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I have been asked recently both why I think an iPad pilot
project is important and how I will know if the pilot was a success. These are the central questions, aren’t
they? They should direct the entire
project. In this post, I’ll start with
the “why?”
The reason why to use iPads in school will differ from
school to school and district to district.
As one example, PS10 in New York, one of the first districts to roll out teacher iPads,
adopted teacher iPads to save paper (the pilot showed that the district did
indeed save paper, but also showed other important benefits).
For me, the reason to have iPads is to teach digital
literacy, a skill it is imperative for our students to develop to live well in
the 21
st Century. Today’s 5
th
graders will be living and working in a world of digital text. In fact, many -- maybe most -- of them
already are, as they text, watch youtube videos, interact with Facebook, and
surf the internet. Our students must
know how to intelligently read digital text, write digital text, and manipulate
it.
Not surprisingly, the importance of digital media shows up
clearly in the newly adopted Common Core standards for the English Language
Arts. As most know, the standards were
developed top-down. The writers first
looked at what skills students need to be career-ready, then worked backwards
through the grades to see how these skills should be developed year-by-year
through a student’s educational career.
One of the specific portraits of career readiness revolves around the
use of technology and digital media:
Students employ technology
thoughtfully to enhance their reading, writing, speaking, listening, and
language use. They tailor their searches online to acquire useful information
efficiently, and they integrate what they learn using technology with what they
learn offline. They are familiar with the strengths and limitations of various
technological tools and mediums and can select and use those best suited to
their communication goals.
Here are some excerpts from the 5
th grade
standards to show how this portrait is developed in 5
th grade:
Writing (Production and
Distribution of Writing)
·
W.5.6. With some guidance and support
from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish
writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate
sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of two pages in a
single sitting.
Writing (Research to Build &
Present Knowledge)
· W.5.8. Recall relevant
information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and
digital sources; summarize or paraphrase information in notes and finished
work, and provide a list of sources.
Reading Informational Text
(Integration of Knowledge and Ideas)
· Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources,
demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve
a problem efficiently.
Reading Literature (Integration of
Knowledge & Ideas)
· RL 5.7. Analyze
how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty
of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale,
myth, poem).
Speaking and Listening
(Comprehension & Collaboration)
· SL.5.2. Summarize a written text read aloud or information
presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and
orally.
Speaking and Listening
(Presentation of Knowledge & Ideas)
· SL5.5. Include
multimedia components (e.g., graphics, sound) and visual displays in
presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or
themes.
We are now required to teach our students to read, write and
use digital media. We need to teach
these three skills at school, not only because it is our job to teach our
students to read, write and present well, but also because, in the case of
digital text, our students’ parents may not know these skills themselves. Some
of our students’ parents consider themselves digital dinosaurs, some don’t have
access to digital media at home, and some don’t know how much time their child
is involved with digital media.
At the moment, our students get one hour a week in the computer lab, and many students miss half of that period attending instrumental music lessons. Having iPads in the classroom will give students much more time
to read, write and present digital
media. A few simple examples of ways of reading,
writing and presenting by iPad are listed here, but the possibilities are only limited
by a teacher’s ingenuity.
Reading:
Students can use the iPads as e-readers to read any of the
many books available for iPad, including those in Amazon’s Kindle store. Most of these books are less expensive in
digital form than in book form. In
addition, thousands of books are available to download for free.
Project Gutenberg alone has 40,000 free books available, including
Grimms Fairy Tales and
Anne
of Green Gables.
Increasingly, even text materials are being made available
for free, including some appropriate for 5
th grade.
K-12 Handhelds
has a growing elementary library. Titles
for language arts include
Types of Poetry,
Types of Poetry 2,
Poetry
Anthology,
Writers’ Style Guide for Students, and
Writing a
Research Paper. Titles for math
include
Exponents,
Decimals, and
Distributive Property. These digital texts include interactive
elements; for example, in
Ratios, students can solve ratio problems,
then click to check their work. All of
these books could be used to supplement and expand our adopted texts. Perhaps even more important is the move by
major textbook companies to produce interactive textbooks, which will include
rich digital media.
Students can also use the iPads in class to conduct
research, much as they would in computer lab.
They can learn how to interact with the internet safely and
efficiently. They will also need to
learn about plagiarism and compliance with copyright laws as the ease with
which they can cut and paste items from the internet increases. Although there is a doctrine of educational
fair use, which may protect students from copyright violations when they are
doing a project for school, many of our students are creating digital media
outside the school grounds.
Writing
Using iPads and the
Pages app ($10), students will be able
to generate essays and journal entries much as they could with pencil and
paper, but using iPads will also allow students to add digital content to their
writing, if appropriate. For example,
students can use a simple app like
Popplet Lite (free), to brainstorm and
pre-write. When they make a mind-map
digitally with an app such as Popplet, they can also insert images to expand
upon their thinking. For example, when
learning the word “contemplation,” they can take a photo of a friend in
contemplation to illustrate the meaning of the word.
As students write using iPad apps, they will create digital
text for an increasingly digital audience.
The
Scribble Press app is another free app which students can use to
write a book, using typed text, drawings, imported images and stamps. Their work can then be published as an
e-book or emailed to share.
Presenting
With their iPads, students can create traditional
presentations, such as slide presentations using
Keynote ($10), or posters
using Pages ($10), but another use of iPads is for students to present their
work in class or to an internet audience.
IPads can be mirrored so that a student’s iPad screen can be shown at
the front of the classroom. A free app,
such as
Educreations Interactive Whiteboard, can be used for a student to show her
process for solving a math problem on the whiteboard at the front of the class
while she works at their desk. The same
app can be used for students to create short screencasts of their work that can
be posted to a class blog, used as an assessment, or shared with another
student who might have missed class. Using
Board Cam Pro ($2.99), teachers can use
their iPads as roving cameras to share student work, for example to show
different groups’ results when working on a science experiment. The teacher is no longer tethered to the
front of the class, but can move freely around the room.
Students can use their iPads to work with audio as
well. For example, using a free computer
application
Cinch and the Cinch app for the iPad, students can record
themselves practicing their poems for oral presentation, then review these
recordings with peers or their teacher to see how they can improve before
making a final presentation in front of the class.
Of course, these are only a few examples of how iPads can be used to read, write and present digitally. There are whole websites dedicated to subsets of these skills, for example,
David Jakes' resources for digital presentation. If a teacher is willing to dive in and learn with her students, I think learning with iPads can be an engaging way to teach and learn these vitally important 21st Century Skills.
