18 Ways iPads Are Being Used In Classrooms Right Now iPads are quickly becoming a popular and powerful educational tool for classrooms. Beyond the immediate benefit of engaging students, iPads can improve education efficiency and standards. However, many teachers are unsure of how to use them effectively. As the case studies below demonstrate, iPads are being used in education environments around the world with great success. So just what are they doing? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. Similarly, First Words Animals aids with letter and word identification. 18.
Technology Integration Matrix | Arizona K12 Center What is the Arizona Technology Integration Matrix? The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, collaborative, constructive, authentic, and goal directed (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. What is in each cell? Within each cell of the Matrix one will find two lessons plans with a short video of the lesson. Download PDF of the Technology Integration Matrix Print this page Characteristics fo the Learning Environment ← → Levels of Technology Integration Into the Curriculum How should the Technology Integration Matrix be used? Use this TIM tutorial to get more information on how to use it in your classroom practice.
10 incredible iPad apps for education Learning is rarely fun; it’s even less fun when being taught within the confines of a lecture hall or classroom. While this may be true, there’s no reason why you can’t make the process more entertaining and challenging. The tablet market has paved the way for educational resources in the form of slick, new apps, with text-books now being replaced by online downloadable versions of themselves. Evernote It seems wherever you look nowadays, there’s Evernote. ➤ Evernote Price: Free Paper Winner at the 2012 Apple Design Awards for Best iPad app, Paper has taken creativity of app development to new heights. ➤ Paper Goodreader You could be forgiven for thinking Goodreader as just as a PDF reader for the iPad. Price: $4.99 Bamboo Paper – Notebook Famous for its pen graphic tablets, Wacom’s first foray into the app market is quite an impressive one. ➤ Bamboo Paper – Notebook iA Writer ➤ iA Writer Price: $0.99
Struggling with educators' lack of technology fluency It’s 2012. Technology suffuses everything around us. The Internet and Internet browsers have been pretty mainstream for at least a decade. And yet, I continually run into significant numbers of educators who still don’t know how to work their Internet browser. They struggle with copying and pasting. What hope do these teachers have of providing meaningful, technology-rich learning experiences for their students? Is it even possible to get these educators to where they need to be? Can you tell I’m really struggling with this lately? [Guiding question: What can we do to build the internal capacity of both individual educators and school systems to be better learners and faster change agents?] Image credit: Shutterstock
Kyrene improves walk-through procedure with iPads - Ahwatukee Foothills News: Community Focus Kyrene School District has found a way to help its students demonstrate academic growth by updating its walk-through procedure with the use of iPads. "Kyrene has received $6.8 million from a capital override, thanks to support from taxpayers," said Karin Smith, chief financial and operations officer for the district. "This is far more than we've ever received through the state funding formula and it helps fund items such as iPads, which cost $500 a piece." Each iPad is equipped with a duplicate of Kyrene's Improvement Walk-Through Instrument form, but is not readily available to just anyone. Patricia Weegar, director of instructional services at Kyrene, was the founding principal of Akimel A-al Middle School and recalled what a walk-through was like pre-iPads. "There are 1,200 classes and two different types of walk-through procedures for reading and math. "The most important thing is that students have the best possible education and it all starts with the teacher," Weegar said.
Habits of Living: Being Human in a Networked Society Recently, in Bangalore, a cluster of academics, researchers, artists, and practitioners, were supported by Brown University, to assemble in a Thinkathon (a thinking marathon, if you will) and explore how our new habits of everyday life need to be re-thought and refigured to produce new accounts of what it means to be human, to be friends, and to be connected in our networked societies. There is no denying the fact that life on the interwebz is structured around various negotiations with information. Even as we go blue in the face, in the face of information overload, we have a sacred trust in the idea that information is the new currency of society. In our networked worlds, it is our role and function to transmit information to the nodes we are connected to. On a daily basis, we commit ourselves to the task of producing content, consuming information, relaying and sharing resources, saving and archiving material. Habits of Being Human
Using the iPad to Increase my Productivity Even though there are numerous other blog posts by principals using the iPad, I have said numerous times that my blog is a great place for me to reflect on my practice and seek the feedback of others. I have learned a great deal of iPad tips from other princpals, and I will list those blog posts/helpful sites below. I plan to use this post to explain how I am using my school issued iPad to increase my productivity and spend more time in classrooms (my ULTIMATE goal as a principal). As basic as it sounds, the top 2 reasons I use the iPad more than anything else are to keep up with emails and my calendar. When I am walking through classrooms, I have just used the Notes app on the iPad to quickly type feedback to teachers and email them. I have just begun to use Evernote in place of the Notes app. I keep track of my daily goals with the app "Simple Goals." I used to be the queen of post-it notes of to-do lists each day, but I have now been using the app "Get it Done."
Site Demonstrations Length 12:58 Increasing Literacy Across the Curriculum Through Mobile Learning and ReadWriteThink.org: How Verizon Foundation Is Transforming Education In Part 1 of this three-part video series, Kristin Townsend from the Verizon Foundation talks about the importance of literacy across the curriculum and how the Foundation is working to transform education and enable 21st-century learners. Length 17:56 Increasing Literacy Across the Curriculum Through Mobile Learning and ReadWriteThink.org: Apps for the Classroom In Part 2 of this three-part video series, Natalie Spangler from Killough (TX) High School, a Verizon Innovative Learning School, highlights mobile apps that she uses in the classroom and identifies ReadWriteThink lessons that you can use with each app. Length 11:56 Increasing Literacy Across the Curriculum Through Mobile Learning and ReadWriteThink.org: Apps in Action Length 18:50 Using ReadWriteThink.org to Address CCSS and Engage Adolescent Learners: Access and Assessment Length 17:40
Walk-Throughs Are On the Move! Classroom walk-throughs are a trend that is on the move! The non-threatening, non-evaluative walk-throughs give principals a quick snapshot of student learning. That snapshot is used to engage teachers in conversations about how to improve teaching. School leaders are under a lot of stress -- but if exercise is a stress antidote, then principals might be among the healthiest managers around. The walk-through technique is based on the work of Carolyn Downey and others (authors of The Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through: Changing School Supervisory Practice One Teacher at a Time). The walk-through process can benefit teachers in many ways, according to Kathy Larson of the Cooperative Education Service Agency #2 in Milton, Wisconsin. As one teacher put it, walk-throughs "allow us to see where we want to go, with the students' best interests in mind." Principals who have been trained to use the walk-through observation technique speak clearly about its benefits.