a new tool in their hands and we’ll see if that changes anything…
I just spent the morning with our IT Head, Matt Scully, picking apps to load into iPad2 tablets for my environmental science class for this school year. In a previous post, I likened this to packing a digital backpack. The iPad (and other tablets) provide so much functionality that you don’t just replace a notebook by using it, you replace what might have filled a backpack–pencils, markers, highlighters, erasers, notebooks, dictionary, calculator, textbooks…
We spent a lot of time talking about student workflow, and the tools that would help facilitate that workflow best. So, here is a list of tasks and apps we selected thus far (too many for me to link to each app, but you can find them all at iTunes):
My colleague, Matt Scully, brought this nifty video to my attention. If you have 20 minutes, watch this video documentary about Larry Mitchell’s 5th grade class…
*Here is link to full size video on YouTube if you want a better view.
Wow! Are those kids engaged? I’ve dabbled in using the iPads for a science class (http://pdsblogs.org/costarica/), but I’ve achieved nothing like this. Using iPad or another tablet, is this the future in our classrooms?
