Week Six - Reflection on iDevices

Today many children and teenagers have mobile devices such as iPods, iPads, iPhones, or other generic versions of these. These devices are designed for the user to participate in some form of interaction, communication or pleasure at anytime or anywhere around the world. As technology evolves we can see the emergence of these ‘daily’ tools throughout schools and classrooms. However, just because children interact with these digital implements at home, are they necessary in order to facilitate learning? Are the demands of the contemporary learner unreasonable? Or would this implementation of technology support a continuum of learning from the classroom to the home?  Take for example an iPad, these are readily becoming available to students in classrooms as devices that support ‘thinking, wondering, discussing, and collaboration’. Functions such as a notepad, calculator, calendar, camera, clock and available storage space can be useful to primary students in creating and recording data. Applications of all genres are available for download and storage on these devices and are very popular. Some of these are educational, engaging and fun to use. However, I personally agree with Langwitches’s statement that as teachers we should ‘use iPads beyond apps’ and the use of these devices must relate directly to the curriculum. Furthermore the focus of using this technology should be on how they utilise it in order to gain further comprehension of content, and merely not just for practicing isolated skills such as spelling, memorisation and participating in quizzes. Langwitches recommends the use of these tools so that students can participate in:

• Practicing skills as a modern learner
• Critical thinking
• Personal learning
• Transofmative learning
• Workflow fluency
• Anytime/anywhere/anyhow
• Creating

(2013)

Examples of Educational Apps:

English

·         Adode Reader

·         Dictionary.com

·         Little Story maker

·         A+Spelling Test

Maths

·         Motion Maths

·         Calculator Pro

·         Fractions Basic

·         Skill Builder Numeracy

Geography

·         I Learn: continents and oceans

·         Google Earth

·         ArcGIS

I thought this movie reiterated  what I was talking about to some degree!

References 

Landwitches. (2013, February, 3). How Does iPad Workflow Fluency Look Like in Kindergarden? [Web log post]. Retrieved April 1, 2013, from http://langwitches.org/blog/?s=i+devices

Professorchip. (2012). iPad Everywhere. [Screen Presentation]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGVTp7eCWBo