iPad for Beginners

It has been a few weeks since I wrote my last blog, so I might be a little rusty!  I had a couple of weeks where I was not in the rotation class, so I was able to get into the classrooms and help teachers use technology.  It was great to be back in the classroom teaching!  I was able to use the iPad cart each day with the class that I was in and the students were LOVING it!  The class had never used the iPads before so I started with some basic tasks to get them started.  I had the students read an article from Time for Kids to begin with.  I showed them how to scan a QR code that took them right to the article we planned to read as a class.  It was a simple task that they would normally do, but the students were more engaged just for the fact that they were holding an iPad while reading the article.  

Time for Kids

As we read the article, we discussed the story and some of the different elements just like we normally would.  It was a great way to get the students reading and discussing the story while learning to use the iPads.  After the students read the article and we discussed it, the next activity we did was the writing activity that I described in my last blog post.  The students really enjoyed the activity!  

Their favorite part was the Story Starters where they would spin the wheel to come up with an idea for a story.  They may have played with the buttons to spin the wheel more than needed, but they wanted to find a story starter that interested them.  Once they chose their story starter, they came up with some great stories!  They were able to type their story right there on the page.  The only problem was that we were not able to print their stories since I did not have airprint set up for the ipads.  I am not sure if it would print from the webpage anyway.  The students worked on the Show me, Don't Tell Me activity for a couple of days during their reading/writing time.  When it came time to write their stories, they wrote them in the note pad on the iPad.  It was quick and easy to open the notepad and have them get started.  It was good that they could start and stop at anytime and not lose any of their work.  The same issue came up that we were not able to print their stories.  Once the students started to get the hang of using the iPads, I started logging them into their Google drive accounts.  Our district has Google accounts set up for all students so they were able to log in and start writing their stories.  This way, they could easily share their story with their teacher.  If we wanted, we could also print their stories by logging in to their account from a computer and it would be right there!  

These were some very easy ways to get the students started using the iPads and did not take a lot of time to plan for!  It also, got their teacher excited about using technology and she started asking me how she could use the iPads more!  I think once we get teachers and students on the same page with technology, it will make both of their lives easier and give the students a better education!  Stop back tomorrow to hear more about what I implemented into that classroom the last couple of weeks!