7 Reasons You Need an iPad in Your Classroom and 10 Ways to Use Them

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Barbara Schroeder over at Technology Teacher

This blog post will explore reasons why the iPad might be the perfect technology tool in our schools today, providing teachers with 10 concrete ideas for using them in the classroom RIGHT NOW.

Why an iPad and not a netbook? Here are 7 reasons:
  1. The iPad has a very responsive Multi-Touch screen, a strong advantage over using a touchpad or external mouse.
  2. The iPad has accessibility built in. It comes with a screen reader, support for playback of closed-captioned content, and universal zoom feature which provides magnification of the entire screen of any application. There is even support for a wireless braille display and international braille tables.
  3. The iPad is more streamlined, portable, and cool.
  4. The iPad boots up much faster, since it uses a solid-state hard drive.
  5. The iPad is optimized for its hardware–the operating system was designed for the device.
  6. The iPad video display is a large, high-resolution LED backlit IPS display.
  7. The iPad can stay charged for an entire school day, with a 10 hour battery life.
How might teachers use iPads in their classroom? 

Reading: The iPad makes an excellent ebook, magazine, or any document reader, as the color screen is vibrant and readable in almost any kind of lighting. Books can be transferred to the Apple iBook app, using ePub or PDF formats. The color screen is especially appealing when displaying picture books and other media such as magazines. The advantages to students would be: (1) not having to lug around heavy books, (2) having all textbooks on one device, (3) being able to take and share notes, (4) automatic bookmarks when returning to the book, and (5) potential cost savings versus purchasing books.

Listening/Viewing: Students can download podcasts, music, and other media (iTunes U anyone?) for instant listening and viewing through the iTunes store. They can also view YouTube and other image/video sharing services.

Conduct On-Demand Research: The Safari browser is quick and easy to use, allowing students to conduct quick research to answer questions, watch videos, read and save webpages, search for resources in online library databases, share ideas with their Facebook friends–just about everything they can do on a traditional computing device.

Organizing: Students can learn and apply digital organization skills through working with the iPad and discovering ways they can streamline content collection, access, and redundancy. Show them Dropbox as one way they can save and access content through multiple devices.
Publication: Students can post and publish content to their blogs and other websites, either using the browser interface or specialized apps for blogs.

Communicate/Collaborate: Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Evernote, and other social apps are all available through the iPad for sharing information, receiving updates, and conducting research. The email app built-in to the iPad is intuitive and handy.

Facilitate Note taking: Evernote is a great way to take notes on the iPad (yes, there’s an app for that). Students can have all of their notes organized, along with their “textbooks” to study and review. There are also apps that allow the user to handwrite on the device, using either their finger or a specialized stylus. This would provide another way for students to write instead of having to keyboard.

Offer Individualized instruction: As a teacher, you know that not all students are on the same page or at the same level. By identifying students who need extra help or those who are bored and need to move forward, the iPad can provide the platform for additional curricular paths and challenges. Entire courses could become less dependent upon the teacher, with students identifying their interests, needs, and ways they can accomplish their goals.

Teach Personal responsibility: I’ve heard this before, that students won’t take care of technology tools. I don’t agree with that. If students had their own technology tools, they would learn how to take care of them and be responsible for ethical use of these devices. This is another great reason to support individual student ownership of technology devices–the opportunity to actively demonstrate and teach standards for appropriate use and care. We hear a lot about personal responsibility–ownership of an iPad would greatly facilitate this.

Gaming: Yes, the iPad can also be used for gaming, with many games available that would supplement a curricular unit. With a little creativity and no effort to get students to engage, the iPad can be a compelling reason to incorporate games in the classroom.




iPad 2 Could Level Playing Field For Learning

                                                                                                         image from modmyi.com
This is an interesting piece written by Meredith Ely over at Huffingtonpost on 2nd March 2011. It is an even and well constructed argument for the use of tablets in education and the flow on effect this type of mass implementation may have for the wider community and specifically low income families.

With over 15 million iPads sold to date, we might see its ubiquity as a matter of time. With the launch of the iPad 2, Apple will continue its push to democratize technology through anticipated lower costs, proven utility, and product "stickiness". Tablets have generated a lot of buzz in the last year for their educational potential, but the iPad 2 has the capacity to disrupt education in even more drastic ways. Lower cost, mobility, and intuitive design mean schools will be interested in the new iPad, but what is more significant is use among a more "overlooked" or "underestimated" constituency in education -- families. As education technology advocates, my colleague Rafael Corrales and I brainstormed ways in which the iPad 2 might have a unique impact on education.

