With so many great topics for inquiry flying around the circle today, I found my interest on overdrive! I wanted to join so many topic areas, including the nature and technology one, the learning commons inquiry and the curation one! However, this is typical of me – the woman with 5 apps open, along with 6 different safari tabs while simultaneously flipping through a magazine and having a texting on my iPhone with a friend, all while watching TV.
SO, I am sticking to my original ‘gut’ topic inquiry: Using iPads effectively in the classroom. Luckily, Julie Mason, another student in class, is also interested in pursuing this area. She teaches Grades 6 & & Language Arts, and I teach Grade 5, plus we seem to have similar work styles and views about using technology, so I think we will work well together while also pushing one another. She has already share some great blog websites about iPads with me (and hopefully vice versa).
In the inquiry cycle, we’re in the Finding Out phase (from Kath Murdoch): gathering information from a range of sources, working as researchers, continuing to raise questions, learning skills of investigation. The problem is there is SO MUCH out there (there being on the internet). Many pilot projects, lists of apps, ideas, problems, solutions, websites, policies, blogs — you name it, it’s out there on iPads in the classroom.
SO — tomorrow, it is important that Julie and I try to narrow down the topic within iPads.
As we are both committed advocates of literature circles, we already like the idea of inquiring into using iPads to enhance student learning and engagement in them. I’m sure we can come up with an inquiry vision or statement to do with iPads and literature circles. From there, we’ll continue on a more manageable, narrow path of Finding Out and then proceed to… Sorting Out: reviewing information, analyzing information, looking for patterns and generalizations.
I’m excited! In typical me fashion, I am already worrying about problems… problems with sharing iPads at school, problems with how to save student work when the iPads aren’t one-to-one, problems with accessing apps I want to use but having to go through some hoops to get them onto the iPads. One step at a time though!
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I am glad you and Julie are working together on this topic! It seems very timely, given the current fascination with iPads and the way they are being brought into schools. I wonder if there was a curricular or pedagogical rationale at the provincial level about iPads? It would be interesting to find out where the push has come from – they are showing up simultaneously in many school districts. It would appear this is a provincial impulse rather than a district-wide coincidence. Is there anything at the government level about iPads and district purchasing? That said, there are many learning activities that can be accomplished with iPads, depending on the Internet connection. I would love to know how that part of the purchasing rationale was phrased : )