6 Core Benefits of Competency Based Education

By Katie Lepi on January 27, 2014

From flipped classrooms, to 1:1 programs, MOOCs and project based learning, there are a lot of educational trends to keep up on. Realistically, keeping up on more than a few of the things you read about can become a full-time job, and can start to feel overwhelming. So with the aim of helping to simplify things for quick and easy understanding, voila- the handy infographic below. Mia MacMeekin has put together a quick and easy guide to some of the benefits of competency based education (aka competency based learning). Think of it as a simple, handy guide to this great teaching and learning concept. Tomorrow, we’ll share Mia’s step by step guide to implementing competency based education in your own classrooms, but for now, keep reading to learn more. 

Benefits of Competency Based Education

• Competency based education’s goal is to demonstrate a set of skills and knowledge in a select field through authentic assessments. It allows the student to learn what they need to learn in the way they learn best.
• With competency based education, students must demonstrate proficiency in many areas in order to graduate the program with a degree, certificate, or distinction.
• Some students may come to the program already able to demonstrate certain proficiencies, so students can easily enter the program at different points.
• Each student learns at their own pace.
• Each competency has rich content to choose from to meet the needs of each student.
• Learning can be quite individualized while still teaching a larger group of students.

Katie was a teacher, graduate student, and is now the lady who makes sure Edudemic is as useful as possible. She oversees the editorial process and is basically a Swiss Army Knife of solutions.

Source: http://www.edudemic.com/competency-based-education/

Survey Reveals Parents Concerned About Student Data Privacy

By Karla Scoon Reid

Cross-posted from Digital Education

Nine of ten American voters are worried about advertisers using personal data to market to children, and an overwhelming bipartisan consensus has emerged in support of proposals geared towards safeguarding children's personal information.

That's according to Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit seeking to institutionalize such privacy protections before the digital devices, software, and apps now flooding schools become completely ubiquitous.

On Wednesday, the group released new findings from a survey of 800 registered voters, which included 227 parents.

"American families feel by incredible margins that students' personal and private information should not be for sale, period," Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer told Education Week's Benjamin Herold earlier this week.

The survey found that a huge knowledge gap exist about what is currently taking place with children's data. Many respondents, including most parents, reported knowing little or nothing about the information that schools now collect about students, the increasingly common practice of districts contracting with private companies to store that information in the cloud, and the lack of restrictions on what those companies can do with children's data. Almost six in 10 parents were almost completely unaware of this practice, according to the survey.

"It's the Wild West out there, with a grab-bag of [privacy-related] proposals" that vary from state to state and district to district, Steyer said.

The new findings are the result of telephone interviews with 800 registered voters conducted Jan. 6 - 9 by pollsters from the Benenson Strategy Group. The results contain a 3.5 percentage-point margin of error for all respondents, and a 9.5-point margin of error for parents alone.

Student data privacy has become a hot-button issue in recent months and is raising the alarm of some parents. This week, Education Week took an in-depth look at what has some parents and privacy advocates so concerned, including the potential for identity theft, nuisance advertising, wrongful profiling of students, and even physical harm. Common Sense Media is spearheading an initiative to get leading ed-tech companies to agree to broad principles related to protecting children's data, and Steyer said his group is playing an active role in trying to help shape the related legislation that has started popping up in statehouses around the country, as well as in Congress.

In its new survey, Common Sense Media found broad support for action across the country's bitter partisan divide: 91 percent of respondents support stronger parental-consent requirements related to the sharing of sensitive student data, and 89 percent supported tighter security standards for cloud storage, with no meaningful differences between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.

Steyer said it's important to leverage that consensus in order to prevent the establishment of troubling norms in which children's sensitive information is automatically shared or sold for non-educational uses unless parents decide to opt out.

"That's how the consumer world works, because those rules were written by the tech industry," he said. "We should be automatically safeguarding student information unless parents want to give it up."

Not everyone agrees with the increasingly loud alarm bells being rung over student data privacy, or the proposed fixes. The Software and Information Industry Association, for example, has maintained that current federal laws contain strong restrictions and that businesses are committed to their responsibilities to student privacy.

