One iPad. 28 Students. Here's How to Make it Work

I was fortunate enough to work as a school library media specialist at a school where there were 60 iPads that teachers could checkout individually or in sets of 6 or even in a classroom set of 30.  While more and more schools are acquiring iPads for classroom use there are still many more schools who simply don't have the funds to purchase these magical devices.  So what is a teacher to do if there is only one iPad in the classroom? Is it worth it?

I know, some of you are saying, one iPad would be nice! Right now we have zero... Hang in there. Consider other sources such as PTA and educational grants. Some teachers even use their own personal iPads in the classroom (gasp!). Once you have an iPad in hand, evaluate the apps carefully. Explore educational apps on the iPad (many are free) and take time to play with them.  Consider how user friendly the app is and its educational value for your curriculum and your particular students. Here are a few tips to get you started:

VGA adapter

1. Whole group activities: Connect the iPad to your digital overhead projector or ActivBoard with a VGA adapter. These cost about $30. This converts your tiny screen into a large screen. Now everyone can easily see the iPad screen.

• Use navigation applications such as Google Earth and other maps apps to locate places as they apply to your curriculum. Estimate miles from your school to a specific destination and check it with the app using the "Get directions" feature. These apps are also great for building background knowledge for the setting of a story or understanding where specific historical events took place. 
•  Don't have a whiteboard? There is an app for that! Apps such as Whiteboard and Show Me can serve as a white board that the teacher or students can write on just as you would a traditional dry erase board. Try several different ones out (most are free) before you decide which one to use in the classroom. They all have a unique feel and you will likely find one that you like more than others. Several of these apps have a recording feature that will record your writing or drawing and your voice and play it back for you. 
• Skype! Use the Skype app (also free) or Face Time (free from iPad to iPad or iPhone) to connect with another class in another state or part of the world or host your own virtual author visit by Skyping an author. You can read more about using Skype in the Classroom and see a video of how I've used it with 2nd graders.

2. Small group / Centers:  Set up the iPad as a center activity or Learning Station. Communicate high expectations for appropriate use and care of the iPad and take away the privilege if it is abused. You will likely find that your students enjoy using the iPad enough to meet or exceed your expectations.

• Read an e-book together as a class to demonstrate first, then set it up for use as a small group activity or even as an incentive for individuals to reward good behavior. Many e-books are free and run off of various free apps including the Kindle app (my favorite). The highlight and margin notes features work great for taking and sharing notes as you read. Sometimes the most reluctant readers will be the first to volunteer to read an e-book simply because they are attracted to the technology. There are even wonderful e-books for beginning readers. Check out the app I Like Books, which has 37 nonfiction colorful easy readers your kindergartners and first graders will love.
• Set up the iPad as a small group activity for researching the solar system using NASA's excellent educational apps as a starting place. 
• Use the camera and video camera on the iPad to document events in your classroom. Set up a classroom blog (there are apps for that!) and assign students to be responsible for updating the blog each week. Be sure to share the blog link with parents and even other classrooms so they can see all the great learning going on in your classroom. 
• Set up the iPad as a center activity for literature response, creative writing, or to share information learned from a research project. Use creative apps that allow students to create a story while recording their own voice. Students will be actively engaged in the writing task just by having a new purpose and new tools with which to write. Suggested apps: Puppet Pals HD, Sock Puppets, Show Me, and Toontastic.
  

3. Classroom Management: Incorporate the iPad into your classroom management tool box for smoother transitions and increased student interest.

• Use a timer app to display a countdown clock on the big screen. Most timer apps are free and you can choose from several fun sounds instead of a buzzer. When students can see exactly how much time they have left for a task, they are more likely to better manage their own time. 
• Use the iPad as an incentive for good behavior by rewarding students with time to use the iPad as individuals or in pairs. Select specific educational apps for students to explore and create a folder for them on the iPad so students will be certain of their perimeters for exploration time.
• Explore apps made especially for classroom management to assist with record keeping, grading, anecdotal notes and class calendar. Use clock and calendar apps to set reminders about when small groups leave the classroom for pull-outs such as speech or tutoring or for grade level events such as assemblies. 

Chances are your students know a bit more about iPads than their teachers. Include them in the discussion. Ask them to share educational apps that they find and use at home. Ask them how we could use the iPad to support learning in the classroom. You might be surprised at their resourcefulness! 

Teachers + Pinterest = Genius!

Pinterest as Collaboration Tool for Teachers

It's one of the first lessons learned in Kindergarten: Share with others. Teachers are naturally good at sharing, unless, of course, it's the week before school starts and the local teacher supply store is running low on the hottest sale items. Then of course, it's fend for yourself! But most days, if a teacher has a good idea for her classroom, she's likely going to share it with her coworkers at her school. But give a teacher a Pinterest account and she will share those great teaching ideas with teacher friends, friends of teacher friends and other teachers around the world... all with the click of a button.

