After using this revolutionary device for the past three months in the classroom, I'm not convinced it will be the most efficient method of increasing technology awareness in the classroom. My opinion was pushed towards this frame of mind when each student in my class received a Netbook (from a district grant) allowing them access to a personal computer throughout the day. Immediately we started doing art, math, social studies, and even reading right there on the computers. It seemed so easy to integrate school work onto a netbook as most kids were used to how the software worked. It wasn't so easy getting kids used to the iTouch. With that in mind I doubled my efforts over the last two weeks to see if I could find any other uses for this grand device. Here's my list:
- Voice recorder to build a story. Get a pupil to record the first line of a story, pass it to the next pupil to listen to and add to, continue with each pupil adding a part until the story is complete.
- Collect Data With Google Forms
- Create a Google Form and email it to your iPod Touch. When you click the link, it will take you to the Form formatted for the Touch, with multiple choice scroll menus, text boxes, etc. Use the Touch as a handheld data collection device that automatically populates a spreadsheet with your data.
- Conduct Assessments with online Polls
- Using Poll Everywhere students can access polls online and vote for the correct answer. Poll everywhere is FREE for up to 30 users per poll. Additional users can be added at a fee. Using Assessment Apps like qWhiz, ResponseWare, Teachers Pick, iResponse that work like traditional clickers.
- Probability and Percentages
- Install the free app "iChoose", which has coin toss, dice, cards and other options for random outcomes. Students play for a fixed time and tally their results. They then calculate the percentage of each outcome using the iPod calculator and compare their results with the whole class data, to show after many trials experimental data approaches theoretical probability.
This was assembled from several online sources. I was curious to try a couple of them with my class, starting with the online poll. It seemed easy enough, but unless you had 30 iTouches, it was going to be cumbersome handing the device around so everyone could be polled. One thing I was able to do is get a group of ten students together and have them use the voice recorder to build a story. It started out slow but when we played the story back they all got excited to hear their voices. Of course, they wanted to do it again, and again. Some of the stories were quite creative, it reminded me of Mad Libs when I was a little tike.
In the end, if a classroom has a chance to get a device in the hands of each student then by all means make it happen. ESPECIALLY if they come in conjunction with a netbook. The possibilities of increasing a students organizational skills with a netbook and a portable device would be huge....assuming of course they have been given strict expectations about what they are for and how they are to use them.
I very much appreciate the chance to play around with the IPOD Touch, and I will certainly miss the little bugger!!
Cheerio
I'm really interested at the criteria that people are using to weigh the value of the Touches. "Most Efficient"? There's one most efficient tool for anything in education? I"m smiling as I type this -- I promise, and at 1/3 the cost of a netbook, when most schools are far far from buying netbooks for all kids, how does the efficiency question change?
ReplyDeleteI'd love to know more about you mean by doing "math, social studies, and reading" on a netbook? What were kids doing? What were the learning goals? Deeper analysis of what sorts of learning kids are doing in any tech is pretty core to sorting out these questions.
It's interesting, too, because as netbook sales have really stalled in the real world because they are so limited in so many ways, schools are now jumping into that market, in part just because it takes schools a long time to adopt any technologies.
But... I'd be really curious to know what you thought of the ways that schools at all those links on the Tech wiki are using Touches instead of Windows based computers... Are they doing those things mainly because they couldn't afford netbooks or because particular tools work well for some things...
And it's fabulous that your kids all have access to a computer. That happens in some entire states, but is still so so rare.