iPad Implementation In a Classroom

I recently read this article from : http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/07/11/putting-the-ipad-to-work-in-elementary-classrooms.aspx

It is a very good article on using iPod Touch in the classroom. I have included the text below, as well as, some of my own thoughts/commentary following the article.

Lovely Lady Liberty: Active Media Engagement for Young Learners

Andrea Patrick is an exceptionally adventurous kindergarten teacher from Johnson Ranch Elementary School (Comal ISD) in Texas. Her students use iPod touch devices for all kinds of fun learning activities. Recently, while teaching a unit on American symbols, she found several videos that presented information in an age appropriate way. They were short and provided important facts, as well as context and a story for each of the symbols. She downloaded the videos from her school’s video subscription service and synchronized them onto the iPods.

There was only one problem. How would she know exactly what the students were getting from the experience? Were they just passively consuming or were they retaining important facts and ideas?

Being a great teacher, she knew just what to do. She built a scaffold to give the students a place to capture details and construct a concept map of the big ideas in the video. Essentially, she was just teaching them how to take notes. Wait a minute… Kindergarteners taking notes?! YOU BET!

By providing a simple scaffold that asked them to draw the Statue of Liberty and look for at least 3 facts about it, the students engaged with the media in a very different way. As a follow up, they had a conversation about their notes. In one case, Mrs. Patrick noticed that a student had only grasped part of an idea. She asked him to go back to the video and see if he could find out the rest. After a second run at it, he was able to add more detail to his notes.

Scaffolds like this are a great tool to increase engagement and provide you with material for assessment and coaching.

I was really impressed with this article and the use of the iPod touch in the classroom to enhance a learning activity. I was impressed for several reasons:

1. One of the first things that impressed me the most was seeing a teacher use this technology as a supplement to her own actual teaching or in other words to not rely on the technology and device to do the work of teaching. This activity was a success because of her teaching skills and the work she did to scaffold and help connect the students’ knowledge together.
2. She also did what is often forgotten or neglected with using iPads in the classroom and that is to have some kind of assessment or accountability for the learning that takes place on them. 
3. She used them to intertwine traditional learning (concept mapping) with the use of technology. Sometimes we are so “wow”ed by what technology can do we tend to let it overshadow or just plain replace some of the important or even vital aspects of traditional classroom work and learning. This should not happen. Technology like this should be used in an intertwined method such as this article presented or as an enhancement but not as a replacement for those important and vital elements of traditional learning.

I’d love to get some other takes on this—what do you think about this teacher’s teaching methods with her iPod touches (essentially mini-iPads) and how they can and/or should be used in the classroom?