It doesn’t seem to matter whether I’m searching the internet for technology integration in the classroom or attending conferences, I keep running across a recurring theme: It’s not about the technology, it’s about pedagogy. It’s not about the iPad apps, it’s about the application of a new way of teaching. It’s not about teaching with technology, it’s about turning lectures into learning through problem solving. It’s about using technology for exploration, stimulation, collaboration, and presentation. Some of our teachers still use their interactive white boards like electric chalkboards, without changing their teaching methods. Let’s make sure that we get started on the right foot with the iPads.
Consider this (sorry, I've lost the source for this article)….
ZIS, a school in Switzerland, has distributed 600 iPads—one to every student in first through eighth grades, plus a set for teachers in preschool and kindergarten to use with children in small groups.
The school has an unconventional take on the iPad’s purpose. The devices are not really valued as portable screens or mobile gaming devices. Teachers I talked to seemed uninterested, almost dismissive, of animations and gamelike apps. Instead, the tablets were intended to be used as video cameras, audio recorders, and multimedia notebooks of individual students’ creations. The teachers cared most about how the devices could capture moments that told stories about their students’ experiences in school. Instead of focusing on what was coming out of the iPad, they were focused on what was going into it.
One morning I watched first-graders taking assessments of what they understood about “systems.” No pen-and-paper test was in sight. Instead, the teacher asked her students to come up with an example of a system and record a video of themselves explaining why their choice did, in fact, represent a system. A girl with a blond braid had drawn pictures of how people check out library books. With some technical guidance from the aide sitting next to her, and using an app called Explain Everything, she started arranging the pictures in a digital flow chart, adding arrows between her drawings of the book shelves, the checkout counter, the book at home, and the book being returned to the library. A few minutes later, she sat in a quiet corner by herself, pressed the record button, and explained each picture out loud. “My system is good,” she said at the end, “because if you don’t do something in my system, it will break down.”
In this case it’s not about learning a document, it’s about documenting learning!
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