C4T #1

Post #1
Daniel Edwards is the Director of Digital Strategy at the Stephen Perse Foundation schools in Cambridge, UK. In his recent blog post The Impact of New Technology In Schools - Results are In! he discusses the impact of the recent technological changes in his school. For two years an A level classroom of 15 students has been using iPads. These same students produced the best grades Edwards has seen in ten years of teaching at the school. Was this a direct cause of iPad use in the classroom? Well, we are still unsure but he does mention he believes they have enhanced learning. There could be many reasons for the increase he has seen in grades.
Beside the fact that this A level class recorded higher results, the entire school also received record breaking General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) results. This goes to show that technology has not had a negative impact on the students. What can Edwards draw from this information? Engagement with learning is crucial and I could not agree more. New technology has enabled his students to better engage with the materials and context. In a short video you can see how collaboration and communication skills are being practiced with technology in these classrooms. Although we are still unsure of the impact of technology on the rest of the world, we know Daniel Edwards feels like a better educator because of it.

After reading this post I could not help but wonder how the iPad's are being used in the classroom. My main concern was how are students being assessed? This is the comment I left for Mr. Edwards:
Greetings Daniel, I am a Junior studying Early Childhood Education at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, AL, USA. I am currently enrolled in EDM310 (Micro-computing Systems in Education) with Professor Dr. Strange who has kindly assigned me to discuss your blog this week. First, I want to say congratulations on the results you have received as that is quite an accomplishment for a teacher! You should be very proud. In our neighboring county, Baldwin County, this is the first school year where we have seen every student provided with a Macbook to further their studies. It is challenging to engage all students through lecture so perhaps in two years we will see better engagement from our students in the classroom as well as you have. I am curious though, when you are teaching students with iPads (especially PE), how do you assess them? Is this done via web or manually? Hope to hear from you soon! Please feel free to follow me on my Class Blog or Twitter. Thanks!


Post #2

Edwards' posts The iPad Toolkit for Learning diagram in his latest post. This is basically a guide for new and experienced educators who use technology in the classroom. He believes that 15 apps or less can act as a starting point for learning. The great thing about this diagram is that you can edit it to customize your teaching or learning needs. Some apps may be noticed more than once on the diagram to validate their importance in education. There are benefits to using all of the apps suggested. I would recommend reading Edwards' full blog post. (Link above)
This post got my brain wondering how I could incorporate these apps into my classroom. In fact, this is the comment I left for Daniel.
"Do you have any suggestions on how to incorporate these apps into a lesson plan?"