Tales from a third grade, 1:1 iPad pilot.

The iPad is a tool. A versatile one, for sure, but it’s just a tool. It’s not a magic bullet. And it’s not a teacher. But when when is it the right tool?

When looking at where to incorporate iPads into my class I’ve found myself asking three questions:

1. Can the iPad make something easier?
2. Can the iPad make something more engaging/fun?
3. Can the iPad make something that was prohibitively difficult now doable?

Can the iPad make something easier?

Movies. They can be a great way for students to creatively show what they have learned. But the process used to be cumbersome, often prohibitively so, looking something look like this:

1. Shoot lots of video with a digital camera (some of the clips were good; others were trash; they all ended up on the camera).
2. Find the cable to get all the clips (good and trash) off the camera.
3. Move the clips to a place on the network where the students can get to them (hopefully there’s enough space; those movie files get pretty big).
4. Give the students time to go through the clips to find the good ones.
5. Use some sort of video editing program to put it all together.
6. Zip it into a single movie file.

This could be a forbidding process on the best of days. iMovie ($4.99) makes the process simple. It allows for users to shoot video, select quality clips, and edit/export the final product all from the same device. This is a game-changer in the world of student videos.

In college I took a media literacy course where we experimented with in-camera editing, a rudimentary way of splicing your movie together within the video camera itself (back when cameras shot on real video tapes). At best, it was an iffy process. iMovie on the iPad brings an ease to the movie-making process that has never been there before.

Can the iPad make something more engaging/fun?

With third grade comes the charge of getting my students to memorize their multiplication facts. Many are not intrinsically thrilled about this and try as I may we are still looking at plain-old memorization. It wasn’t fun when I had to do it (though I am very glad I did), and in an age of instant gratification it certainly isn’t any more fun now. But the iPad allows us to easily gamify the process. Apps like Speed Math (free) and Ace Multiply (free; my kids really like this one) make the process fun. Often when my students finish early in math they’ll ask, “Can I play Ace Multiply?” Yes, they ask if they can practice their math facts; this has never happened before. “Of course you can!”

Can the iPad make something that was prohibitively difficult now doable?

I’m always on the lookout for new and better ways for my students to demonstrate their learning. Explain Everything ($2.99) has opened some new doors for this. In short, the app allows students to create and modify visual diagrams while recording their voice over the diagrams. The app then exports a movie file.

I suppose I could have done this in the past. I could have sat down for a one-on-one with each student and had them explain what they had learned, talking as they drew pictures. It would have taken an enormous amount of time, and certainly would not have been a good use of time for the other 23 students in the class. With the help of Dropbox (free), my students can show and tell me what they know and I can view it when it doesn’t eat into the precious hours of the student day.

The iPad is a tool, and like all tools if you select the wrong one for the job you won’t be happy. The iPad is no different. Sometimes it’s the right tool; sometimes it isn’t. When it’s the right tool, it can change a classroom.

photo credit: Meanest Indian via photopin cc

Tales from a 1:1 iPad pilot.

After an afternoon of researching on the iPads, a veteran educator in the room commented to me that she worried the kids weren’t interacting with physical books. Getting ready for a digital product, and taking digital notes, wasn’t the same as if they had to plan out something like a physical poster.

I wanted to defend the iPads, but I couldn’t help but acknowledge some truth in what she was saying. Though it wasn’t that they weren’t interacting with the content, it was just a different interaction. iPads are “mistake tolerant” (Beth Holland mentioned this a lot at the EdTechTeacher iPad Summit), so interacting with them is different.

Designing content for a paper product meant lots of planning and a single shot at the finished product. If it doesn’t go the way you want it to, that might necessitate starting over (or living with a product you weren’t 100% happy with). The mistake tolerance of the iPad (and other digital media) makes for a different interaction. You can jump in haphazardly and make changes as you go.

Are these two approaches different? Absolutely! Is one better than the other? I don’t know. iPads are a different kind of tool, and thus allow for different approaches. If we are going to leverage the full power of them with students we need to recognize that. With mistake tolerant devices our planning phases look very different. I’m not advocating for abolishing planning, but with a different tool the approach needs to be different too.

photo credit: Mr. T in DC via photopin cc

For as long as I can remember, my dad has been a math teacher: elementary school, middle school, high school, and for the past 22 years as an independent consultant. As such I have fond memories of sitting in Pizza Hut booths as a kid being posed math questions as we waited for our dinner. As I solved them I was guaranteed to have the follow-up question, “how do you know?” I came to expect it.

At the time, the questions bugged me. “I just do” I would often respond. If I got the question right, why did it matter? Years later as I went through my teacher prep program and began teaching I realized the value of the question and now subject my students to the same question.

Coming back from the holidays on a long bus ride I found myself killing time on my iPad with Flow (an iOS app). It’s a game (albeit one based on spacial puzzles) I’ve played before and I’ve developed strategies. The idea is to connect the dots, without having any of your lines cross. At times I let my students use the app in school and it’s always interesting to see who takes off with it and who struggles (that is to say, who has a strong spacial sense and who struggles in that area).

As I played I got to thinking, if someone asked me about one of the puzzles, “how do you know?” or “can you explain your thinking?” how would I respond?

So I went with the Explain Everything tactic. If I could layer speech (a verbal explanation) over what I was doing in the game, in real time, could I explain what I was doing? That seemed reasonable.

My initial strategy of filing in the outside squares was easy to explain, but then I just found myself seeing the board three or four moves ahead of where I was. Half of the flows would be complete, and I would instantly see the rest. The metacognition we ask our students to do wasn’t working because I wasn’t actually thinking. My eyes saw the board as a whole and my fingers quickly traced around the iPad screen. I was sitting back watching my brain bypass rational thought. It just knew.

So if I, an educator with strong spacial skills, can’t explain my spacial thinking is it fair to require all my students be able to explain all their thinking all the time? (Yea, that question made me a little uncomfortable too, which may or may not be a bad thing.)

Ok, I’m not saying we should stop asking kids to explain their thinking. And I’m not going to stop asking my kids to explain theirs. It’s a good question and one we should be asking. But everybody’s brain is different. We’re all wired in different ways. We all remember Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. Is it possible that “I just know” really is what’s going on in a kid’s brain? Just because we have to think about it (and can be metacognative because we actually are thinking) is it inconceivable that the brain of a student might be wired so differently that they just see what comes next? That they truly don’t have to think about it? That they really just know?

I think it is possible. And I think it happens enough that we need to be aware of it. There are a lot of elementary teachers out there who are especially strong in the linguistic intelligence. If we’re going to help all our students be successful, we need to be open to the idea that we will have students who are stronger in some intelligences than we are, even in elementary school. It’s a wiring thing.

So, the next time a student tells you they just know, take a moment. Maybe they do. Maybe their brain is wired very differently than yours. Maybe it’s the truth: maybe they do just know.