As previously reported students have been downloading on average 8 - 10 Apps per week - most of them FREE!  Armed with my own iPad and App store budget I have been attempting to discover Apps that will help me as a teacher supplement my own teaching and learning.

Firstly, the Australian Curriculum App is a necessity!!  While we can all try and ignore it, realistically we have to accept it!  So why not make sifting through the content descriptions and achievement standards fun!  This App contains the draft Australian Curriculum for K-10 years for English, Mathematics, Science and History.  A comprehensive search engine and glossary allows the user to fully understand the implications of a National curriculum.  While this App is still in beta mode and not enhanced for the iPad it has great potential and will in the future hopefully be enhanced to include unit plans and the ability to export information to Pages.  Best of all it is FREE!!

Next is the ClickView Live App.  While this Apps functionality depends on a connection with a ClickView Live device, schools who do not have this feature are missing out on a world of information! This App allows you to watch any of the 6 video streams available from your school's ClickView Live device.  I have used this App within the classroom to stream different videos to groups of students.  It also allowed me to secretly watch the Commonwealth Games a few weeks ago!!  FREE, FREE, FREE!  So what is ClickView??  ClickView provides a complete digital video solution for schools and makes it easier for administrators to manage a large video collection, record television and video and store it in the one location.  http://www.clickview.com.au/home.php

And finally... (for now!) Mobile Teacher.  The Mobile Teacher App compliments the Mathletics program available at:  http://www.mathletics.com.au/.  This App empowers teachers to review and guide student achievement by sitting individual learning pathways customised to each students strengths and weaknesses.  While the computer based teacher program allows you the same function it is quite clunky and cumbersome.  Best of all you can change your settings anytime, anywhere! Last week I was able to set students appropriate activities while in the middle of a professional development session.

Each week students who use the iPads are given an 'App store' budget - the only catch is that they have to record and justify their purchases and explain how the App has aided their learning.  While the $ amount is relatively small students have been advised to let me know if they find a worthwhile App that is outside of their budget.  Surprisingly, very few students are coming even close to spending their allowance.  Don't be fooled into thinking students are content with using the few Apps already on the iPads, the volume of Apps downloaded is huge - 109 in just over five weeks, an average of 8 - 10 Apps per student!  

Students have reported that the FREE Apps are often the best! (For a full list see Useful Apps)  In particular the LOTE (Language other than English) and the Maths Apps are a huge hit.

Apps categorised by Apple as 'Productivity Apps' also feature high on students download list.  According to one student these Apps "help to organise time and make completing homework easy and fun".  While Pages, Numbers and Keynote were all preloaded onto the iPads, students have rated these Apps as "highly important and an absolute necessity for an iPad user".  Other Productivity Apps of interest include SmartNote, Musical Notes Sheet Music and To dos List.

So the big question is why are students not spending their allowance?  When asked this question one replied with what I deem a fairy logical answer, "they cover exactly what we are working on in class" in reference to free Apps.  My students are in Yr 7 and they feel the content used and tested in the free Apps is sufficient for their standard of learning and achievement. 

Interestingly almost 85% of the Apps recommended by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) as part of the Vic iPad Trial have been downloaded by my students.  According to the DEECD these Apps have been chosen to determine their teaching and learning potential.

Make sure you check out what Apps the students are purchasing at: Useful Apps

What other Apps are of interest to your students?      

Here is the survey that students are required to fill out each week during/after using the iPad.  The results have been very interesting - data to follow!!

All data collected by students so far highlights many positive aspects of the iPad and its potential use in education.  Many students claim that it is “slim and easy to carry around”, “it is a lot quicker to start up and shut down – browsing the web is instant” and that its battery life outlives the student’s laptops by more than 300%.

However, one negativity which is constantly repeated on students evaluation form is the iPads ability to hold and sustain connection to a wifi network.  Combined with the constant need to authenticate to the schools network, students are finding that they often need to go to the settings app and reconnect to the designated Mac network.

Students have found this issue to be non-discriminatory – it happens while they are on email, searching the web or connecting and using web based apps.  To say this is frustrating is an understatement!

After some research I have discovered many other users of iPads have had similar issues.  Apple even acknowledge there are some wifi issues with the iPad.  So after some initial testing the issue now lies in the hands of our IT department.  Hopefully it will be an easy fix and the iPad’s ability to connect and hold a connection will meet the needs of the students. 

Does anyone have any suggestions?

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This weeks iPad users are travelling along at a cracking pace!  They have really started to explore what it means to be 'mobile' and have discovered many tricks and tips which will help future iPad users involved in the trial.  Today upon request from the students we have added the iPad User Guide to the shared dropbox.  This pdf explains in detail the ins and outs of working with an iPad!  Students have also suggested that we make available the Guided Tours published on the Apple website which explain how Apps like Safari, Maps, Keynote and the App store work.

This week sees the iPad in the hands of the 12th user.  Surprisingly it has taken this long for the students to realise that while dropbox is the ideal tool to transfer files from a laptop to the iPad there is no such App which allows the exporting of files from the iPad back to a laptop.  To overcome this issue most students have been using the cumbersome process of emailing their Pages documents to themselves and then placing them back into their dropbox folder.  Set with the challenge one of this weeks iPad user vowed to find an easier solution. 


His solution is Habilis (www.gethabilis.com).  After accessing the website and connecting to your dropbox account, Habilis gives you a unique email which you send your files to and then bang your files show up in your dropbox folder a few seconds later!  Hm... I am not sure that this is any easier than emailing yourself!  Has anyone else found a way to overcome this??

