iPad in the Classroom

Thanks to one of the teachers at our school we were able to get our hands on an iPad for a day this week. The video below shows year a 1 student playing with the Dino Mixer app.

The iPad was smaller than I thought it was going to be and surprisingly light. It feels sturdy enough and the screen brightness was excellent.

Clearly there is scope for using these in schools - like the iTouch you turn them on and they work - no need to log on to a network or phone a technician when your desired network drives don't appear. With ever increasing options for sharing work to and from them they appear to have a number of uses within the classroom.

One issue may be that the iPad looks to be a consumer tool, how will schools be able to use it to allow students to create and produce. Hopefully we can come up with some ideas before we start buying a few next year.

Mobile Learning in Education

Year 1 students have been using the application DinoMixer on the iPodTouch to enhance their study of dinosaurs. Students mixed up their own dinosaur and then added an image of themselves dressed as paleontologists. These were then added to a PowerPoint and students then voiced over their stories and descriptive writing - some also used Wordle. The author of the app also gave us permission to use the images in our work.

They also used the mobile phone app Qik to livestram a dinosaur hunt from outside the school back to the whiteboard in the classroom. Although the 'mobile' aspects of this project were relatively minimal the impact upon learning was considerable.