Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Literacy with iPads
I keep hearing more and more about ipads in the classroom and I haven't quite decided how I feel about them. The article brought up many good points about the uses and advantages of using ipads. Some of the advantages for teaching literacy with ipads include typing or writing on top of printed text or backgrounds, recording audio for responses, adding pictures from the photo library, inserting symbols and stamps, graphically organizing responses in many ways, and capturing videos or photos on the spot for responses. I agree that these are all great tools. They are accessible and useful for many students and could be used to support students with a variety of needs. When I think of ipads from this perspective, I think they are great. However, I want to ensure that our students are receiving a balanced education. When they are not in school, or if they go to a school with different resources, not every student will have an ipad to work on. They will need to develop their skills using other tools and resources that are available. I do not think we should teach our students to expect ipads or other devices to always be there. They need to know how to do things when technology is not around. I do think ipads are great tools. We should use them to reach out to students and allow them to express themselves in a variety of ways. I also think we need to educate our students without constant available technology.
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Justine,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that there needs to be a balance between the usage of iPads in the classroom. I think the iPad can be a great assistive technology tool for students who really need the extra support. However, I do not think that content or lessons should surround the use of an iPad. Like you said, there are many students who don't come from a household where they have Apple products. We don't want students to go home to their parents asking them to start buying iPads because they need it for school. We need to make sure that our students rely on technology to learn. We wouldn't want our students to only read when they can only do it on an iPad.
I really appreciated your point about making sure that the same resources should be available to all students and that a student shouldn't just expect that they'll always be able to have such luxurious technologies at their disposal at all times. Maybe the money spent on iPads for schools with more funding and resources should be reallocated to first help lower-income schools that need help catching up.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we should make sure that students do not rely on Ipads too much. It's a good point that we should teach students to use other resourced and let them know that they may not always have technology available to them. I agree that a good use of ipads is using them to express themselves in many ways.
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