First, I'm not a blogger. But I was encouraged to start a blog by a friend and I'm realizing as a I learn that documenting and reflecting will be important, so hopefully I'll continue with this. And as the world now goes, why keep my thoughts to myself? I'm teaching my students that they are presenting to a global audience so it seems I should allow myself to do the same!
Second, it has been about 4 months since my second grade team and I found out we'd be given 1:1 iPads for the 2012-2013 school year. I swear if I were by myself I would have cried I was so happy! We actually received our teacher iPads about 2 weeks after school ended, around the end of June. One of the best things that can happen is to get the iPad into the teacher's hands ASAP. I'll give us a B+ for that. Although it's probably good school was over because I would have been greatly distracted otherwise!
What's the first app I downloaded? Pretty sure it was Pandora. Not real educational, but it actually is useful during the day. I'll keep that on my teacher iPad for sure. My team and I (there are 3 of us) all have automatic downloads turned on and share a teacher account. I'll be curious to know their reasoning behind downloading some of the apps they have as I'm sure they wonder for mine. I expect a similar answer from them as mine would be to them, "I just wanted to experiment."
Some general thoughts, comments, and observations:
Teacher iPad: The thought is that the teacher iPads should have greater capacity and be the newest, yet compatible, available. We will be getting The New iPad (iPad 3, some say) with 32 GB and students will get the iPad 2 with 16 GB. For our summer trial we have the iPad 2.
Cases: What kind? Short answer; don't know. There are large spongy cases that would be good for young and uncoordinated young hands but those are pricey. Basically, there are hundreds of choices and we haven't picked one yet. Seems like a case with reinforced corners will be important.
App Management: Free! Free! Free! My focus is free apps. Don't get me wrong, there are some paid apps that intrigue for sure but I'm content without them for now...I think. Either way, it's important to set up a Volume Purchasing Program person. Ours is the network administrator. I'll put the apps in folders but don't want to do 20-something of them. Wouldn't be difficult, just time-consuming. I'd also like the kids to experience that too.
PLN: Much like this blog it needs to be shared. I'm fortunate to have a friend that is much more knowledgeable and involved in tech integration than I am and is willing to be helpful (Thanks, Brad!) I'm fortunate that one of my teaching partners has a master's in Ed Tech and is interested in implementing these properly. I'm fortunate that the other teacher is super creative and likes to experiment with tech, but isn't real confident. I like that I can share and teach. I'm not real connected otherwise, but I'm thankful for Twitter and Pinterest for all the resources that they provide. Almost too many to go through in a day or evening, but still glad they exist! This is probably the most important thing to have otherwise I think I'd be flying blind.
PD: Attended some webinars this summer. Those are important to seek out. Mainly have attended SimpleK12 presentations. Also went to a Day of Innovation in Hamilton to meet and listen to Amber Kowach, the MACUL Teacher of the Year. Her advice and experience with 1:1 iPads was priceless.
At this risk of making this too long for an introduction, I will end here and add additional posts as I think of key tips For right now, I'm looking forward to meeting with an Apple rep next week and working with our superintendent and tech coordinator to discuss our policies, procedures, and implementation ideas.