First let’s start with the students.  When I was finally able to confirm that we had been given the go ahead for the trial I took the iPads (still boxed up) into the class and sat them on a desk.  There was an excited buzz in the air and I was soon surrounded by 26 eager students all talking a billion miles an hour and clambering to be one of the first users of the iPad.  It took almost a whole period (55 minutes) to explain the trial and answer the student’s questions and concerns.  A lot of their concerns centred around buying Apps, playing games and whether their friends and family members could use the devices.  Then came the all important question “Who gets to use the iPads first”.  This was something that I had anticipated!  As the basis of the iPad trial is to see how students will use them to aid their learning I decided that the students’ first challenge was to convince me that they should be the one to take the iPad home.  Their response was mixed.  Some decided to wait it out as we had taken a class vote and decided that each week the iPads would accumulate Apps rather than be erased.  Others spent hours crafting the perfect submission (some of them are shown below).  

Exciting news travels fast and it was only a matter of minutes before students from other classes were asking “When do we get to use the iPads?”.  Some students have been lucky enough to use the devices while we have been on camp or excursions and if I had a spare $10, 000 a few more iPads would definitely allow me to gain more data and give more students an iPad experience!

As part of the conditions of the trial, on a Friday afternoon I call the students parent/guardian and notify them that they should be expecting an iPad to be coming home with their son/daughter.  Again reactions have been mixed but on the most part parents have been really excited about the devices and their potential use in education.  Parents and students have willingly accepted all the terms and conditions of the trial and have embraced the technology.  I have received a number of emails from parents thanking the school for giving their son/daughter the opportunity to be involved in such a relevant, exciting and innovative project.  Many others have written to express their gratitude for helping them indirectly solve issues with their iPhones!

And finally the Teachers.  While on the most part teachers have been very supportive of the program, it has taken some time to convince them that they iPads are in fact the students own personal learning device.  Teachers have been given opportunities to ‘recommend’ apps/books for students to purchase but ultimately, they the students have the final say as to what they buy as they have to record and justify their spending.  There has been the odd teacher that has claimed that this new gadget has no purpose in education and has refused to let students use the iPads in class – but my guess is the same thing happens with the students laptops!

With the iPad trial about to enter its fifth rotation it is difficult to even begin to explain what I have learnt over the past few weeks.  Having never really experienced the power of an Apple device I have had to personally overcome some huge hurdles and re-teach my windows based brain.  On the most part the journey has been fun, interesting and has kept me and my students on our toes!

The main reason for my lack of reflection to date has been due to time!  I really don’t think that I estimated appropriately how long it would take to set-up, hand-out and reflect on the use of iPads with students each week.  Until now I have been focused on the administration of the iPad... I think after five weeks I can start to relax!

In a few words the trial can be summarised as follows:  Each week a number of students are given the opportunity to interact with an iPad.  The students use them in class, at home, on the bus, at the beach etc!   Students have a limited App store budget, which is monitored by a centralised email address and at the end of the week students are required to justify their App purchases (Even the free ones!) and explain their journey with an iPad.  Students also complete a reflective survey and discuss with me the pros and cons of the iPad interface and they are given the opportunity to state their thoughts about the future use of iPads in education.  The students feel important!  They feel they are being given a say about the way in which they learn.

So back to the beginning...

The technical part of the trial was not something that I had given much thought to.  While I had the generous support of some Mac friendly IT guys I knew that this was something I had to figure out myself!!  Luckily when you take an iPad out of the box it shows you a USB symbol and instructs you to plug it in to a laptop.  After that it was all pretty simple!  With all the iPads synced to my laptop I downloaded and installed some basic Apps; Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Star Walk and of course Angry Birds!

Then it was time to notify parents and put the devices in the hands of the students!

Initially, we experienced some difficulty gaining approval for students with an iPad to have access to itunes and dropbox via the school’s server.  The first students were required to connect to these Apps at home and I nervously awaited their first App purchase.  After almost 4 days of waiting patiently the students started to explore the ‘paid’ Apps option.  Upon reflection almost all students to date believe that there are so many apps available that it is not worth paying for them!

After justifying the need to access itunes and dropbox the IT and Senior Management team came to the conclusion that my trial was not about the logistics of iPad use in schools, it was more to do with answering the basic question ‘How will an iPad aid a students learning’.  So after much discussion access was granted on the condition that each week I emailed the IT team the names of the students with the iPads and these students are then given permission to access dropbox and itunes for the week. 

Having access to the itunes store at any time of the day was an important necessity which I felt could not be negotiated upon. I felt that students needed to have the flexibility to download a French App when they were in a French class or learn addition of fractions when in a Maths class.  Dropbox was also a vital tool for students to ensure that they could easily transfer documents from their laptop to their iPad.  To me this was about a seamless transition where students could alternate and decide which device best suited their needs.

Apart from using an iPad in a normal class situation the students have been given other opportunities to experience mobile technology at its best.  Our educational field trip to Phillip Island was made all the more ‘eco’ friendly as the students completed their worksheets, scavenger hunt and digital reflection on the iPads.  Combined with four iPod touches the trip had a real techno feel and the students thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to engage with technology.

Similarly, on our excursion to the zoo last week students were able to complete the required questions and answers using their iPad.  While I realise that the technology is still new and exciting for students I believe that this has aided their productivity and I have received some very well thought out responses to probing questions, as opposed to the scribbled scrawl I received from the hand writers!

Whew what a relief to have got all that out... there are still so many things to talk about including; teacher response to the program, how we have overcome projecting your screen, and the success of using mobile technology in class and how this has influenced other students to bring and use their devices to class.