More and more iPads are popping up in schools and classrooms these days. They can be wonderful tools for helping students learn, communicate and share their ideas. Not to mention that there are millions of apps about everything you could possibly want to learn about or do. Recently our Assistive Technology folks ran a workshop for us called "Get Your Head Out of Your Apps". Other such cleverly named workshops have been running in other boards in Eastern Ontario. The main goal of these workshops is to have people stop focusing on the apps and explore what the iPad itself can already do - right out of the box. Check out this link: An Introduction to Your iPadThis author has done a phenomenal job of telling you lots of the functions that you might not have known your iPad already had. Some of these functions include:
- Speech Function - your iPad can read any text to you
- Guided Access - you can "lock" your students (or my 4 year old) in one program so that they stay on task
- Taking a Screen Shot - any screen on your iPad can be photographed and saved to your camera roll - a great way for students to show their work.
I have used iPads in my classroom for the last 2 years and have found them a valuable tool for learning and sharing. My students have Portfolios through Evernote. Evernote is a free app that allows you to make notebooks about different subjects - or in my case... students. When my students complete a task, especially those great hands on ones that are so hard to keep records of, we take a picture with the iPad. Then we use Skitch (another free app) that lets the students label the picture. I have had students label using success criteria to demonstrate that they have completed the assignment, or I have had them point out the important learning in the task. For example when we learned about patterning this year I had the students make a pattern out of counters. They photographed their pattern, isolated the core and gave the pattern a name.
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