How do you introduce iPads in a constructive way?

We share 20 iPads for over 200 students. Still, we want to encourage them to be used in day-day learning. How can we show there are more than just ‘games’ on iPads?

Our Goal: Introduce the iPads to students as a tool for learning, evaluation, presentation and collaboration.

How we achieved this Goal: 4 simple rotations in 60 minutes.

The apps we chose:

We’ve just started iPad Wednesdays in Grade 5 to introduce students to the wide variety of presentation, evaluation, collaboration apps available for learning. Our school has only 20 iPads for over 200 students, which makes it difficult to use them properly as personal devices.

As such, our Grade 5 team has devised a way to help students explore certain apps in 3 areas of learning: Literacy, Maths and Unit of Inquiry (PYP). Each class had 1 hour with the iPads, and rotated to 15-minute stations to trial some of the apps.

This was an opportunity for students to also view and comment on eBooks from our Write Now 1000 ebookstore

Here are some examples of what students created in the brief time with their shared iPad:

UOI TASK: Use Tellagami’ to create a

story about Migration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiqccveQrNQ

Students explored both Puppet Pals and Tellagami as alternative presentation tools. Tellegami allows students to type or record their voice. Typing proved to be a fun way to also edit their spelling and grammar as many discovered mistakes when they replayed it! It was similar to a youtube clip I viewed about using voki.com to edit work…called “Conferring with an Avatar“

LITERACY TASK: Review and comment on our Write

Now 1000 eBookstore

Students were excited to finally take a look at what they wrote months ago in preparation for Exhibition (eDictionaries) and earlier, about Ms. Ingrid’s Orphanage.

Luli listens to a younger students’ eBook. Students were encouraged to leave a comment after reading it.

EXTENSION/MATHS TASK: This station was a 15 minute introduction to RSA-style videos and stop-motion animation. Students created a video for Grade three students that illustrated fractions.

Here is one 4-second video that Luli made:

Students will blog about their experience tonight. We will create a new set of stations the following Wednesday exploring some creativity apps such as ‘SHOW ME’ and ‘EDUCREATION’