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.
- Attachments:
-
-
IMG_0113.JPG, 478 KB -
photo.jpg, 161 KB
-
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Deon Scanlon on
-
SAFARI is the answer to almost every question, at my school.
Students use Safari to access Ning networks, to access Edmodo, QuickieQ (an online clicker app), email, our Studywiz learning environment...
MAIL is used for communication, too, as it is quicker than using the web browser.
My students are currently creating a digital story, using the follow apps: Brushes, Typedrawing, Slideshow Builder, Coloursplash... I think there are some others, too.
-
Permalink Reply by Roland O'Daniel on
-
Great stuff! Thanks Deon.
OK, what I hear is that you use the internet as much as possible, and mail for a lot of communication because it is easier/quicker for access [interesting that iPod is (or may be) making a platform that is being used less more important. Just an aside].
Is Ning a central place for many teachers? It's a platform we use with many teachers and one that they have repeated exposure with (good!). I love Edmodo and it is available to the teachers, they will love QuickieQ (new to me so Thanks again!).
OK, studywiz? what function does it fulfill?
So open ended tools for the digital storytelling, but am curious how they manage content they create but don't get finished with (pics, text, audio). Do they email to themselves? Save online using online storage or some common drive on the school server? Since they can't save to the Touch because of sync issues. Just curious, and did I say THANKS for the great thinking!
Roland
-
Permalink Reply by Bo Bailey on
-
Roland,
Our school has owned CPS and Response units for clickers to answer tests and content questions in class. We have always had to ask multiple choice questions but now we found Quickieq on here I can now ask any type of question (open ended, essay, short answer, even last min. check outs) and students can communicate their thoughts to me through the website. I have been going nuts using the site with my class set of iPod Touches and the students have never been more interested in discussion..
Ive been working with Alan who designed Quickieq.com for the last couple of weeks. He has been amazing answering all my questions and taking my ideas and moving them forward. He is really trying to get the iPod Touches to become a great way to communicate in class. Alan has been designing the site for computers for a while and now pushed over to making sure iPod Touches work just as well with his site. If you ever have a problem or think of an addon to Quickieq you should send him a note by email. His contact page will connect you to him.
I thought I might add some ideas on using Quickie.com in the class.
Here are some ideas for using the site:
1. Make sure you bookmark as a homepage the site on the ipod touch. You will get a nice icon that has a Q and your login name.
2. There is a way to share questions with other users so you could make a bank of test questions and be able to share with others using a letter number code.
3. When projecting the admin page on a big screen you can hide names of students and answers. This allows the students to monitor their score as they work on an assignment. Another way to work it is zoom (PC- ctrl + / Mac- ctrl 2 finger up and down on mouse pad) in to a question on the board to work out the solutions once everyone has given an answer.
4. Once a class has worked an assignment you can goto the previous sessions to export the grades the students scored on any assignment. Great for I'll look at that later processing!
5. Just this past week I have had students use it to take tests, make surveys, and respond to questions in the class as a last min check out activity. For last minuet questions you can open a session, pick a type of question you want to ask and click submit. Then ask the question outloud and let Quickieq take answers from everyone who has an iPod Touch.
I hope this helps you get up & running. I sure have loved watching Admins. come in to watch the students the last 3 week having fun and excited about learning in class. The iPod Touches have really been a new door to their desire to learn.
-
-
Thanks for the information!!!! I am not having any problem selling the idea of quickieq. I do appreciate the grading/tracking idea, and do love the different capabilities of the application. I will definitely pass this along and incorporate into our plan.
Roland
-
Permalink Reply by Peggy Harvey on
-
I love the idea of using iPod Touches in education, and can easily envision many valuable applications. Unfortunately, at my school there is currently a debate about banning them altogether, due to situations where students brought iTouches from home and accessed inappropriate sites and apps. How can a school monitor the iPod Touches that are brought by students from home? Does anyone have experience with this problem? What sort of school policies might work to prevent abuse of such potentially valuable tools?
