Tag Archives: ipads

Name Change?

Education, technology

Justin Reich’s title for his blog post caught my attention: If You Meet An iPad on the Way, Smash It. It is a play on a well-known Zen koan that advises you to kill the Buddha if you meet him on the road.

Reich’s post describes the EdTeach Teacher iPad Summit, which ended today. Despite its name, Reich insists that the iPad is not the focus on the conference:

The way we are seeking is one where we prepare young people for a life of civic commitment, of self-reflection, and of meaningful work and contributions to community. The way is about unlocking student talent, compassion, and humanity. If the iPad distracts us from defining the way, then we have to smash it.

Reich’s “way” is admirable and his idea that we can’t let technology get in the way is also admirable.  My simple question is this: if your goal is not related to iPads, then why is this called an iPad summit? Why not call it “unlocking student potential”? Or “developing 21st century citizenship”? Or “creating powerful learning environments”?

 

 

Day 30! Well, actually Day 31 ;-)

Education, technology

NB: I realized that it is Halloween and that is October 31st.  (Thirty days hath September and so forth.) I reached my goal YESTERDAY so today is the first blog post in the next 30 days but I’m not starting another challenge until tomorrow.)

I have reached the 30th 31st day of my challenge! I posted a substantive blog post every day for the past 30 31 days. Writing is part of my daily routine and I have put a plan in place to continue to incorporate writing, along with the reading and research that I do to prepare each entry.  I feel more connected to the larger educational world through the work I’ve done this past month. I am more thoughtful about spending Quadrant Two time and am finding the Google Alerts to be a helpful way to get news headlines.  It is interesting to see the trends across various publications. On Wednesdays, I’m going to highlight some of those headlines.

One of my alerts is ipads in education and I’ve been seeing lots of links to local news stories about their local school’s adoption of iPads. Today was no exception:

School board candidates share views
From the Powell Tribune, Powell, Wyoming
The first question asked the candidates to give their views on the use of technology in education, specifically the increased use of iPads. Candidates expressed mixed feelings about iPads, with some questioning their printing-compatibility with …

This one is worth a read.  The candidates are concerned about some very interesting things: the inability to print, a desire to throttle access to “outside interfaces” and the ability to save money on textbooks with a side of concern for students’ backs.  One member did look to the future for students:

“They’re probably pretty handy to have because as people grow up and go to college they’re going to have to have them with their businesses too,” he said.

Not much vision for how these devices might support student learning in the short term and really not any real enthusiasm for them.

Meanwhile, from Park City, UT:

One-to-one initiative to take off
From the Park Record
Following board approval earlier this month, the North Summit School District is moving forward to implement a new program which students in the high school will receive iPads. Using capital funds, the school district will invest $150,000 in providing …

The article gives a few examples of the uses of the iPads but I worry a bit about the focus on comparing them to textbooks:

From education applications to online textbooks, teachers have already been figuring out the best way to use the new technology. It could be a biology class using an app in which students can rotate a three-dimensional diagram of a heart. It could be easier to distribute in-class quizzes. Either way, getting iPads distributed to students will serve as a launching point to bring classrooms that added technological edge.

“These are basically textbooks,” Holmes said, “but each one is a textbook that has video or 3D imaging. When you open a textbook, you just see the picture. Pictures on the iPad come to life, and that’s the point. It is interactive.”

Certainly, interactivity is an important feature of digital devices but interactive textbook ties the device to traditional methods.

Finally, from the Charlton County Herald in Folkston, George:

iPads for everybody — FES gets new technology
From the Charlton County Herald
Every classroom at Folkston Elementary School will have its own iPad this year after 35-40 of the devices were purchased by the Charlton County school system using federal education dollars. “This is the first of our schools to be completely outfitted …

Am I reading this correctly?  One iPad per classroom? An interesting approach…the article doesn’t give much details related to professional development plan or integration ideas.

These all suffer from the same lack of vision. Vague reasons for making large expenditures. No conversations about student learning or instructional support. No discussion of school vision or mission statements and how buying iPads might fulfill them.

Breaking News: Yet Another Revolution

Education, technology,

I was showing my grad students how to use Google alerts today and used education technology as my example query.  This story was the first one that showed up in the News section. My first thought was really? Are we still thinking that any technology is going to spur an education revolution?

Here’s the money quote:

A lot has to happen in education before tablets can reach their potential. Most important, the people who run schools have to overcome their deep-seated fear of students in possession of connected devices. Yes, they can facilitate cheating and distractions, but teachers have always had to deal with cheating and distraction in classrooms and this is a terrible reason to deny students the advantages to students of everything from a library at their fingertips to instructional materials enabled by the tablet.

He is right that a lot has to happen in education but I don’t have a sense that deep-seated fear is the biggest issue. After 3 days at ISTE’s Leadership Forum, the biggest issue I hear is concern with how to really make a powerful use of these tools, way beyond textbooks or apps. I use my iPad in so many ways beyond creating and reading ebooks, his two major examples of the education revolution wrought by iPads.

Then, I reread the article and it occurred to me that a non-education writer’s definition of revolution is probably just different than mine: it doesn’t have to do with pedagogy and a shift from traditional practices, it has to do with technical ubiquity:

There are many reasons why technology has been an educational disappointment for three decades. Probably the most significant is that the computer has never become students’ constant companion but remains instead an occasional tool.

That’s all the further he goes. If you aren’t going to change the way teaching and learning take place, then other than helping lighten the backpack, computers are only needed occasionally.

Schools, particularly K-12 education, is a sector that has lagged badly in the adoption and use of computer technology. The explosion of tablets may finally be about to change that.

So, tablets may change students’ access to digital technologies…if that’s your revolution, we are well on our way if the other headlines in my Google alerts are to be believed.  School after school are adopting mobile technologies, mostly iPads.  But it is still to be seen if a real revolution takes place.

 

iPad Lesson: Creating a Food Web

21st Century Skills, Education, professional development, technology

I’ve been doing some training for teachers who will be using iPads in their classrooms this coming year.  I wanted to show them the power of mobile technologies so designed a lesson plan that I thought others might find interesting, particularly if you doing your own training.

Pretty simple idea: the content I used was the food web since it seems to be a ubiquitous standard in the biological sciences.  The teachers started with their own school campuses to locate and photograph the various parts of the food web that they could find.  If they couldn’t find certain ones, they were allowed to supplement with photos from the web.  They opened the photos in Skitch to do some annotations and then used an interactive whiteboard app to create a presentation.  The preferred app was educreations as it allowed the user to have multiple screens.  Considering the limited amount of time we were able to devote to the activity (just about an hour), the resulting products were pretty good.

This past week, I also had math teachers so I gave them the option of creating one related to triangles and other geometric shapes.  They were able to easily find photos in the school and combine them into great presentations.

I would love to hear about other ways you’ve incorporated hands on learning in your professional development…I’m convinced that if teachers can experience engagement with the devices, they will be more likely to use them in more powerful ways.