Hello, I am Kylene Brooks – I teach Kindergarten in Weber
School District. I am excited to be guest blogging for Geoff today. Let me start out by giving you a little bit
of history about me. I have been
teaching kindergarten for 5 years. I LOVE it!
I love getting to be my student’s first teacher and help them see what
great and smart students they are! I love getting to know all about each one of
them and be a part of their lives. I love being a part of their excitement for
school and learning. I am also a teacher
of technology for other elementary teachers at our school district. Every summer, our district puts on a
technology education and training conference for the teachers and
administrators in our district. I have
been teaching at that for 3 years now. Technology is an integral and essential
part of my teaching. This past year I
piloted a set of 6 iPads in my kindergarten classroom and will be teaching
about how to use them in a classroom at the tech conference later this summer.
Today I want to talk about iPads, of course. I want to give you my three essential tips
for teaching with iPads.
Tip #1: If you have multiple iPads owned by your school or
school district, you are under legal obligation to follow Apple’s volume
licensing requirements which basically means you can only put each app you
purchase on one device. For me since I
have six iPads in my classroom, if I want a particular app on each one of my
iPads I have to buy the app 6 times.
Unlike my personal iPads at home, I cannot just buy the app once and install
it six times on each device (which apple does permit for personally owned
devices.) Because of this requirement,
buying apps becomes very expensive quickly. Let’s face it, I could spend a
boatload of money even if I just had to buy one of each app for all the apps I
would like on my school iPads, so now that I have to buy six copies of each, it
is very challenging. That is why I love appshopper.com a website that has a complete
list of discounted apps. It changes
daily depending on what is on sale (or free!!) I have saved a lot of money over
time and got some great apps for free or a fraction of the normal price!
Tip#2: Have a management system for using your iPads. Find a way to manage when and how students
get to use them and then train the students.
iPads are an amazing and fantastic learning tool but like all learning
tools, teachers need to give input and hold students accountable for their
time. Ipads can be used independently by
students of all ages (kindergarten teacher speaking here!) but they should always
be managed by teachers. In my class,
when students work hard without distraction on a task they can earn an iPad
pass to use the iPad when they are done, before we move on as a class. With an iPad pass, they have free choice to
pick any app they want. During our
reading and math small group time, if I have a group working independently with
the iPads, they have a poster that gives them the choice of several apps to
choose from. Students understand that
when they do not follow the system, they are excused to a less desirable
activity and lose their iPad privileges.
Tip #3: This last tip is short and sweet and pretty
self-explanatory: invest in headphones. The first few months I went without and
now I just can’t understand how or why I went without them for so long.
Let me leave you with my excitement for iPads in
education. I am impressed with the
device and even more impressed with the variety of high quality apps. I love
getting to use this tool in my classroom to help my students learn!
Kylene and/or Geoff, I wonder how many school districts actually adhere to the first tip? Or for that matter how Apple is able to police it?
ReplyDeleteIt is very difficult to adhere to, thats not to say that schools should not make their best effort to adhere to it. I think that for schools to adhere to it they need to have a plan in place before they start dropping ipads into classrooms.
DeleteIm not sure how they police it or even whether that matters, but it is their policy our district is taking it seriously and making efforts to be legal.
It would be nice if apple had a more education friendly model.
I was not aware of your first tip. Good advice! How do schools manage what you put on the iPads? How do you buy apps? Is it hooked up to their credit card or yours? Ahhh...so many questions!
ReplyDelete~Tanya
I have read about a lot of different ways that districts manage their ipads, and most have a different way of doing it.
DeleteA lot of your questions can be answered here :
http://www.apple.com/education/volume-purchase-program/faq.html
Thanks for the comment.
Kylene and Geoff--
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up! I only have one (I would write #firstworldproblems if this was a tweet..ONLY one iPad!) but the website was so helpful! Thanks. --dm
Oooh that first tip is good to know! I hadn't realized there was this issue at all, and I was already cringing at the cost of installing apps and just paying for one copy of them!
ReplyDeleteI love the tip about headphones! I have laptops and my students carry their headphones with them. This is very handy for watching videos, editing projects, and listening to music.
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt about the value of iPad implementation at the primary of middle school level, but I am still hesitant about their value at the secondary level. I have more apps on my iPad for my 4 year old than for me. He is reading and learning and having fun. Thanks for the tips.
ReplyDelete-Barry
That is a good point. Our district has adopted the policy of ipads for k-6, and android tablets for 7-12. (Specifically the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer models these have an integrated keyboard)
DeleteIs your media specialist coordinating the purchase and installation of the apps or have you actually been given the discretion to do so? I will be using that app to find discounts for my personal I-Pad for sure. I had the same experience with headphones and our new laptops. My supervising administrator about had a stroke but everyone was watching different podcasts and none of us could take the distractions of multiple audio files playing at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI was acting as the program facilitator for a small pilot test of ipads, and have helped in forming my district's plan going forward. Beginning this coming school year we have a designated person in charge of all app purchases (the physical act of purchasing, not deciding which apps to purchase ), and another person who will manage the policies, deployment, and syncing of apps, rules, and restrictions to the devices.
DeleteVery interesting! Good luck expanding the pilot program!
Delete