{"id":216,"date":"2013-01-22T05:32:59","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T10:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benschersten.com\/blog\/?p=216"},"modified":"2013-01-22T05:32:59","modified_gmt":"2013-01-22T10:32:59","slug":"managing-ipads-in-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benschersten.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/managing-ipads-in-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing iPads in the Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was fortunate enough to get to run a 1:1 iPad pilot in my self-contained third grade classroom this year. This is the first in a series of posts sharing what I have done and learned in hopes that other educators implementing 1:1 programs won’t have to reinvent the wheel. Feel free to take and\/or modify any resources here.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I begin the year, I don’t have classroom rules. It’s a practice I picked up with my Responsive Classroom<\/a> training. The students come up with Hopes and Dreams<\/a> for the year and over the course of the first few days we build rules that will support those hopes and dreams, and help us achieve them.<\/p>\n

When the iPads arrived, I took a similar approach. The class talked about the fact that they were tools for learning and that they were fragile. The front is a sheet of glass. It will break. And if you drop a sheet of glass onto a hard tile floor, the glass is going to loose that battle every time. We also agreed that carrying the iPads with two hands was a good idea.<\/p>\n

Te next few lessons were about navigating the iPad. I took the iPad Orientation Checklist<\/a> that Dan Callahan<\/a> at Pine Glen Elemenary<\/a> (Burlington, MA) used, and modified it a little. Thanks Dan. This is my version<\/a>. We explored a few core apps that I figured we’d get a lot of mileage out of. When I saw behavior\/handling I didn’t feel comfortable with, I would stop the class and we’d talk about it for a couple minutes.<\/p>\n

It was a few days into the process before we formally started talking rules.<\/p>\n

I started with Suzy Brooks’ ipad rules<\/a> (thanks Suzy<\/a>). I told the class this was a set of rules from another third grade class in Massachusetts. I wanted to look at those rules, see if we wanted to keep or modify them, and see if there were any we wanted to add.<\/p>\n

The conversation was surprising mature. The kids really seemed to understand the importance of having fair rules to keep the iPads safe. We settled on these rules.<\/p>\n