Next month, Common Sense Media will host a forum on the issue at which U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is expected to speak, said Steyer.

"The good news is that we believe we have the chance to get this right," he said.

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Parents Say Children Use Educational Media Less Frequently As They Age

By Karla Scoon Reid on JanuaryChildren's screen time today has evolved from watching Elmo from "Sesame Street" sing the alphabet on TV to fighting Creepers in the popular videogame Minecraft on their iPads.

So it's understandable that a new national survey released Friday found that most parents believe that the amount of creative and quality educational media on mobile devices is lacking, especially when it comes to older children.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center survey of more than 1,500 parents of children ages 2 to 10 found that more than half of parents believe that their children have learned "a lot" from educational media.

But parents' perceptions of the educational value of media—both television and mobile devices—drops significantly for older children, who naturally spend more time in front of the screen than the youngest children.

The study, "Learning at Home: Families' Educational Media Use in America," found that the proportion of screen time devoted to educational content is:

• 78 percent for 2- to 4-year-olds
• 39 percent among 5- to 7-year-olds
• 27 percent among 8- to 10-year-olds

 "As we work to raise education standards and improve students' success, we must provide higher-quality media options—especially on mobile—that will help engage and educate today's older children," Michael H. Levine, executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, said in a press release Friday. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is a New York City-based nonprofit research lab founded by the Sesame Workshop which produces "Sesame Street."

GfK conducted the study with a nationally representative group of 1,577 parents of children ages 2-10, including large over-samples of black (290) and Hispanic or Latino (682) parents.

More than a third of the parents surveyed said their children use educational media daily with 80 percent of children using it weekly. Most parents say educational media prompts their children to further explore learning, with 78 percent of those children engaging in imaginative play and 61 percent wanting to create projects based on something they've learned from their time on the screen.

While more parents surveyed say that their children have learned a lot about reading (37 percent) and math (28 percent) from educational media, only 19 percent say the same about science.

Despite the heavy barrage of mobile devices being marketed to children, it appears Big Bird has little to fear as television continues to be the most popular medium for learning among children. According to the study, parents say their children are spending an average of 42 minutes each day with educational TV compared to just five minutes with educational content on mobile devices and computers and only three minutes with educational video games.

So is it too late to pry our older children (ages 8-10) away from Minecraft and Super Mario in favor of games and apps that contain an element of learning?

Apparently not, since the power to tune in continues to remain in the hands of parents. The survey found that while most parents had access to e-platforms for books only a third used them with their children because they still preferred printed books. Children are spending five minutes reading on e-platforms compared to 29 minutes in print. (I concur. Call me old-fashioned, but my house is overrun with children's books even though Santa granted my sons' wish for an iPad mini this year.)

The study may serve as a wake-up call for parents like me who have found it increasingly convenient to park our kids in front of a mobile device. The dearth of high-quality, engaging educational media for our older children on mobile platforms might give parents pause about the amount of time we permit our children to be glued to the screen. 

"Right now, mobile media are not living up to their potential as a source of learning for kids, at least according to parents' reports," said Vicky Rideout, the president of VJR Consulting and the study's author.

In a blog on the Joan Ganz Cooney Center site, Levine noted that Common Sense Media has an educational-rating system for parents and a new service aimed at educators called Graphite.  He also wrote that Google Play for Education is a site that helps identify the "good stuff" in educational media. Education Week's Michele Molnar wrote a story about the expanding field of ed-tech product-review sites last year.

Meanwhile, Rideout said in a video blog that the study has the potential to encourage a surge in the development of educational media geared toward mobile platforms for children who have already mastered their ABCs. 

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Nelson Mandela On Education: Robben Island Distance Learning

“After we had been sent to Robben Island, there was concern among our supporters that we would not be permitted to study. Within a few months of our arrival, the authorities announced that those who wanted to study could apply for permission. Most of the men did so and even though they were D Group prisoners, permission was granted. The state, after the Rivonia Trial, was feeling confident and thought giving us study privileges would be harmless. Later, they came to regret it. Postgraduate study was not permitted, but they made an exception in my case because I had established a precedent when I was in Pretoria.

