Session 5 (14/04/2016)

written by Anna Solé Tusal and Ferran Rodríguez i Díaz

Today's session is about iPads and its different applications in Infant and Primary schools. Some of us are having our first contact with iPads, so there are a lot of new things we need to explore. The classmates who know how iPad's work will be helping the rest. Therefore, we are learning in a cooperative way. 

first contact

Now we are discussing about the pros, cons and purposes of the use of iPads in class. Some pros are that iPads are fun, interactive and nice; this device can develop and improve the ICT competence of our students. The cons we see are the lack of iPads in the school; the inappropriate use some students would do of the devices and of course one of the biggest cons are the battery issues. 

We also talked about the "What for?"; they are useful for designing interactive and motivating activities; iPads provide a wide variety of high quality visuals and are also good for a recreational use. 

We are discovering some apps we never heard before. They are apps designed to help teachers manage the class. One is called "ClassDojo", it is an easy app that will let us administrate the positive-negative points every student deserves (this can be considered behaviorist, but the app is good and motivates them a great deal). The other one is called "Classcraft"; the purpose is similar to the last app but from a different point of view. We are also talking about Book Creator, BitsBoards, Puppet Show, Tiny Tap.

Finally Miriam and me have created activities using the different apps we discovered in class. An example is BitsBoard, which is is a simple True/False game about the different spaces of our university.
This game can be listed in the Understanding and Applying steps of Bloom's Taxonomy, because it will have the students thinking and relating all the vocabulary they know. In the activity, they not only are tested in the vocabulary itself... they will have to pay attention on the spelling as well; some of the words are tricky and have been misspelled.

The target age for this activity in particular would be 9-11 years old. They not only are able to identify the different vocabulary worked in class, in addition they are able and ready to check the spelling as well.

Once again, ICT takes advantage on old/classic activities. We all know how to create vocabulary-check activities on paper... but now we are able to do them with ICT tools as the iPad. With this, you are bringing innovation and technology to the classroom. The students will enjoy more the activity and will improve their tech skills.

Here you have a couple screenshots of it:

We really encourage you to try these kind of apps; they are really useful and engaging for children!! We believe it is very important to instill in children the desire to learn in a different way, why not through ICT support?

Ferran Rodríguez and Anna Solé