How 5 Inspiring Tablet Classrooms Are Changing Education

Noonoo, S. (2014). How 5 inspiring tablet classrooms are changing education. THE, 11-15. Retrieved July 7, 2015.

Elizabeth Beste

Aurora University EDU 6210

July 7, 2015

How 5 Inspiring Tablet Classrooms Are Changing Education

Summary

            This article briefly looked at five classrooms around the country that are using different forms of tablets in different settings and situations. Each individual teacher has developed creative ways to use tablets that fit their specific setting and student population.

Main Points

            In classroom number 1, a high school teacher from Illinois used 1 to 1 iPads with Google Drive and Schoology. Students work collaboratively, but not together. Students give feedback and help edit or refine each other’s work. Another way iPads are in use is that students are all able to look at outside resources individually to provide the collective group with hundreds of additional academic resources. Students access as many as 100 additional resources in a two day period. The only negative comment was that while writing is improved, iPads are not great for formatting. The teacher will be implementing the same plan using Chromebooks, at another school. He feels that what he does is not controlled by the device.

            In the second classroom, a speech pathologist uses iPads and SmartEdPads. SmartEdPads are an android device preloaded with special education specific apps. The apps can be geared to meet the students IEP. Since she is a speech pathologist, her focus was on the speech apps specifically. Students used such features as a karaoke machine and other apps with record abilities to encourage students to speak. She had two students that were selectively mute, that were beginning to speak more because of the tablet use.

            The third class mentioned was an elementary second and third grade teacher who only had access to three iPads per classroom. She used the iPads most frequently with her ELL students. In addition to sight words apps, she used drawing apps to help students demonstrate their comprehension of stories. After whole group reading instruction, the ELL students were given differentiated work on the iPad because their comprehension levels were not on grade level yet. Students used vocabulary activities,  additional e-books on related topics at their reading level, or other literacy skills apps. The ELL students no only increased their reading skills almost 2 years but became quite tech savvy and could use those technology skills to be class leaders.

            The nation’s first school to be fully 1 to 1 was the fourth school in the article. Students in this school use computers for everything and are almost paperless. Work is submitted through MS OneNote which allows teachers to quickly grade and respond to student work. From a teacher viewpoint, grading is faster and there is little work to take home. Additionally, their school has the ability to do a lot if inquiry activities using 3D software. One example given was to calculate the volume of oddly shaped 3D images.

            Finally the article introduced a high school science teacher who received a grant to purchase a cart of 1 to 1 iPads. He immediately flipped his class and went completely paperless with his class. He moved his desk to a corner of the room, set students up in table groups and stopped classroom lectures. He created video lessons for students to watch on their own. Students were put in control of their learning. Students were taught different presentation methods using different presentation programs. Now students can create their own presentations using their own preferred presentation method. Students spend time one day a week focusing on the topic they most want to research. The class blogs about their research findings. One student wrote his own program to study sound waves.

Recommendations

            While there were no specific recommendations, each teacher gave ideas and solutions that worked best for their class or situation. They knew their student population and their resources and found technology that worked for them. They allowed the curriculum and the students to dictate the technology needs, not the reverse.

Reflection/Application

            What I most liked about this article was the fact that there were a variety of situations, grades, and technology uses. Some teachers had 1 to 1 while others had only 3 iPads. Most of the ideas given could easily be transferred to a different platform or device and wasn’t iPad only. The teachers listed off a variety of apps and software that they used, so that the reader has a lot of ideas. The activities were age appropriate and were very differentiated. I intend to look into several of the products mentioned, such as podcasts and Book Creator to see if these could be used in the classroom.