iPads in the First Grade Classroom: Start of Year 2

We are starting Week 4 of school and already I can see a difference in the way we are integrating iPads into our classroom.  A main change I can see is that we are rolling things out slowly.  Last year, using iPads in the classroom was such a new idea, I felt that I had to just jump in and try things.  Many times, we had to scramble to figure out where to go next, or we completely failed in our attempts to use iPads in certain areas.  I spent countless hours thinking about and planning how to possibly use the iPad in the classroom only to realize that it wasn't the right place for this tool when actually working with first graders. All that said, I feel that was the right way for me to try to integrate this new tool into the curriculum.  It gave me a good idea of where it could fit and where it could be left on the shelf.

This year, we have learned to roll this tool out with purpose and not just jump in.  We started with a review of the device itself.  What do the various buttons do? Where is the volume? How do you turn the device on and off? How do you know how much battery power is left? When do you need to tell a teacher your device needs to be charged? How do you take a picture? Where is the front camera? Where is the back camera?  It was a great review for the students and teachers alike.  And the big idea that this device was to be used differently in school - it's not your mother's iPad!  

Since it is still the beginning of school, another routine practiced over and over again was "belly buttons down" - a favorite of mine.  This is the signal that all students must stop working, turn their iPad over, and listen to whatever message needs to be delivered.  We practiced this signal many times, the message always being that you can always return to your work, but you need to listen now.

Our grade level team has started discussing where we can go with this tool.  How do we want students to use it in the classroom? Are there certain skills or experiences we want all kids to have before the end of first grade?  We haven't come to any conclusions yet, but are thinking and talking about it.  I am excited for another new year of growth! 

iPrep for iPads: The Game Plan (and Blogging!)

With a great deal of deliberation, 4x has not launched the iPads yet. We will this week – the fourth week of school.  It is the halfway point in the first six weeks – a critical time for routine setting and generally getting to know one’s students.  We waited for a few reasons.  One, a guiding philosophy is that the iPad is a tool and one tool of many that students are equipped with.  It can be perfect or wrong depending on the task, and our students need to now when to use it and when to put it down. Two, we don’t want the iPads (or any particular technology) to be the center of our classroom or our curriculum so we have been doing other stuff with books and color pencils and paper and glue and scissors and poster board.  The pedagogy is leading, and the iPads will literally follow.

When we do launch the iPads on Monday, we are going in with a game plan.  Our tech integration and rollout plan will include “just in time” digital citizenship lessons taught by our Technology and Idea Coordinator, guided discoveries of apps, introductions to supplementary accounts with GoogleDrive and Haiku, email etiquette and protocols, and the piloting of student blogs via KidBlog.

I've selected a few guiding principles or "professional development mantras" to help me stay focused throughout the year, and I look forward to conversing with colleagues about what motivates and guides them.

           We will focus on introducing open ended, creativity apps through meaningful curricular tasks and assignments. When exploring apps, we give minimal instruction.  There is usually a list of things to find or include; part of the learning process is figuring out exactly how to do so.  They teach themselves, each other, and often their teachers! Once the children know enough about these apps, the goal becomes enabling them to choose how to demonstrate what they are learning.  We want them to select the digital or non-digital method/format that is right for them.  We want students to think: 

• How can I best communicate what is in my head? 
• What project can I manage effectively and efficiently?  
• "What can I do well?"  
• "What risk could I take?"

I am most excited about our KidBlog pilot where students will curate their best work and reflect on their learning. Creating digital portfolios is an important next step - the absence of which left last year's program feeling incomplete. We have heard many good things about this platform, and I am hopeful it will help us achieve our goals. We are currently in the process of developing curriculum on publishing and commenting. Some inspiring work comes from:

http://www.notesfrommcteach.com/2010/09/learning-to-blog-using-paper.html

http://educational-blogging.wikispaces.com/

http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org

If you have blogged with students (especially elementary school students) and have some advice, we would love to hear from you!

Guided Discovery #1: Not Your Mother’s iPad

This year we are rolling out 1-to 2 iPads in K and 1, and 1-to-1 iPads in grades 2, 3, and 4. In each class I have the opportunity, during the critical first six weeks of school, to create expectations for how the iPads are seen and treated by kids. With two years of iPads to reflect on, my goal is to give the students full credit for what they already know about iPads, while making sure that the difference between a school iPad and a home iPad is established.