Within months, virtually all of us were studying for one degree or another. At night, our cell block seemed more like a study hall than a prison. But the privilege of studying came with a host of conditions. Certain subjects, such as politics and military history, were prohibited. For years, we were not permitted to receive funds except from our families, so that poor prisoners rarely had money for books or tuition. This made the opportunity to study a function of how much money one had. Nor were we permitted to lend books to other prisoners, which would have enabled our poorer colleagues to study.

There was always controversy about whether or not we should accept study privileges. Some members of the Unity Movement at first felt that we were accepting a handout from the government, which compromised our integrity. They argued that studying should not be a conditional privilege but an unfettered right. While I agreed, I could not accept that we should therefore disavow studying. As freedom fighters and political prisoners, we had an obligation to improve and strengthen ourselves, and study was one of the few opportunities to do so.

Prisoners were permitted to enroll at either the University of South Africa (UNISA) or Rapid Results College, which was for those studying for their high school qualification. In my own case, studying under the auspices of the University of London was a mixed blessing. On the one hand I was assigned the sorts of stimulating books that would not have been on a South African reading list; on the other, the authorities inevitably regarded many of them as unsuitable and thus banned them.

Receiving books at all was often a challenge. You might make an application to a South African library for a book on contract law. They would process your request and then send you the book by post. But because of the vagaries of the mail system, the remoteness of the island, and the often deliberate slowness of the censors, the book would reach you after the date that it needed to be returned. If the date had passed, the warders would typically send the book back without even showing it to you. Given the nature of the system, you might receive a late fine without ever having received the book.

In addition to books, we were permitted to order publications necessary to our studies. The authorities were extremely strict about this, and the only kind of publication that would pass muster might be a quarterly on actuarial science for a prisoner studying accounting. But one day, Mac Maharaj told a comrade who was studying economics to request The Economist. We laughed and said we might as well ask for Time magazine, because The Economist was also a newsweekly. But Mac simply smiled and said the authorities wouldn’t know that; they judged a book by its title. Within a month, we were receiving The Economist and reading the news we hungered for. But the authorities soon discovered their mistake and ended the subscription.

Once most of the men began to study, we complained that we did not even have the minimum facilities necessary for studying, such as desks and chairs. I made this complaint to the International Red Cross. Finally, the complaint to the International Red Cross. Finally, the authorities built in each cell a kind of stand-up desk, a simple wooden board that jutted out from the wall at about chest-level.

This was not precisely what we had envisaged. After a tedious day at the quarry, one did not much feel like working at a stand-up desk. A number of us complained about the desks, and Kathy was the most vociferous. He informed the commanding officer that not only was it an imposition to have stand-up desks, but that they sloped so steeply that the books fell off. The commanding officer made a surprise visit to Kathy’s cell, asked for a book, and plunked it on his desk. It did not move. He asked Kathy for another and placed it on top of the first one; again, nothing happened. Finally, after placing four books on the desk, he turned to a sheepish Kathy and said, “Ag, there’s nothing wrong with these desks,” and walked out. But about six months later, the authorities relented and we were given three-legged wooden stools and the stand-up desks were lowered.”

(Taken from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom)

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Must-Have Facebook Guidelines For Educators

By Katie Lepi

There are probably hundreds of different ways to use Facebook in your classroom. We’ve written about a number of them, and we know that a lot of educators out there are using the tool for everything from classroom projects to keeping in touch with parents. But before you jump into using a social media tool that’s made for sharing, it is important to take a look at some considerations. Understanding things like social media privacy concerns and potential issues can help you ensure that you’re leading your students into an online safe space. Helping your studentsunderstand their digital footprint is a big one, too.

So what guidelines should you follow when you’re bringing Facebook into your classroom? We’ve set forth a few examples below. There will be obvious differences depending on whether you’re using the tool with an older or younger group, but the basics can remain the same.

