Mobile Learning with iPads

Mary Ray, Mike Shedrock, Mike Harber

As you can see from the photo above, instructional and technical services combine in the East Central ISD Technology Department to problem-solve a question related to the upcoming M-Learning initiative. The question? When you have 20-30 iPads in a classroom, how do you print from one? The solution is out there, and customizing it for the EC network is key!

Here's a little more on the The M-Learning initiative, which has it's own wiki (accessible only if you are logged in as an ECISD staff member):

Provide students with engaged learning opportunities that not only transform delivery, assessment and differentiate the delivery of instruction, but change how students and staff create, collaborate, communicate, as well as develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills in a globally connected environment. Students and staff must develop new literacies--skills, strategies, and dispositions--that enable them to engage in the 4Cs--Creating, Collaborating, and Communicating as they hone Critical thinking and problem solving skills (Source: http://p21.org/overview). 

Need
Students need increased differentiation to engage them, and educators need to be able to assess that differentiation in efficient and robust ways. New technologies and increased connectivity, the twin requirements for trans-global communication and collaboration make old technologies increasingly obsolete. Essentially, education leaders (e.g. teachers and administrators)  and students must employ technology in such a way as to redefine how they approach teaching, learning and leadership. This means a radical departure from what we’ve done as educators and students in the past, shedding preconceived notions of what a classroom looks like, feels like, and how it operates.
In fact, it is not enough to be able to evaluate web sites, synthesize information, but important that students and staff be able to create and craft compelling narratives—digital stories—that encompass, as George Lucas shares, the “language of images and sound.” Text is no longer enough, and new literacies require a level of fluency that teachers today have not yet grasped systemically in K-16 education.

What Success Looks LikeSuccess in this endeavor is defined in the following ways: 

In the Classroom:

• Classroom usage of iPads will reflect student creation of content, rather than content-consumption of instruction. For example, instead of watching math videos, students create them.
• Students and staff create interactive videos of projects and  mini-lessons to increase differentiation and easily make them public online.
• Students and staff  create and use online student surveys and audio/visual apps to voice their emotions, curiosities, and academic goals.
• Students and staff employee district-hosted and cloud-based storage solutions, as well as websites such as Google Docs and Edmodo to create a faster feedback loop. Since these sites (e.g. GoogleDocs, Edmodo) utilize color coding, instantaneous feedback, and automatic student grouping, they facilitate data analysis.
• Students and staff will develop multi-media presentations to communicate concepts and theories.
• Students will increase research and global connections as they access information portals and network with other students in other places around the world to research curricular topics.
• Students and staff will be able to use online texts enabling them to annotate and highlight materials for their personal reflection as well as writing research.
• Students and staff will be able to share writing from rough draft to finish copy in a highly efficient way.
• Students and staff will share presentations and respond in real time to presentations given by the teacher and other students.
• Students and staff will interface data collection probes to collect experimental data in the laboratory setting.
• Students and staff will collect, organize, analyze, and report experimental data, results, and conclusions in an efficient and professional manner.
• Students and staff will participate in, as well as design, online quizzes and exams to test knowledge and evaluate understanding.

In the School Leaders’ Offices

• Campus principals, assistant principals, academic deans, administrative assistants, and NCLB facilitators will implement online assessment tools that provide anytime, anywhere access to data for analysis.
• Evaluate student and staff performance in the use of technologies that facilitate achievement of the 4Cs (e.g.
http://www.lengel.net/ipad/)
• Enhance productivity in the use of online resources.