Not Your Mother’s iPad

In our first session, we talked about how this iPad is a classroom tool with apps that will help them create and share work for their classes. It’s not the iPad your mom hands you when the food is late at the restaurant, or you’re bored in the backseat. While your mom’s iPad might have games on it, and she might let you do whatever you like, the school iPad has apps carefully chosen by your teachers and you will use them for projects in school.

Encouraging Students to Discover and Share

Next, I drew an outline of an iPad, with our iBallz “case” and asked them to help me fill in the blanks. I decided to do this intro “old school” - on an old-fashioned white board or chart paper. This way our work could stay around for students to look at for a while. I asked students to tell me what was missing from the picture. As they came up and added things, we named them, and talked about what they did. An example is the “home” button, that has many jobs and many names. I left it up to the class to decide what to call it, although my personal favorite is “belly button”. After a few important additions were made to the drawing, I invited the students to take their iPads and spend three minutes exploring them without opening any apps. They were charged with finding three things to share they thought others might not know.

The exploration time helped students who were not as familiar with the iPad share discoveries and feel empowered by them. Depending on the group, we learned gestures, how to manage open apps, and how to use the search feature. When we added the battery symbol and % we were able to mention that when the battery is at 20% students should ask the teacher to charge their iPad at the end of the day. Many small details like that came out in this discussion that should help everyone feel more confident later.

The final drawing looked something like this:

After this, we guided students through using the camera app to take a photo of themselves with the front camera and set it as their lockscreen. Although the student’s name is on the back of the iPad, it is helpful to be able to press the home button and see the owner’s face as well.

Last but not least, we practiced putting the iPads away properly and making it clear that each of them is responsible for doing this well. The second session is about photos and how we establish class norms for photo-taking that everyone is comfortable with.

Resolve to be more Interested, less Interesting

The NAIS Annual Conference just took place in Philadelphia and we were once again amazed and overwhelmed by the brilliant speakers and rich, inspired dialogues with our colleagues. As I left by car for a weekend in Ottawa (another story), the many messages began to sift through my mind and resolved in one thought that has been raised to the level of "mantra" over the last few days. This came from Pat Bassett, outgoing NAIS President:

Resolve to be more interested, instead of trying so hard to be interesting.

His thought came in reference to what he's come to realize over the years, and I recognized it immediately as the natural evolution of my previous "mantra" from the Singapore schools: Teach less, learn more. 

Teach Less, Learn More - Exploration vs Explanation

I was inspired by Tom Daccord's reference at the EdTechTeacher iPad Summit to this goal for teachers in the Singapore school system. I realize that when I teach students or teachers to integrate technology into their schoolwork I have often started from a "I'm going to show you how to use this" stance. That approach puts me in front of the group, showing, demonstrating, and then turning it over to the class to try all those steps out. Inevitably I find students and teachers alike assume that they can only proceed to the next step with my permission, or they are defeated by the overwhelming prospect of tackling the project solo and never feel the confidence to work on it outside of my class.

This year, with iPads being used daily in classrooms, we changed our approach from showing and explaining apps and assigning specific apps to projects, to giving students (and teachers!) a dedicated time to explore and discover apps, share what they have learned with each other, and thus build a community of resources in every classroom. As students have explored the apps, we have all learned surprising things about them, which in turn, has helped teachers feel more confident about implementing them. When teachers build in the exploration time before a project is launched, it helps with iPad management, because students can openly share their enthusiasm, knowledge, and creative ideas in a free-wheeling format where sudden discoveries are encouraged. Once the apps are explored, many of our teachers have been willing to present the plan and purpose of the project, and let the students choose the app(s) to use to fit their own vision. Best of all, it is way more fun to explore and learn from each other than to be the fount of all knowledge!

Resolve to be more interested, less interesting

I love this transmutation of the previous idea. What if we, as teachers, spent less time sharing what we know and assuming that what we know is the most interesting thing our students (or colleagues, friends, family, etc!) will ever hear. What if class time was organized around learning from our students about their interests, letting them share what they are learning, with a focus on collaboratively discovering new information. What if we let students take charge of their learning in more ways than just which desk or table they work at? What if we spent more time learning from our colleagues, taking turns, and respecting each other's knowledge and experiences, across all the disciplines? What would it feel like to invest part of every day to actively listening, responding authentically, and using what we learned to create a richer teaching and learning experience for the whole school?

These thoughts are going to be rolling around in my head for a long time to come. I'm interested to hear what all of you are thinking!