Facebook Guidelines For Educators

Keep It Professional

This is your job, after all. If you already have a personal Facebook profile, it is better to keep everything personal and professional separate. This way, you don’t need to worry about what to share and if it is appropriate for sharing with your students or not. There will be no issues of allowing some students to be ‘friends’ and others not.

You can either choose to allow your students to be friends with your professional profile or not, but know that you don’t need to be friends with them to interact with them using Groups and Pages (whether you’ve created those groups and pages or not). Many teachers find it useful to use the ‘all or nothing’ approach to friending students, even if it is on a professional profile that doesn’t share much. We’d tend towards the ‘nothing’ part of that approach – because you really don’t need to know what your students are doing in their online life, either.

Make A Page

Making a page is one of the ways we mentioned above that you can interact with your students without needing to be friends with them. When you’re deciding if a page is appropriate for what you might want to use it for, remember that Pages are public – anyone can see them. You might use a page you’ve created to keep people (both students and parents) up to date on classroom and school events, showcase the students’ work and accomplishments, and share what would be considered ‘public’ information.

Create A Group

Creating a group, on the other hand, is the more private way to interact with your students (and you still don’t need to be friends with them to do so). Thus, this makes groups more appropriate for sharing classroom work, collaborating, sharing ideas, hosting discussions, posting class notes, scheduling reminders, and other items that are not as suitable (or necessary) for public sharing.

Make It Safe

While social media is generally a much ‘safer’ space when it is classroom centric (as opposed to the free for all that is the rest of the internet), you’ll still need to implement some rules. Give your students some guidelines for interacting: they can be basic (no mean commenting!) or they can be more in depth (requiring students to give constructive feedback, respond with supporting outside resources, encourage other students, etc).

Katie was a teacher, graduate student, and is now the lady who makes sure Edudemic is as useful as possible. She oversees the editorial process and is basically a Swiss Army Knife of solutions.

Source: http://www.edudemic.com/facebook-guidelines-for-educators/

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Teacher vs Student: How Each Actually Uses Social Media

By Katie Lepi on October 20, 2013

At some point in my life, a few years back, Facebook became much less….interesting to me. Much less cool, even. I thought it was me. I assumed I was getting old and that my friends, acquaintances, and I were just doing less interesting stuff. Or maybe just posting about more boring stuff?

It turns out I was right – at least according to the handy infographic below, which details how both teachers and students view some of the more popular social media platforms. Facebook is for old people (according to students) – so I wasn’t too far off. I’m old (apparently). And with just about the expected amount of no surprise, teachers and students see each platform quite differently. Teachers’ favorites are not student favorites, and vice versa. And those that are popular with both are not necessarily for the same reasons.

So is there one platform that ‘wins’ with both students and teachers? My guess is that it is probablyTwitter. Both teachers and students use it pretty actively, and it can easily be used in the classroom. Do you agree? What do you think is the most ‘all-around’ social media platform for both teachers and students (in and out of class)?

Student And Teacher Views On Social Media

Facebook

• Teacher: Love it! So fun to see pics and posts from my friends, family, even my coworkers!
• Student: Facebook? Isn’t that for old people?

Twitter

• Teacher: Awesome for connecting with other teachers. Love my Tuesday night #edchat!
• Student: Awesome for connecting with my friends. #FridayNightParty #ChelseasHouse #Don’tCareIfThisIsPublic

Instagram

• Teacher: Check out these supercute photos of my classroom!
• Student: Check out these supercute mirror selfies!

Google+

• Teacher: Have an account but don’t really use it.
• Student: Have an account but don’t really use it.

Pinterest

• Teacher: My source of inspiration for lesson planning, crafts, meal planning, and more!
• Student: A source of procrastination for grown-ups.

Snapchat

• Teacher: Snapchat? I think my students use that. #DontEvenWantToGoThere
• Student: My favorite social media app. #UntilTheGrownUpsArrive

Katie was a teacher, graduate student, and is now the lady who makes sure Edudemic is as useful as possible. She oversees the editorial process and is basically a Swiss Army Knife of solutions.

