Freedom

When Shauna and I received our iPads, it went something like this. Here's the iPad. Here's an iTunes giftcard. Go. I hadn't touched an Apple since the Macintosh 128ks in my elementary school in the early 90's, but there was no need for a pro-D workshop, or a standard list of apps, etc. because the iPads really ARE that intuitive and user friendly. I've been reading a couple roll-out blogs from schools, and it's disheartening to hear so many Ed. Tech. directors say things along the lines of 'I wanted to save my teachers the hassle, so I looked up a list of the top 100 apps for education and installed them onto all of the iPads in the school.' Great intentions, but so much of the fun and excitement came from discovering, creating, and sharing with no mandated direction.

Here's a blog post from our principal about how the recent roll-out to the rest of the Junior School went yesterday... http://karynmitchell.posterous.com/ We're incredibly lucky to have the IT freedom both Karyn and Brad O-C have allowed us, and I hope this is how we continue approaching technology in our classrooms. I think as long as key learning outcomes continue to be met, use of technology should be relatively personalised for teachers.

Flexibility and the Home Connection

Having the opportunity to discover, create, customize, and share is equally as important for students as it is for teachers. Our school is fortunate in that each student's iPad has been purchased by the family who is also responsible for covering the cost of applications (so far, quite low). The students enjoyed having freedom from the get-go and were chatting about choosing their cases and wallpaper on the first day of school. The ability to take their iPads to and from school has also been tremendously valuable. We send out a list of apps we need them to have, and they have the freedom to search and install any others they are interested in. The flexibility this gives families is important because they can choose applications to suit their child's needs (eBooks at their childs reading level, educational games for younger siblings, etc.). It also means that learning does not stop at 3:15 because students are still connected to their classmates and to their schoolwork. The interest and engagement students have shown in our UOIs has increased ten-fold and many students, who I suspect would not be otherwise, are finding relevant information and sharing it in various formats electronically. I think having an iPad home connection could work in cases where iPads are purchased by the school as well.

Assimilation

At the beginning of the year we were a bit worried about what tech. balance would look like. We were worried some parents might feel we weren't using the iPads enough after spending 500$, and we were worried others might feel we were using them too much. This led to some planned 'iPad time' in our schedules as well as some "Take out your iPad, we're going to do _____________ right now." For the first few weeks this was somewhat necessary as there were certain skills (email use, configuration, movie/document creation) that did need to be explicitly demonstrated. It was a lot more efficient to walk them through email set-up and procedures step-by-step rather than saying 'go explore email'. Now those times are fewer and farther between as the iPads have become assimilated into the learning process. Students don't feel they need to ask 'can I use my iPad for ____________'. They just do it. Here's a quick example of what this looks like now:

Yesterday we started our summative assessment for structures. Each group was given a chance to research and choose a model to base their structure on. The bridge group was meeting in the corner, where two students had iPads out searching the web for bridges around the world while the other two students had books. After school, Sahra found a picture of their group's bridge online, saved it into her photo roll, imported it into an app (Draw4Free maybe), labeled some ideas for materials and emailed it to Taka, Aleksei, and Gabi, her group members, and myself.

Gabi made a subsequent diagram which she shared after school, and then Taka sent Sahra the following email cc-ing myself and the rest of his group members. The amount of 'disguised' writing over email has been impressive, and it is nice to see them (mostly) try to be aware of punctuation, spelling, and letter writing etiquette online. 

When the bridge group met back at school today, they were quickly able to compile their ideas into their final blueprint:

The great thing is that throughout the whole process, I didn't mention the word iPad once. When it helps, they use it, and when it doesn't, they don't. I told them if they happened to find anything interesting at home, they should share it with their group, and they now have the freedom to interpret share the way they wish. Telling a friend the next day, drawing a diagram, sending an email, making a phone call. Whatever works best. It hasn't taken long to get to this point even with eight year olds, and I can't wait to see the future successes as our Junior School iPad programme begins to expand. Such an exciting time to be in education!