Reflection #7: (Podcast) 21st Century Learning

21st Century Learning #148 1:1 iPads with Peter Smith

Peter Smith is the head of a Pre-k through 12th grade school. The school went from ancient technology to a 1:1 ratio of iPads per student. This is amazing to me and I was very curious as to how they managed it.
Luckily so were the hosts of the podcast. Peter told us about his school's discovery model approach. Rather than hand the iPads to the teachers a month in advance and say, "here, know everything there is to know about this by the time school starts," they gave them to the staff and the students and told them they were going to go about this together. They also brought in the parents for training sessions on how to use the device before they did the same with the children. They developed an entire learning community. I think that is so cool! Every student in the school had one but the Pre-k through 3rd grade students used them only in the classroom while the 4th and older grades checked them out at the beginning of the year and got to take them from school to home and back. The older students use them as daily organizers, to organize notes and they have email accounts in which the email some assignments to their teachers and receive them back with comments and grades that very same day. They also are used to individualize the curriculum based on each students needs. If a student is struggling with a certain concept, they will download apps to help them work on or understand that concept. All this is being done only 6 months into having iPads in the classrooms. The teachers also were supportive and cooperative in the change and i think that all has to do with the way the administration went about introducing this technology. As a learning community figuring it out rather than forcing them to do it alone. I not only would love to work in a school with this kind of technology integration but also this kind of administration and learning community! Props to Peter Smith!