We’ve bought an iPad to try out and see how useful it would be to have a class or half class set of them. I’ve been keen on trying the iPod touch in the classroom for a while but we’ve held off for the iPad mainly because of the size and therefore usability for typing and general easier access for children. Here are some of the ways I think it could be used.
Safari
The included browser, Safari is great for browsing and children will use it’s features such as zooming and saving pictures naturally. The lack of flash is a minor issue, but there is still so much potential for children researching and exploring online. The speed is good and this seems like a good time to point out the benefits of the reliability of iPod / iPad apps, and the devices wi-fi. Crashes are very rare in my experience of iPod touch and iPhone, and the iPad is proving equally reliable. When you are planning on having 30 devices in the room, this is a big factor!
E-mail
It’s another of the basics, but the email app is clean and efficient, and could be a good way of sharing a document or image with a group of children. I would set up one class email address and one individual machine address on each iPad. With third party office apps installed, documents that require editing could be opened with them.
Twitterific
Twitter is a great tool for quick, easy publishing of short ideas, reviews, thoughts etc online. Combined with a Twitter widget on your website, it means that videos, pictures and text can be easily added to your site, keeping pages up to date and relevant. Children could post a summary of what they have learnt today, or a book review. It isn’t necessary or important that people follow the account, as the tweets are displayed on the widget on the school website. Class, year group and whole school accounts can be created.
DropBox
A class DropBox account would be a great way to share files across all iPads. Files are uploaded from any machine, and once the app has been installed on all iPads and they have been signed into the class account, all machines will have access to the files. They can be organized in folders, and again, office files can be opened in Documents to Go or other ‘Office’ type apps. This could be a way of sharing template documents which children can then open, edit and email back to the teacher.
Documents to Go
Documents to Go is a mobile Office app, which enables creation and editing of doc, xls and ppt files. Linking to DropBox and Google Docs is possible, so that any documents stored using these services can be accessed and edited. In the classroom, this means that the teacher can prepare and save a document for the class to access and work on. Children can also create documents themselves, although I prefer ‘Pages’ for word processing. Numbers and Keynote for iPad are yet to be explored!
Reel Director
Wow. This is a stunning app. Even more flexible than iMovie for iPhone 4, this app will enable the creation of movie projects using pictures and movies saved in the Photos app. Music can be uploaded to the iPad from a PC or Mac using the built in http server and used as a backing track. Voice over for the movie can be recorded directly within the app. Transitions and Ken Burns effects are available, as well as fading options for audio. Classy looking titles can be added to any image or video clip. Video projects can then be exported and emailed or uploaded directly to YouTube. The possibilities for using this across the curriculum are endless – here I was thinking how a rivers topic could make use of screen captures using Google Earth, a narrated journey, following a river from source to mouth.
Strip Designer
This app enables the creation of comic strip style pages, using images saved in the Photos app. There are lots of templates to chose from, and once inserted, the images can be zoomed and rotated as required.
Callouts can be added and manipulated, meaning children can create high quality comic strip images. This could be a great tool for vocabulary and sentence level work in literacy, and for exploring and empathising with characters in other subjects.
Art Studio
There are lots of Art apps around, but Art Studio seems like a nice balance between functionality and usability. Certainly a program primary aged children could use to create digital art, with simple tools but lots of possibility for deeper customisation of tools.
Art apps are a great way of exploring tone and shade, as well as experimenting with blending. Could be used in combination with Reel Director or Strip Design.
Photo FX Ultra
Lots of high quality photo effects and filters, cropping and rotating of images. Good for any pictures grabbed or saved from the web that need some editing, or for creating a particular effect (sepia for a WW2 movie) from photos imported from Web Albums.
Pages
Pages is the word processing app available for the iPad. It is a fantastic app, a simplified word processor with limitations but for classroom use it is great. Typing on the iPad keyboard is surprisingly fast and responsive, especially easy in landscape mode. Basic formatting is available, but the most impressive tool is the image inserting – a choice of photos, tables charts and shapes, all of which can be manipulated freely and easily using multi-touch. This app is ideal for quick instinctive document creation in the classroom, with good default text wrapping, and the option to insert text boxes for free text positioning.