If you haven't yet joined Pinterest, here's how it works: Pinterest is a free virtual bulletin board that allows the user to "pin" a webpage or blog post while capturing the link that takes you back to the source from which it was "pinned."

Old School: when teachers found an idea or resource to use in their classroom they photocopied it and put it in a notebook or pinned the page with a thumbtack to a bulletin board for later reference. With Pinterest, teachers can save those great ideas they find on professional websites and blogs onto their Pinterest account by creating and organizing virtual bulletin boards and "pinning" the picture links to their boards. They can then go back and click on the pin (or picture) and it will take them to the website or blog where they found that great idea in the first place. They can also "Repin" pins that other have found and "follow" other pinners or other boards. Here is where the sharing comes in. Everything that you pin can be viewed by other pinners that follow you as well as other pinners that just happen to explore the topic you organized it under. (If you aren't in the sharing mood, you can also limit who sees your pins.)

I have pinned numerous recipes, home renovation tutorials and nifty craft ideas in the short time since I joined Pinterest. While browsing pins of those I "follow" I could not help but notice my teacher friends are pinning like crazy! Popular pins include everything from bulletin boards and favorite read alouds to research projects, math center ideas, Web 2.0 resources and Common Core Curriculum. As the first day of school inched closer, the number of teaching pins increased so much that I found myself secretly blaming the teachers who had become Pinaholics avid pinners over the summer break as the reason the Pinterest app on my phone was moving so slow. No kidding! It is working fine now that school has started.

Pinterest makes it easy for teachers to collaborate on themes by allowing multiple pinners to pin on the same board. True story: Erin, a second grade teacher was frustrated with the low writing scores in her class. She browsed pins on Pinterest about teaching writing. After finding many great ideas for Writer's Workshop online and from other Pinners, she created a board, "2nd grade Writer's Workshop" and shared the board with the other teachers on her grade level. After giving her coworkers access to pin to the board, her teammate Jan, then browsed the board adding in the comment box on one of the pins, "This will work great for teaching author's purpose too. What do you think?"  The other 2nd grade teachers also added to the board and commented on the pins already there. They can each access the board individually from school, home or on their cell phone via the Pinterest app. At their next collaborative planning meeting they were able to go back to several of the ideas they pinned to their shared board for a quick reference to the new resources.
 
If only we could get PD credit for all our "Professional Development" time spent on Pinterest! Oh, wait, I think I saw a quote about that on Pinterest the other day...

Dictation App Makes Learning Fun

Recently the English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) teacher and I collaborated on a lesson that incorporated the use of iPads to help her students practice their English skills in a new way.

For individual practice, we used Dragon Dictation , an app that makes use of voice recognition to help you see your text after speaking it. Students were able to speak a phrase or sentence then watch as the app wrote the words on the iPad screen.

 At first we weren't sure how quickly the 1st and 2nd grade students would take to this activity but five minutes into it, we were pleasantly surprised. We heard lots of giggles when the app interpreted words differently than expected at times. Students quickly figured out that in order for the app to get it right they had to speak as clearly as possible and slow down, a task that would require intentional and careful pronunciation of words.

Overall we found the simple design of the app to be user friendly. While the voice recognition does have it's limitations, after seeing the extra attention and energy it brought to the ESOL lesson, I began to think of other uses for a dictation app in the classroom:

• Students who are still learning to write and spell could use a dictation app like Dragon Dictation to dictate short stories. It would help them get their ideas down before getting bogged down in the mechanics of writing.
• Students with special needs that find writing challenging could dictate stories or sentences using the app
• Students could take turns dictating a sentence one at a time to build a story together.
• Students could practice letter writing by dictating a letter then emailing it to their teacher or parent (the app has the option to send dictated text as text message or email).
• Students could practice reading fluency and reading with expression with the dictation app then go back into the text on the screen to edit for punctuation marks as needed.

School iPad Checkout Forms

We began this school year with 45 new iPads for use in the classroom and by the end of the year we had almost 60. Being one of the first schools in our district to have school iPads, we quickly found ourselves in need of creating our own policies and forms for iPad checkout. Below are some of the forms that worked for us.

• Maintenance: We found it helpful to keep the following chart on a clipboard attached to each iPad cart to help keep up with maintenance issues or noticed damage to the iPads. This way teachers could write down issues as they noticed them and we could be sure they were attended to as soon as possible. 

• Teacher checkout agreement: At our school, we posted the iPad reservation schedule for teachers to access online. This allowed teachers flexibility to reserve six iPads for a small group activity or an entire cart / class set of iPads as needed. As teachers came to the media center to check out the iPads they reserved, we used the following form to help us have a visual of where the iPads were for the day.  

• Overnight iPad checkout agreement: Our teachers often request to checkout a school iPad over night or over the weekend so that they may become more familiar with the apps they want to use with a particular lesson. We use the agreement below for this: