Taking Ownership

One of our second grade classes is on its third day using the iPads in their literacy centers, and another class just got started today. It was interesting to sit in on both our "veteran" (of three days) class and our beginning class and notice the difference a few days has made. In the more experienced class, students navigated smoothly to a new sight word video, reset the video upon finishing, and then started the Spell Blocks with Sight Words app. Without prompting, students began to explore the settings in Spell Blocks with Sight Words to adjust the challenge level to meet their needs. In contrast, the beginning class was still in teacher-directed...

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First day with student literacy centers!

Today our second graders started using the iPads in their literacy centers. We set up the iPads so there are three screens of apps -- one for literacy practice, one for art and publication, and a third for teacher apps. As each group of 5 students came to the center, I showed them how to navigate through the screens and, specifically, how to navigate a video. There was a little confusion between the video progress bar (at the top) and the volume slider (near the playback controls), so that was something we talked about.For today's content, we used a sight word video that prompted students to read the word silently, pause the movie, write the...

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Numbering the iPads

So this may not be the most earth shattering revelation, but I think it was a small stroke of genius on the part of our excellent Apple Professional Development trainer, Bruce Ahlborn. Rather than relying on the numbers we have hand-written on the outside of the silicone cases to tell which iPad is which, we are also making jpeg images in Keynote that have the iPad number on them in a large font, and those will become the iPad wallpaper. Simple, visible, helpful, and won't rub off -- an incredibly helpful deta...

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Ipad

One of the hardest thing with using the iPad in the classroom is finding the time to go through all of the apps in the iTunes Store listed under the education banner. We have started to list some of the apps we've found under the Key Learning Areas. This is an ongoing task so check every so often to see which new Apps have been add...

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Almost ready...

Next week we will start using the iPads in our second grade literacy centers. We have been working on some student pre-surveys to learn a bit about their current confidence level with technology and their level of awareness of different types of technology-based learning tasks. Because the students are so young, this process has been a bit of a challenge! My general impression so far is that kids have some awareness of using technology to play games and perhaps to find some information, and I can't wait to see how their knowledge and confidence grow over the course of the year. There has been a good deal of behind the scenes activity since school began September 7. Finding affordable protective cases was a mundane but necessary step. After much consideration, we ended up with the delightfully...

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So Excited.....

I am looking forward to creating stories for the iPads. Tina, Kelly, & I have been discussing creating a book to support our pioneer unit....

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