-
-
It's really no different to kids using mobile phones or notebook computers.
Ultimately, you can't stop them from doing what they want, other than to:
a) Educate them well, and encourage an environment of responsibility (with consequences); or
b) Ensure you have a good filtering service, so at least Internet is well-regulated; or
c) Ban the things outright.
Obviously a combination of a) and b) would be the best manner.
I'm not sure how to prevent kids from using inappropriate apps if they are bringing their own (like at our school). From what I have seen, the worst you are likely to get (from the app store, at least) are the "Asian Girls Live" type apps (bikini photos). Individual responsibility is the way we work - break the rules, lose the privilege!
On school-owned devices (or via agreement with owners), you can restrict the ability of the device to access the Internet, YouTube, iTunes (for downloading music/video), App Store (so no further apps can be added).
This is all controlled by a pin code.
Hope this helps!
Bells gone - I'd better get to class!
-
Permalink Reply by Susan Wells on
-
Peggy,
We've written a use agreement for our student. As with any internet use, if the agreement's not following consequences are in place. The use agreement covers school-owned and personally-owned units. I think I've already posted the agreement here. Much of the language we used came from combining an older policy we had in place for desktop units with a use agreement I'm pretty sure came from Deon... The wonderful advantages of Ning collaboration!
-
-
Hi again, Roland
We use Ning with our Year 7s, mostly for English purposes. We have a 'novel study' Ning, and I also use one as a regular 'learning journal' where students blog (the verb!) reflections on their learning at school.
Studywiz is our online learning environment (like blackboard/moodle etc). It has a mobile interface that the students can use for access to curriculum materials posted by their teachers, as well as an iPod Touch app for retrieving information offline. This app links to the students' eLocker (server space) and can show/play all manner of different file types (video/audio/pdf/text etc). The students sync their iPod with their eLocker, and can then take homework tasks with them.
We don't have the need for saving to alternate places, as our students all own their own iPods. This has its benefits, but the pitfalls of student-added content are continually creating issues.
If we did need to do this, the students could upload to the Studywiz eLocker (it has an interface in the iPod app for adding items), or, as you suggest, email to themselves, although the latter would be a cumbersome process if they had to email all their slides (for this digital storytelling task) to themselves each time they had to put their iPod back. I guess reusing the same iPod could solve this issue, but that depends on your syncing routine, and availability of devices.
Any more questions, feel free to ask!
-
Permalink Reply by Sandy on
-
Wow! Never heard of StudyWiz or eLocker. That this product has a mobile component puts it way ahead of Blackboard which we use but find it clunky. Are you using the Touches for reading text books? Or just viewing teacher presentations of content (pdf)?
-
Permalink Reply by Wendy Nowak on
-
We have also used Studywiz for about 5 years now. The new mobile interface and mobile eLocker access is amazing, very slick! We're just beginning to explore the possibilities of it because we received a grant to purchase a classroom set of Touches this fall. Our pilot teacher (4th grade) is using it to read text books as well as deliver content through Studywiz. They are also used in a before school tutoring program. I appreciate following this thread, it's been so helpful!
-
-
I try not to give students too much reading on the itouch for health reasons.
Also, we don't have a text-book based curriculum, so don't have the need.
I can imagine a generation of people with sight problems if using a handheld device became popular in schools, and a priority for reading. I'm no doctor, though, so maybe this wouldn't happen...
I guess using a handheld device is better than hunching over an immovable screen or laptop all day, though.
There's some longitudinal research to be done, I can see!
-
-
I had an inquiry from an Elementary School seeking others out there working with iPod touches. In our system we have three schools with a number of labs. I'll see if I can track them down to ring in. Elementary Schools out there, please share your current use with the iPod touches.
Thanks!
Report
Win at School
Commercial Policy
If you are representing a commercial entity, please see the specific guidelines on your participation.
Badge
Follow
Awards:
© 2024 Created by Steve Hargadon.
Powered by
