Some good iPad resources can be gleaned from the integration efforts in the Chicago Public Schools.
Some of the schools have websites that share their apps, best practices, and user videos. Here are a couple:
I doubt there has ever been a more helpless target for those who have trouble understanding technology’s role in education than the iPad. The personal nature of the iPad allows almost anyone to quickly form an opinion about the device, informed or not. And since many tech users seem to expect perfection from Apple products, there is little tolerance for shortcomings or obviously missing features.
At the moment, Missoula has at least five distinct and mostly unrelated iPad integration efforts underway of various flavors and degree of operation. There is a dual-grade 1:1 under construction, a PTA funded teacher-centered 1:1, a dozen iPads in place in a school’s library, and a deep integration in a middle school--here’s their iPad Handbook-Procedures etc.
There are also many pockets of iPad use tucked away in classrooms all across the Missoula districts. And there are plenty of iPads floating around in the rarified air of administration.
In answer to the question about high school use, there are some powerful advantages to using the iPads with Vernier probeware (the LabQuest2’s Connected Science System is pretty amazing!); and Pasco’s AirLink provides a physical data stream via BT up to 10m from the sensor. And don’t forget Vernier’s Video Physics where you can capture video, plot motion in the movie, and then view graphs of the physical parameters from the video. It’s like a combination physics lab/TV station. In fact, with iMovie, you can easily shoot, edit, render, and upload a movie completely on an iPad. Works slick, but no green screen yet. This latter use really drives home the potential of the camera upgrade in the iPad3.
Xplane9 is a fairly substantial flight simulator for aeronautics, and the foreign language apps are surprisingly useful for teaching and learning.
For projection and screen mirroring, Doceri can create some tremendous options with its whiteboard-to-movie-to-YouTube pathway, especially when timestamps are included for navigation Splashtop and Splashtop Whiteboard make any computer/projector system run from an iPad detethering the presenter from the podium. LogMeIn works great, and Google Docs, although limited compared to PC operation, still has great potential.
Google Earth is fabulous, and you can run kmz and kml files easily with 90% -100% (my opinion) functionality. Here are some great starter kmz sites:
(one if his best , I think: http://earth.tryse.net/
http://www.googlelittrips.org/ (great for literature/Comm arts/Humanities across the curriculum)
And you can supplement GEarth content with:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/
The mention about special needs/assistive tech is an important one. While some of the killer apps for AT like Proloquo2Go are a little pricy ( http://itunes.apple.com/us/
And for those of us who have been working in instructional tech for decades, there is the perennial Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything (iPad):
I could go on, but you get the point. iPads are not a conventional computing device. While many people stereotype them, and vocalize their disappointments with the iPad when it does not play by the same old rules of IT, I consider that just normal and unfortunate growing pains for education. But given that many businesses (including almost every Fortune 500 Companies (>94% at last count) are using or actively testing iPads), medicine, commercial aviation, research laboratories, the military, higher education, industries around the world, and clinical placements and data collection across almost all fields, avoiding iPad use in education, whether by design or defect, in my opinion, is nothing shy of proudly planting a flag in mediocrity.
Teachers can be just as lost as anyone else about the use of an iPad. The usual steps educators and tech folks take as they approach, climb, and overcome the implementation hump of any new or disruptive technology are 1) use it to do what we can already do (think comfort food), 2) supplement what we can already do, but begin to push the boundaries (think mobile presentations, utility app use), and 3) to go boldly where it was impossible to go before. I believe it is the job of enlightened IT folks to speed the process and encourage the leaders empowering them to focus on the good in education and not to punish them or make fun of them for taking risks.
Teachers need visionary tech leaders. The iPad is a transformational technology and defies many conventional measures used to address the efficacy of technology in schools. While a poorly supported integration effort can die a painful and embarrassing death, the likely cause is not the device, but rather one of imagination, wisdom, and judgment. Cheap netbooks sucked (in my opinion) and thusly were not going to get better in educational settings. iPads don’t suck, so they should not begin to suck when placed in schools. Simple enough.
My take is if IT cannot imagine what it would do differently with unlimited funds, a thousand new iPads, or bottomless bandwidth, then its time for a upgrade.
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