iPod Touch Schoolwide Implementation
There are a number of posts from individuals interested in using iPod Touches for teaching and Learning. At Culbreth Middle in Chapel Hill, NC we began a pilot this past August to place the iPod Touch in the hands of staff and students.
Our staff development for faculty to roll out the new technology centered on teacher coaches leading their groups in exploration through professional learning communities.
Our AVID students use the iPod Touch in the AVID classroom and in all other courses. They have piloted this program, using the iPod Touches daily for note taking, keeping individual agendas, translation for world languages, and accessing research through the Internet. In addition, our AVID students use many of the apps that teachers sync with these mobile devices. As student leaders, they’ve understood their responsibility to work and share this learning tool in collaborative groups.
This winter we were able to add iPod Touch labs for each of our seven interdisciplinary teams and two labs for our exploratory and resource teams. The interdisciplinary grade level iPod Touch labs are housed with each team and shared among the four content teachers (math, language arts, science, and social studies). These teachers plan together so that their students have access throughout each day. They access the internet as needed and use many apps as well.
Teacher current app favorites include: WordBook, Thesaurus, USA, Countries, Brain Tuner, Blanks, Whiteboard, CoinToss, Lose It!, Word Warp, FlipBook Lite. Of course they are using the included apps: Calendar, Calculator, Notes, Clock, YouTube throughout each day.
We held an iPod Touch Day last week with visitors from all over the state and from across the country. We even had a group from the UK come see our students and teachers in action with the iPod Touch. With almost 400 iPod Touches now in use at Culbreth, we’re happy to share what we’ve learned and what we’re learning.
Our staff development for faculty to roll out the new technology centered on teacher coaches leading their groups in exploration through professional learning communities.
Our AVID students use the iPod Touch in the AVID classroom and in all other courses. They have piloted this program, using the iPod Touches daily for note taking, keeping individual agendas, translation for world languages, and accessing research through the Internet. In addition, our AVID students use many of the apps that teachers sync with these mobile devices. As student leaders, they’ve understood their responsibility to work and share this learning tool in collaborative groups.
This winter we were able to add iPod Touch labs for each of our seven interdisciplinary teams and two labs for our exploratory and resource teams. The interdisciplinary grade level iPod Touch labs are housed with each team and shared among the four content teachers (math, language arts, science, and social studies). These teachers plan together so that their students have access throughout each day. They access the internet as needed and use many apps as well.
Teacher current app favorites include: WordBook, Thesaurus, USA, Countries, Brain Tuner, Blanks, Whiteboard, CoinToss, Lose It!, Word Warp, FlipBook Lite. Of course they are using the included apps: Calendar, Calculator, Notes, Clock, YouTube throughout each day.
We held an iPod Touch Day last week with visitors from all over the state and from across the country. We even had a group from the UK come see our students and teachers in action with the iPod Touch. With almost 400 iPod Touches now in use at Culbreth, we’re happy to share what we’ve learned and what we’re learning.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mark Marshall on
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Genius! Thx
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We just got our iPod Touch 4s today! Whoohoo! They are fantastic and we are super excited. Anyone have any iPod Touch user agreements that are different than normal AUPs?
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Permalink Reply by MIroslava Silva on
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Hi, my name is Miros. I work at the International School of the Hague in the Netherlands as ICT Primary teacher. I have been following this great forum for several months now and finally in a couple of weeks we will be receiving our first 66 iPod Touch 4s and we will start using them with Year 6 sts. At the moment we have only 2 Wi-Fi connections in a couple of classrooms. We are wondering if that would be enough to use in the corridor and in all 3 classrooms. Could any of you tell me how many Wi-Fi connections you have to successfully use your iPods? At the moment our concern is that 2 won’t be enough and the sts will have a slow connection.
Thanks for all the great stuff you have been sharing here, it has been really helpful to get us started.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Greetings from the Hague,
Miros
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Permalink Reply by Susan Wells on
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Congratulations! You and your students are going to have a blast! I am afraid you might have a slow connection... Although we now have full industry standard wi-fi, we started with a handful of wi-fi connections and then moved to the Apple Airport Extreme base stations. We had 20 of these running our entire school, about 600 units. I know Apple doesn't see this as the best long-term solution but it worked really well for us and cost very little.
Best,
Susan
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Permalink Reply by Deon Scanlon on
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Hi Miros
At our school we have four wireless access points in each learning centre. Each learning centre services about 100 iPods and 60 laptops.
This isn't sufficient, despite having some expensive hardware driving our wireless network.
I think that you will find that students have problems connecting to the Internet - it won't really make it slower - it is your Internet connection that affects speed of connection mainly.
The iPods are fairly reliable, though, and use a different channel to laptops. See how it goes. Maybe try to limit the number of students who use the Internet at the same time, or put as much teaching content onto the iPods through iTunes, so the students don't need to connect to the Internet so much.
Good luck!
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I absolutely love this! Since we are teaching the digital generation, any time we can incorporate technology into their learning is great and definitely grasps their attention! I can only hope to see more schools and districts implementing this idea into their student's learning!
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Permalink Reply by Alline Sada on
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Recently I have noticed that it is difficult (for classroom teachers) to find APPS. I ran into a great site that is just starting out which allows users to create App lists and share them - similar to DELICIOUS. The apps can be reviewed, rated, and even downloaded. I have found it to be a very efficient and practical tool with my teachers to quickly build a "School App Library"
http://www.appolicious.com
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Permalink Reply by Charlene Chausis on
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We just posted our "school" list on Appolicious: http://www.appolicious.com/users/Patriot -- do you have a link to yours?
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Added our apps and followed you as well. Thanks for posting. Ours is http://www.appolicious.com/users/ISKLapps
But we just started last week so haven't downloaded too many yet
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Permalink Reply by Sandy on
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Have been long-time follower of this ning but it's been awhile since I posted anything - we've got 60 touches and now our district is looking hard at purchasing more or purchasing iPads as we've gone to digital textbooks for social studies classes.
I received just today an unsolicited email from a vendor offering up insurance for loss or theft:
"Student Insurance Partners offers a policy that provides full replacement cost coverage and protects the unit worldwide (on and off school grounds). We can set up group policies or individual policies depending on your school’s needs. Our policies work for both student and faculty units."
This is a hghly reputable vendor. The marketplace is beginning to see education as a new revenue stream - as well they should because we buy a lot of stuff.
Yet, this is the first I've seen a program like this one. If we go to 1:1 computing with handhelds how important do you think this kind of insurance will be? In our current situation, we don't insurance laptops or desktops. We used to, but the insurance was too expensive. I'm loathe to reply to this vendor, but I confess I am curious about what they are really offering.
Our high school is large, 1900+ students. Our SES is 40% free & reduce lunch....so I'm thinking maybe we should look into insurance?? Thoughts anyone?
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Our loss at this point is less than 2% after two years of 1:1. The cost of the insurance of course would be the question... Still and all 2% of 700 units is a good bit of money. I'd be interested to see what they're offering.
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Permalink Reply by Tony Vincent on
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With those figures, it sounds like insurance would cost more than simply replacing what's lost.
Susan, over the two years, how many iPod touches have been lost or broken?
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