Technology in Education: Student Engagement Through iPods

I like speaking with individuals of a sure age who’ve by no means taught in a classroom. The dialog usually begins with a line one thing like this: “You educate highschool? I do not know the way you do it!” As soon as that truth has been established, my dialog mate usually meanders via all the ills which have befallen our public faculties prior to now decade, me murmuring my very own opinions about my occupation occasionally (that are usually countered with a “Nicely, again in my day… ” dismissal). We come to an finish of our chat with my new acquaintance sighing after which summing up the huge issues of adolescents right now by saying one thing alongside the strains of “Youngsters simply aren’t the identical as of late.”

Whereas I smile politely via a lot of the dialog, secretly (or not so secretly) disagreeing with many statements, I do are likely to agree with that ultimate assertion: youngsters simply AREN’T the identical as of late. It’s nearly dizzying to consider how a lot our world has modified in simply the previous decade (use the scale of a mobile phone as a measuring stick if essential). How might we anticipate our youths to remain the identical? Theirs is a world of texting, tweeting, Googling, and Facebooking, and none of these items had been widespread data (a lot much less widespread verbs!) after I was in highschool, despite the fact that that was solely a brief ten years in the past. As an alternative of bemoaning that the scholars of right now aren’t responding to the usual technique of delivering instruction, we should always meet them on their very own enjoying area, integrating know-how into our on a regular basis apply. With this thought in thoughts, I structured my classroom round using iPods, and I shortly discovered that devoted educators have the chance of harnessing a lot academic potential via one tiny machine.

I grew to become the shepardess of thirty iPod Touches as a form of fluke; I used to be a younger English trainer, and my faculty district had simply obtained a grant to position these units in English, Math, and Science lessons that had been getting ready for our state’s standardized exams. The cart resembled R2-D2 from Star Wars, and it had a slot for every numbered iPod that got here full with a twine that related it to the cart itself; this allowed for mass charging and syncing of the iPods. Contained in the cart, I discovered that I used to be additionally furnished with a Macbook, a digital presenter, and a wi-fi hotspot.

As an alternative of the thrill I am certain I used to be meant to really feel (oh the entitlement of being one of many first lecturers within the district to be a part of this new wave in training!), I used to be utterly freaked out. Nothing in my restricted instructing expertise to date, to not point out my training programs in faculty, had ready me for managing or utilizing iPods with my college students. What within the heck was I alleged to do with these items? Weren’t they only for listening to music and enjoying the occasional sport? What was I alleged to do if a pupil walked out with one? For that matter, what was stopping them from coming in after hours and wheeling out all the cart? I used to be besieged by ideas of mass academic failure, adopted by the inevitable termination of my instructing place, and I counted myself as very unfortunate certainly to be chosen for such an “honor.”

I ultimately overcame my terror and created a system the place every pupil was assigned an iPod by his or her seat within the classroom. College students and oldsters signed a waiver originally of the college yr that had them acknowledge that they might be liable for half of the iPod’s price if theirs was to go lacking or turn into broken past regular put on and tear. Every desk was furnished with an iPod “parking house,” which was merely a laminated piece of paper that had the define of an iPod that included the iPod quantity assigned to that desk and the principles for utilizing the iPods; when the iPods weren’t in use, college students had been to show them face-down of their parking house. College students had been to choose up their assigned iPods from the cart when first getting into the classroom and return them throughout clean-up time, about three minutes previous to the bell ringing. As a result of I used to be instructing 5 separate sections of tenth and eleventh graders all through the day, this technique made administration of the units simple and likewise prevented college students from merely enjoying with their iPods when instruction was occurring.

My first foray into utilizing the iPods was very simplistic, however it will definitely grew into an efficient analysis undertaking. By merely utilizing the Safari utility, I had college students lookup numerous information about our subsequent creator and reply questions on a worksheet. This primary undertaking turned out to be a bit of too fundamental (and a bit of an excessive amount of like wanting up information in a textbook), so we added one other factor to our subsequent undertaking. Once we had been starting our unit on Zora Neale Hurston, I created a modified webquest by merely wanting up informative web sites and saving the hyperlinks to my PortaPortal web site. I then created a shortcut on the iPods to my PortaPortal web site. College students had been positioned into teams and assigned the job of making “Farcebook” profile pages that needed to embody posts, biographical info, and mates that may have been included if Zora Neale Hurston had had a social networking web site like Fb. Completely different variations of this undertaking grew to become an everyday occasion in my classroom as a result of my college students felt like they weren’t doing “actual analysis” due to the format of the ultimate product, and so they had been way more amenable to discovering the knowledge utilizing the iPods than they’d been when doing an analogous undertaking utilizing printed supplies.

