The Bartin Bunch: Our First Days of iPad Learning

Last week, we got our iPad Minis. We are the only second grade class at Keysor with iPads, because I am on the district's Technology Leadership Group (TLG). We are going to learn how to use the iPads in our classroom, and share the information with other teachers and students in the district.

Of course, my students have been very excited to get their iPads and get started using them. On the first day, we learned how to use some basic features and took a picture of ourselves to set as the background. We also went over all of the expectations and talked about the importance of being technology leaders. Students signed the iPad agreement, which their parents have or will also sign.

Since all of that went very well, I decided to be brave, and we ventured outside with our iPads on a natural resources scavenger hunt. Normally, we would have done this with clipboards and paper, but I thought that taking pictures might be even better. The students were very responsible, and they all did a great job taking pictures of evidence of natural resources in our school yard.

The following day, we used an app called Notability. First we went through a quick totorial, demonstrating all of the great things this app can do. I think it is a great app for second graders. They then import pictures, type, annotate, and record their voice in this app. Then we uploaded the pictures we took the day before to make a natural resources collage. Students could move photos around to group them in different ways, and they could choose to type or write to label their pictures.

The biggest excitement came when I showed them the Airplay button on the iPad. Students got to take turns mirroring their collage onto the ActivBoard (using Apple TV). This got everyone very interested, and everyone wanted to do their best work.

It's going to be a wonderful learning adventure with our iPads this year!