Monday, August 27, 2018

Make Learning So Motivating & Fun, Students Won't Realize it is Homework!

   
A few months ago Apple released the iPad commercial above showing students completing a homework assignment on iPads. In the background of the video, the narrator recites a fun Jack Prelutsky poem originally entitled, "Homework! Oh, Homework!" If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look and does a nice job highlighting some of the many ways that an iPad is a great tool for learning beyond the traditional mediums of textbook and keyboards.

The beginning of the video starts with a Hollywood stereotypical classroom teacher unable to control his class of disinterested and sleeping students. He barely has their attention while trying to explain an upcoming project about gravity. After naming off a few students tasked to work in a group he is naturally interrupted by the bell. What then follows is anything but a stereotypical assignment--the rest of the video shows students' experiences as they go about their neighborhood filming and documenting the many ways they experience gravity, from dropping a watermelons off a bridge to bike jumps to swinging from trees. They use their iPad to edit, annotate, and illustrate their learning in many of the ways our students have been able to use their iPads over the past eight years of our 1:1 iPad program. (See related posts below.)

Over the past week our instructional technology coaches showed this video to teachers who were attending our summer training classes, either in person or online. They discussed ways that the iPad can continue to support our Framework for Teaching and Learning by using technology to foster creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and make learning more authentic and real-world for deeper learning. 

This year, our district has goal to increase the experiential and inquiry based learning opportunities for our students. We hope to create more opportunities like the one shown in this video where all students can be immersed in memorable events and experiences. Technology can enhance and facilitate these experiences, and the iPad is an excellent tool to harness the power of technology for experiential and inquiry based learning.

 Related Posts:
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)