After that preliminary success, I started to analyze extra specialised apps. I quickly discovered that some easy (and free!) video games from the App Retailer could possibly be used as fast and environment friendly bell ringers (or warm-ups). Proper earlier than our standardized exams, my remediation college students started utilizing Miss Spell’s Class for the primary 5 minutes of sophistication each different day to evaluate generally misspelled phrases. College students would document their scores on index playing cards that I might acquire for participation credit score on the finish of sophistication. We might additionally typically begin class with Chicktionary, a sport that requires letters to be rearranged to spell completely different phrases; I might ask college students to put in writing down one phrase from their sport that they weren’t aware of after which use their dictionary app to search out the definition. Relying on the period of time we had at school, I might prolong this exercise in order that college students had to make use of that phrase in a sentence or quiz a accomplice on the that means of the phrase. We additionally made use of the Grammar Up app as a means of reviewing ideas previous to an evaluation.

For my extra superior college students, I began a category weblog that allowed us to create “silent discussions” the place college students might use their iPods to answer dialogue questions. I might put up a query on the positioning earlier than class started, and college students would reply at school by commenting on the put up after which responding to posts from their classmates. I molded this exercise in a number of other ways, together with having college students use sure sentence constructions of their feedback (i.e. it’s essential to use a compound sentence in your put up) and likewise having them put up their very own questions for the category to “silently” talk about. This exercise grew to become a favourite of my college students as a result of it allowed the quiet college students (who would not communicate in any respect in common discussions however typically had great concepts) to specific themselves, and it was additionally enjoyable to see simply how lengthy a category of twenty-five tenth graders might sit in a room collectively and be verbally silent whereas they had been interacting with one another on their units.

I additionally utilized the iPods as a straightforward strategy to differentiate instruction. My eleventh grade remediation class had college students with who obtained particular training help in addition to college students who had been simply shy of reducing it within the common degree course. Due to this big selection of means ranges, it was typically troublesome to cope with conduct administration, as college students would both be bored as a result of instruction was too gradual for them or start appearing out as a masks for not greedy the ideas as shortly because the others. By placing an audio copy of the books that we had been studying at school on every iPod and creating studying guides that highlighted ideas that we had mentioned as a category, college students might work at their very own tempo whereas I circulated all through the room and offered help to people. The studying guides ultimately changed into an Easter egg hunt of kinds, with questions resembling “After studying Chapter 2, look again at web page 5 and duplicate the instance of personification used there.”

Along with the strategies I described intimately above, I applied the iPods in a myriad different methods. Google Docs helped me to create easy a number of alternative (and even brief reply) assessments that could possibly be accomplished on the iPods; these gave me an immediate image of how college students had been doing with ideas that we had been discussing at school. iBooks’ PDF function allowed me to add copies of my PowerPoint shows so college students who had been absent might are available and duplicate notes shortly. The pre-loaded digicam app allowed my college students to take photos and movies of group initiatives. The QR Code reader allowed me to create scavenger hunts the place college students would scan the codes, be despatched to websites or movies, and reply questions for a undertaking. The very best half was, I used to be solely on the tip of the iceberg; I am unable to even start to think about what these units might do in different disciplines and grade ranges.

Now, with all this stated, I’m not saying that the iPod Contact is the ultimate phrase in pupil engagement; in actual fact, by the point that this text is learn, this piece of know-how could also be utterly outdated. iPads, Android units, and different units have simply as a lot potential; I’ve simply spoken from my work with the know-how that was made obtainable to me. The purpose that must be drawn from my expertise is that as educators, we should even be innovators; we won’t stick with the identical classroom methods and anticipate that engagement will come naturally. The classroom should morph and alter with the remainder of the world.

If a reader is searching for a spot to start out with know-how within the classroom, I hope that this text has offered some helpful ideas in addition to a bit of inspiration. Nonetheless, I’m additionally hopeful that this text turns into outdated shortly as lecturers proceed to develop recent approaches. Utilizing the media that college students are already snug with to interact these younger minds within the essential work of the classroom simply is sensible.