Things I’ve Learned about iPads in the Classroom

As a part of my district’s 21^st Century learning initiative, I have a set of iPads to use in my classes, one per student.  It isn’t 1:1 because they don’t get to take them home, but while students are in my room, they have an assigned iPad that is ‘theirs.’  We’ve had them since the first week after winter break.

1.     Logistics – keeping all of the iPads updated and synced is pretty easy if you go through the steps found at Three Teachers Talk.  They seem to need charging after about two days of use throughout all six classes.  I appoint students to pass them out and take them up to prevent crowds at the charging table.

2.     Customs and Norms – When dealing with 13- to 14-year-olds, the thing to remember is that they don’t have any experience with ‘business.’  They have to be shown how to title an email, how to express their opinion politely on-line, and how to save a file to make it easy to find again.  This last is especially important since they are sharing iPads with three other people who have the same assignments that they do.

3.     Dropbox – I thought I would be using Dropbox to have my students submit work, but it hasn’t worked out that way.  Separating each class into folders and then inviting everyone to participate was cumbersome.  The other problem is if two students choose the same name for their file, then the latest one is the only one that will show up.

4.     Show Me Your Work – Instead of Drobox, this is the usual way that I grade things that are on the iPads instead of having the students send me their products.  This method has the added advantage that I can stop and talk to the student while I’m grading.  We can discuss issues and misconceptions, or we can talk about what they learned.

5.     Test the App First – I have downloaded and then deleted more apps than I can count.  I make sure that it does what I want it to do for my lessons before I push it out to all the student iPads.  For this reason, and because the cloud is great most of the time, but sometimes it does things you’d rather it didn’t, I have separate iTunes accounts for my teacher iPad and for the student iPads.  The other thing I have to check is to make sure they are accurate and convey the concept at the level appropriate for my middle school students.

6.     Default Apps – the ones that come with every mobile product from Apple, and include Youtube, Google maps, iTunes, and the like.  If they disappear from the iPad, the only way to fix it is to plug it in to iTunes on a Mac and restore it from backup.  None of the default apps are available at the app store.  No, I don’t know how they get deleted.  All I know is that it happens.

7.     Ear Buds – required student supply. 

8.     Video Notes – I’ve found that everyone is much happier if I videotape my notes and put them on Youtube.  I still set aside class time for note taking, but everyone has their own personal teacher that they can control.  I’m there to answer questions if something isn’t clear or to help students take something further.  My students think it’s great because they can rewind me as many times as they need for understanding.  If they want to review, they can access the videos from home.

9.     Search Terms and Keywords – all my students walk in to my class and the first thing they do when asked to search for something is type the actual question into Google.  Hopefully, that won’t get them anywhere, and if it does, then I wrote a bad question.  We’ve had to have several discussions about pulling the keywords out of a question.  And we’re still talking about it.

10. Technology – keep up with changes, issues, and tricks.  Twitter is invaluable for app suggestions, website information, and chats with other teachers that are in my shoes.  Also, students teach me new stuff about the iPads all the time.

In general, this has been a remarkable experience that has put the whole world at my students’ fingertips.  Their enthusiasm and engagement every day is something amazing.  While some students make bad choices with the iPads, most of them understand what an opportunity they have and act accordingly.