Questions, Questions, Questions

This afternoon we had a fantastic faculty meeting. Several teachers who use iPads in their classrooms (at varying degrees) talked about some part of their teaching and learning journey when using this new device in the classroom.  I loved hearing how others are integrating the iPad into lessons and thinking about the possibilities it creates for all of us.  Some points that really resonated with me were: 

- think about when to use the iPad - be deliberate in your use as you would with any educational tool; 

- the process of creation motivates - student interest makes them invested in their learning; 

- iPads can help customize the learning for each child we teach; 

- creating innovators should be our goal - where kids get the information from now is not as relevant; 

- don't worry about starting small - go at the pace that works for you; and 

- when getting started with the iPad as a classroom tool, you might be at the substitution phase for a while - this is ok!

At the end of the meeting, I was full of questions.  How are we going to move forward with our iPad program in the elementary grades? As a younger grade teacher, are there aspects of use of technology that I should be directly teaching? Is exploration of an app enough? Many children find this device intuitive, but what about the children who need a lesson?  iPads are not the only computers that children will have to use in their life. When are they taught to use a laptop? Will parents be expected to take on more teaching of the rote skills of using a Word program for example? Are there enough similarities among the devices that adults can expect children will be able to use any digital device since this is the world they are growing up in?

I love that our faculty is engaged in these discussions. It is very inspiring to hear my colleagues talk of their successes and failures. It's also nice to know that I am not on this journey of exploration alone!

It's time to introduce the iPads to a new class of Kindergarteners...

The Plan:    To give students a shared vocabulary and manner of handling for the classroom iPads.

What we do:    Our first session involves 1 teacher and a small group (6 or so) of students for 20 minutes.

 

 - 5 minutes of teacher-led introduction
Bearing in mind that children will only retain so much in one session so we pick just a few of the most important details for one lesson.  We begin with how to carry an iPad:  "Fingers on the bottom, thumbs on top, that way my iPad will not drop."  Next I show the everything button and explain that if you get lost somewhere on the iPad, you can press the everything button to get yourself back to the start screen.  I show the students what we call the start screen.  From the start screen, I show a folder and ask them to open one.  Now we can find an app and open an app.  Then I ask them to get themselves back to the start screen (they need to remember to use the everything button).

 - 10 minutes of guided exploration (the good kind of chaos)
I ask the students to find the Art folder.  I might share on the white board how "Art" is spelled to help them out.  The I show them an icon card with the Drawing Box app and, once they've opened that app, I show them how to get a blank page by tapping the little house.  That's it for my instruction.  They get to just explore, try things, talk about what they're drawing with whoever's sitting next to them.  It can get chaotic, but that's ok - it's all about their discovery and independence.

As they do make discoveries or get stuck, I ask them to turn to the classmate sitting next to them and share or ask.  In our classroom, we value peer collaboration and support, so our students are already forming the habit of asking a friend for a tip before they give up or come asking the teacher to bail them out.  This tends to foster peer teaching which deepens understanding and generates wonderful thinking conversations!

- 5 minutes of reflection
We have the students put the iPads in our "off" position (press the sleep button on the side and turn the iPad face down on the table) and students quickly share something that surprised them or a discovery.

Some apps to use:
Art apps are a great choice for guided discovery with K-4 grades.  We like Drawing Box, Brushes, Draw Free.  (we don't like apps that either have ads or in-app purchases)

Introducing the iPads to the students!

In KX, we found it extremely important to have an orientation (10-15 minutes) with the children on how to handle the iPads. Our assumptions were that the children would be so familiar with iPads (seeing as how prevalent they are in many children’s homes) that they would just jump into using them. What we discovered very quickly was that using mom or dad's iPad for games requires different skills/knowledge/care than using them in a targeted manner for our enrichment activities.

Our observation was that many children put their entire hand on the iPads and weren’t accustomed to dragging their fingers over the screen yet. They were unaware of how to open the lid to create an "easel." They needed to be taught how we want them to begin or approach the iPad - in our case, we have the covers closed and want the students to wait for instructions, then open and begin with an app that we already have open. They also needed to practice ending their iPad time - clearing their work and leaving the app open at it's starting point for the next group. We worked with a small group of six children at a time and we modeled the proper uses of the I-Pad by demonstrating right in front of them before they tried it on their own. By the end of the orientation, the children were using their fingers properly and were onto trying out the fantastic programs we have for them!

We decided to open this introduction and exploration session using the DoodleArt app. This video shows the students trying out their first app.