IPad Magic Rules!

Our ICT lessons are famous for their flurry of activity and sometimes louder than a hum, noise levels. That is all good, we've no complaints there. These are learning noises and when we need quiet or silence we get it.

Today we introduced our 6s to GarageBand on the iPads, handed them one each, plugged them in with their headsets and let them loose. What happened next? My teaching partner and I suddenly looked at each other, with shocked expressions on our faces and whispered (because you could hear a whisper) " It is so quiet,"

Have a listen.

iPads bring out the magic and creativity in kids and with the right activities and apps, and engage them to the point that they self direct, explore, peer tutor and require very little direct instruction. It is all a matter of choosing the right apps for activities, establishing routines and expectations, and offering up interesting, clear instructions and exemplars, which don't take up too much of the lesson time.


We are looking forward to sharing our student rap songs in our A Better World Wiki. This is the first time using iPads for the audio for the project and our expectations are high. 

It is usually the mark of a great lesson, when the kids don't want to leave. such was the dilemma today!

Completing the Set

Building on my pervious post, I have gone ahead and attempted to compile a list of reasons for investing in more iPads for student use in lessons. I am currently interested in bumping up our pilot collection to a full class set, 10 of which would be iPad Minis. 

So here we go.
These are my 20 reasons for implement a class set of ipads. This is by no means an argument for their implementation of iPads as desktop or laptop replacements. iPads and computers, both desktop and laptop are very different different devices with different strengths and weaknesses.  Instead this list exemplifies the reasons I see as important for bringing iPads into the classroom for use as the best tool for many jobs. 

1. The auditory, kinesthetic and visual aspects of the iPad appeal to different learners and learning styles.
2. Students can work collaboratively in learning pods more easily with iPads, than they can in a traditional computer lab. Collaborative work is facilitated either on one device or across devices depending on the task and the apps being used.
3. Students already use  a wide range of different smartphones and tablets. They are familiar with touch screen technology and take to them easily. Our students also see the potential of the tablet and not only choose them as their tool of choice in lessons, but also book them outside of lessons often for audio and video work.
4. We are beginning work with Evernote this year and it runs flawlessly on the ipad for research, notetaking and the gathering of multimedia resources. 
5. The set or partial set would be available for booking by other departments when not in use in ICT. Our English teachers have already started using them at times for their digital storytelling assignments.
6.  iPads are viewed by many as devices for content consumption. That is a very shallow view of the potential the tablet offers.  I would argue that their greatest value in education is content creation. We use them extensively for content creation, such as work with digital video, digital books, podcasts and digital presentations using apps like Voicethread and Storykit. The beauty of the iPad is that this type of work can easily take place from start to finish on one device, with no need for external cameras,card readers, cables, or desktop computers.
7. Having a class set will allow them to be used more effectively in lessons. At present students are partnered up, which works well for some activities but not all. 
8. With careful planning a class set of iPads will free up our iMac lab for for certain lessons and even entire units of study.
9. Initial work with the younger grades, involving audio and video can be done on the iPads, instead of the iMacs. The applications are much simpler to use, and although they do not offer all the bells and whistles that iMovie and GarageBand do on the iMacs. There is sufficient there for our youngest students to explore and apply creatively, without overwhelming them. 
10. iPads  are great for starter activities in lessons and we have experimented with online apps like AnswerGarden and Quizlet with great success. Right now our students must share iPads, so responses are not always individualised.
11. Our iPads are well on their way  (in some cases already have) becoming student personal learning studios.
12. Notably, Server storage for projects including heavy multimedia is no longer as necessary as storage solutions have moved to the cloud.
13. iPads are brilliant for Mobile learning. Students can take them any place anywhere at anytime. This means for example, that they can be down at the pond taking photos and recording their observations with Evernote or Fotobabble, annotating their findings with Skitch, showing their understanding with Explain Everything all on the go. 
14. A lesser investment in hardware spending may result. Not as many desktops will be required, and those we have may last longer. There are no mice or keyboards to break or go missing. 
15. iPads are inexpensive in comparison to a desktop computer and more powerful than many and apps are relatively inexpensive and often free.
16. Storage and space issues are minimal, desktops take a lot more space and a small set of iPads can be locked away in most cabinets.
17. We already have a system in place for app purchases. Developer support is great. There are so very many apps to choose from many free for our needs, and these are updated constantly.
18. After the initial sync, a small set can be synced ever few months usually in under an hour.
19. Little maintenance is needed and application installation is easy.
20. We already have systems in place for student use of the devices, which includes a device email address and dropbox account for transfer of work.

I hope that this list is useful in illustrating why a class set of iPads is a sound educational investment. I would love to hear back from others on this, so please feel free to leave a comment.

Starting a New SY With iPads

The new school year has begun and brought with it our New iPads. We have also received the sync station and the Griffin covers. We did not purchase a sync cart even though we  needed storage, as most of what we found was very expensive, even before the cost of shipping them to El Salvador. We decided to refit an old laptop trolley for them  instead, by a sync/charge tray from Parasync and see how it went.  I have included a picture of our set up so far.

We have since spent many hours syncing them to iTunes accounts, identifying and adding new apps, trying to create new iTunes accounts for each one, and failing miserably.  We have also spent a lot of time basically setting them up with email accounts, itunes accounts, restrictions and folders.

Syncing: This took a while the first time as we were doing 10 at a time, using the sync tray and adding over 200 apps to the iPads. I was so grateful for the tray, which cut my work 10 times over, even if it was a long haul.

Organising: We then invited our students in whenever they had free time to help us organise the apps properly for us. We still haven't finished and the reason for that lies with iTunes accounts.

iTunes: I am not sure if it is my lack of experience or if a great many others have similar issues with iTunes. I know from surfing the forums that there are a lot of people out there who have had similar issues with it, but I am not sure if we are in the minority or not.

Unfortunately, at a point during the process,  iTunes blocked us from creating more than 4 accounts for our iPads. Now we really want everything to be on the up and up with this, really there is no other option, yet we still can't create the accounts through which to purchase apps. This means that we have had to delay and modify some of the plans we had for the devices, for the time being. We contacted Apple, and they said they would help us find a solution. They suggested we gift them to our other devices, which is something we too had considered. Unfortunately after doing so, we have yet to receive the confirmation emails for this. All is not lost, I have a screenshot of the purchases we made.

Since we were moving to gifting the Apps I decided to create an account in iTunes for each remaining iPad that didn't link to a credit card, since that route was now blocked. Lo and behold, the None option is now missing, forcing anyone who wants to create an account to link it to a credit card. Again I am not the only one experiencing this issue.

Let me just say at this point how much I love my iPad and how excited I am to have a set (albeit a small set) to use with our students. Despite all the obstacles so far, I am still convinced we can make this fly, and fly high! We knew there would be growing pains when we did this.  I just wish Apple would make it a lot easier for Educators in countries outside of the US to purchase apps. At present we don't qualify for their volume purchase plan. 

We are just beginning our pilot and so far it has been very successful. We are using the iPads for animation work, QR Code scavenger hunts, and will be using them for research and note taking as well as class starters and brainstorming, very shortly. We have plenty of other ideas for using this versatile tool and are busily adding them to our schemes of work. I am hoping to be able to report back on the process again very soon.