Web Albums
Syncing pictures to every iPad would be a clumsy way of giving children a set of shared images to use for a lesson. An online gallery is much more efficient, and Picasa albums is my personal favourite (partly because of the obvious integration with the free Picasa software). Once signed in to a shared Picasa web albums account, this app enables the teacher to share a group of pictures with the class for use in a project. It’s also presented very nicely, in an informal photo album style.
WordPress
The WordPress app gives a clean, simple method off publishing to a class or school WordPress or Primary Blogger account. A class blog is a great way for children to publish writing online, giving an audience for their work, and with a set of iPads, the class could be simultaneously publishing their own reports, stories, recounts, explanations, book reviews, etc to the class blog.
Music Studio
If you are at all familiar with Garage Band on Mac, or probably any basic multitrack music composition software, this is an unbelievably powerful app for £8! Recording up to 16 separate software tracks, with a variety of instruments to choose from is the start – then for the gifted and talented, there are effects, panning, quantising – features you would generally associated with desktop software. When done you can export to wav and transfer to a desktop, or transfer the midi file for further editing. At its most basic this would provide a way for younger children to experiment with very simple two track recording of a simple melody, but will also cater for up to full 16 track composition. Compose a ringtone? A soundtrack for a short animation? An advert jingle?
FourTrack
If you’d Ike your children to experiment with recording real instruments, voices, or create soundscapes, then FourTrack (which is actually an iPhone app so has to be enlarged on iPad) is great. As the title suggests it is a four track recorder, using the iPad’s microphone as an input. The mic is actually pretty good quality, so pleasing results can be achieved. Perhaps recording a drum rhythm on track one, then add a drone and an improvised melody. Or perhaps recording the sound of a playground on one track, to be overlaid with poetry? Lots of potential.
TweetMic
This is another iPhone app at present, so you’ll want to use the x2 magnification on iPad. It’s just a very easy way for children to publish audio recordings online using a Twitter account, and perhaps a widget on the school website. It really is as simple as pressing the big red button, recording your poem, review, speech, short story, advert etc and clicking on publish. That’s it.
Books
Text looks good in the books app, and it is so easy to use. Pages turn very nicely and it’s very straightforward to change text size go to a particular page, search for words even highlight text and add notes. PDF files can also be added to your bookshelf and read in the Books app. This app would be great in guided reading sessions, children being able to highlight appropriate passages and add their thoughts and notes. Also could be a great way to increase the a tock of books, as one purchased book can be synced with all iPads. Not lots of choice at the moment, but hopefully that will increase quickly.
Marvel Comics
More motivational reading for children who have become apathetic towards reading for pleasure. The sample comics I have looked at have some pretty good (all be it short) sections of text, accompanied by brilliant artwork which might engage children with reading in a new way. I haven’t experimented with purchasing comics and downloading them on multiple devices yet – hopefully this will be possible. This app links well with Strip Design – children can see how the professional do it before they embark on a new comic stir project.
Interactive Books
There are a number available at the moment and I’m sure that will increase as these are a great way to enthuse and engage younger readers. This Toy Story book has painting, games, songs and a record function so children can record themselves telling the story for their friends to listen to. Again, beautifully presented and animated, as you’d expect from Disney!
ABC Phonics
There are a lot of ‘educational’ apps available on the app store, some better than others. I’ve just picked a couple here which I think have some value. This app speaks letter sounds clearly, with correct UK English phonic pronunciation. It shows letters being formed, and then the child has to trace the letter shape accurately. A simple app, but clean and effective in achieving its objective.
MathBoard
A good old fashioned blackboard with calculations! For practicing written methods, this is great. You can set the type of calculation you want to do, how many calculations and if you want a time limit, or timing. The calculation is displayed with 4 multiple choice answers. The child can write the calculation down then expand the area for working out, giving them a whole page to carry out the calculation. In some ways no different from carrying out calculations in a book, but I know how I’d rather do a set of practice calculations, and the children seem to find this much more appealing and motivating.
