Hello Everyone,
I apologize for my late post. I had encountered some technical difficulties, and fortunately, the issue has been resolved. My name is JW (Jungwhan) Cho, and I am a teacher in Richmond, BC. I’ve been teaching for seven years (mostly grade 6 and 7) at elementary schools. I have taken on a different role this school year as a released officer in the local union office. In the last few years, I have noticed more mobile technology replacing traditional computer labs in schools. At my home school, before taking a leave of absence to work in the union office, we had iPad carts instead of a computer lab. It had its own positive and negative experiences for users (teachers and students), and it appears that maybe the direction that many education institutions adopt for several reasons.
Personally, it’s been a challenge, navigating this new landscape of Pandemic. I am very fortunate to have a supportive wife, and we are expecting our first child in July.
It is my third MET semester, and I am also taking ETEC 532 and 512 this term.
I have enjoyed and valued hearing and learning from other educators and people in my previous courses, and I look forward to working and learning with all of you.
Hi JW,
Welcome to the course, I look forward to learning from you and hearing about your experiences with mobile technology. My school board has also been gradually replacing computer labs with more mobile technology. For schools that have Kindergarten to grade 6 students, we replace labs with iPad carts and for schools with grade 7 to 12 students, we replace labs with laptop carts. Although the mobile and tactile technology is much appreciated by our younger students, we are encountering two challenges with the iPad carts:
• A lot of interactive resources and games are still in Flash format which is incompatible.
• Students never get to use a personalized login (username and password) as iPads can’t be setup that way for multiple users. So, the younger students struggle when they want to access the school board’s online resources (like Office 365 and the VLE) that are accessible through their student Azure credentials, which they don’t know because they rarely have to use them.
I would certainly like to know more about your experience with the use of iPads with your students.
Véro
Hi Veronique,
It is nice to meet you and I look forward to learning with you. The issue of online resources being incompatible and the challenges with student log-in are very real and frequently experienced. From my experience, I often planned around resources that are compatible with the iPads – it is too time-consuming to figure out a possible workaround and even that doesn’t guarantee that it will “work”. That being said, it was nice to have them in the classroom – being able to utilize tech in many ways to support student learning has been great. Happy to talk to you further about my experiences of using iPads with students.
JW
Hi JW,
Wow, it sounds like you have a full workload this summer.
I’m interested to hear more about your experience with the iPad carts – what has been positive versus negative?
Looking forward to working together on Assignment 2 🙂
Hi Adrian,
Like wise – looking forward to working together on Assignment 2. Some of the positives of using the iPads rather than the traditional computer lab are the flexibility (the ability to have access to devices that can support students) and some of the features that just land itself well with some students learning (the ability to take photos and videos, voice recording). It can be a struggle with some of the incompatibilities – some of the resources cannot be accessed via web (it either has to be downloaded app, which can’t be done on the spot for good reasons) and while it has features that are helpful, it can’t fully replace a computer/laptop. Happy to talk further – I’m sure we will have lots of chances to connect during the course and when we are working on the assignment.