Democratization of Techology

I have to be careful here because I do not wish to say that the iPad 2 will be in the hands of every person in the coming years, nor do I think that is necessary for student achievement. What I do foresee, however, is Apple's emphasis on user adoption and retention continuing to be extremely successful. The iPad was a hit for those daring and wealthy enough to leap into the world of the tablet. The iPad 2 will undoubtedly expand adoption with lower prices and additional features. Like the iPod, eventual price reduction will launch the iPad into more homes across all socioeconomic lines. With added features, it will become more than a toy for wealthier consumers, and with comprehensive networking features, it may supplant traditionally more expensive computer systems for lower-income families. Thus, while I don't think iPads will become the salient learning tool in all schools -- affluent private to urban and rural -- the second edition does show promise in delivering great technology to a much greater population.

Always Wired
Somewhere between the smart phone and the laptop lives the iPad (or tablet generally). With built-in wireless functionality, students, parents, and teachers can interact in real-time -- whenever and wherever. Learning games have already proven to be viable and valuable apps for the iPad, marrying children's love of competitive digital games and academic objectives; learning games are increasingly becoming feasible instructional tools as teachers embrace and utilize the iPad platform. Additionally, with emerging online learning management systems, parents and students can see grades online and forge stronger communication between home and school. Furthermore, with networked devices, suites like Google Apps for Education are in the hands of students 24/7, enabling collaborative learning to be more personal and student-driven.
Extended Learning Opportunities
As with Google Apps for Education, the mobility and diverse utility of the iPad 2 brings about new paradigms for group learning and social networking. As it stands now, children have several options when it comes to working together after school hours: meet in person, (video) chat online, work on shared text documents or talk on the phone. Obviously these methods are valuable, but the real-time applications made possible with the iPad 2 will likely enhance these experiences. The new tablet will have a front- and back-facing camera for FaceTime and other video chat apps like Skype. With the enormous number of applications feeding into the iPad platform, learning experiences that call on students to engage in new, creative ways could be extended beyond the time that students spend in a classroom. The ease of use, mobility and interactive nature of the iPad lends the device to extending the classroom experience meaningfully beyond what it is limited to currently.
Disruption of traditional ed market
Again, I want to note the idea of "democratization" when I discuss disruption of the education market. Education, a very top-down industry, has been dominated by legacy providers that have been able to make it through administrative bottlenecks to teachers and students. Putting the iPad 2 into the hands of families is an incredibly powerful tool in shifting the education market to a more bottom-up industry. The iPad is inherently demanding in nature; it calls on developers to create games and apps to meet the demands of families, but it also gives these developers an incredibly convenient distribution mechanism. This means that educational apps (highly demanded) are delivered right to the hands of eager families at low cost. The ultimate significance: Traditional academic publishers, student information system providers and educational toy/game companies that have been making enormous profits by selling to school districts since the beginning of time will have to compete with innovative, agile competitors who enter the space via the cloud -- and are accessible on devices like the iPad 2.
We will have to wait to see how or if the iPad 2 can truly revolutionize the education system. I do believe that we are seeing the expansion of an incredible tool with potential to disrupt education from the ground up.




Make Your WordPress Blog iPad Friendly with Onswipe

Another great article from Makeuseof written by Jeffry Thurana  and posted on April 7, 2011. This has huge ramifications for those of us that produce digital content for the internet or for consumption by our students.


Statistics say that the iPad is the most successful consumer product today. In less than a year (nine months to be exact), the tablet has found its way into the hands of 15 million people. And looking at the enthusiasm towards iPad 2, business analysts predict that the success rate of the second generation of Apple tablets will surpass the first.

What does this data mean to us?  For a start, more and more people who access the Internet will do so from an iPad or another tablet. So if you have an online presence, it would be a good idea to adjust the interface of your site to be tablet friendly. Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, has realized this and have added a feature that will optimize its 18 million blogs for tablet viewing. So for those of you with a self-hosted WordPress, there’s an app a plugin for that.

Touch, Swipe, Rotate & More
To bring this feature to realization, Automattic worked with Onswipe – a company which specializes in tablet (and other touch-enabled device) publishing.WordPress.com users don’t have to do anything as the feature is already added to their blogs. On the other hand, self-hosted users will need to install the Onswipe plugin before they can make their blog iPad friendly. 

The plugin will add the ability to:
  • automatically adjust the content layout according to how the reader holds their device.
  • give the reader an easy way to save the blog to their device’s home screen.
  • show a customized loading screen while the blog is loading.
  • create a beautiful magazine-like cover from the latest article.
  • easily share the content via Facebook, Twitter and email.
If these power-ups excite you, download the plugin on the Onswipe website, then upload and install it onto your blog.
Read the whole article at:





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