Source: http://www.edudemic.com/teacher-vs-student-social-media/

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How (And Why) Teachers Should Have Multiple Twitter Accounts

By Jeff Dunn on November 16, 2013

Connected educators are learning, sharing, and connecting on Twitter. No big earth-shattering news there. But what’s the proper way for a teacher to get started? We’ve answered that questionin our Teacher’s Guide here. There is, however, an interesting question that many must consider at some point in the time on Twitter:

How many accounts should I have as a connected educator?

Should I do it all from one account because that’d be easier? In other words, should I share photos of my classroom, tips and tricks with other teachers, interesting blog articles, and maybe even some school-wide announcements?

Or should I set up multiple accounts where I have a specific account for each type of communication? That way I can be sure that I have a carefully curated list of followers for each account and I’ll know that only the right niche of people are following that particular account. (Wishful thinking, at least. I’d recommend Twitter Lists no matter how many accounts you have.)

In a new visual from the incredibly useful site iPad 4 Schools, Richard Wells illustrates why ’3′ might be the magic number for teacher Twitter accounts. I am still undecided about how many accounts an educator should have but invite you to let the Edudemic community know how many accounts you use … and why. You can do that by mentioning @edudemic on Twitter and I’ll comment / retweet you!

Do you ever wonder how schools, universities, colleges, and large groups in general should use social media? Students are often early adopters, frequent users, and overall lovers of technology and social media. Want to help? I'm always looking for fun, creative, and exciting writers to get featured. Get in touch with me at edudemic@gmail.com!

Source: http://www.edudemic.com/teachers-multiple-twitter-accounts/

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How Can Big Data Enhance Education?

By Katie Lepi on January 24, 2014

Big Data is all around. Used in every type of industry to identify trends and possibility, data is also being used in education. Identified as one of the top trends in education, institutions are using them in all sorts of different ways. Think of it like the Google analytics for your classroom. Google analytics analyzes your website’s traffic and shows you what your best opportunities are for presenting certain ideas to certain audiences. Learning analytics can analyze your students and their work, and you can pinpoint some opportunity for personalization and optimization of your teaching and classroom. 

The handy infographic below takes a look at some ways that data mining and learning analytics can help enhance education. Keep reading to learn more.

How Can Data Mining & Analytics Enhance Education?

Data mining and learning analytics can help answer questions like:

• What sequence of questions is most effective for a specific student?
• Which student actions are associated with better grades?
• Which actions indicate satisfaction and engagement?
• Which features of an online learning environment lead to better learning?
• When are students ready to move onto the next topic?
• When is a student at risk for not completing a course?
• What grade is a student likely to achieve without intervention?
• Should a student be referred to a counselor?

There Are Cons, Though

• Expensive
• Time consuming
• Choosing which data to mine can be difficult
• Privacy concerns
• Creating a simplified picture from data can be difficult
• All data systems are not interoperable

Katie was a teacher, graduate student, and is now the lady who makes sure Edudemic is as useful as possible. She oversees the editorial process and is basically a Swiss Army Knife of solutions

Source: http://www.edudemic.com/big-data-education/

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4 Steps To Creating Confident And Creative Thinking Students

By Katie Lepi on January 26, 2014

Think about it: when children are young, they’re encouraged almost constantly to be creative. They tell stories, play make believe and dress up, build forts, and draw pictures. Once they get to school, that flow of creativity starts to dwindle, and continues to do so as they get older and older. But the truth is that encouraging students to think creatively can be a challenge in today’s curricula and test focused classrooms. Our modern educational models don’t leave a lot of room for creative free thinking.

The handy infographic below takes a look at four strategies to boost students’ confidence in their creativity. Central to all of them is the idea of positive influence – which, as the teacher, you need to supply. If our students are confident in themselves and their creative thinking skills, they’ll be able to more effectively and efficiently address the complex, multi-faceted problems they’ll face in a fully connected, globalized world.

Steps To Creating Confident, Creative Thinking Students

In all of these steps, students should be encouraged to strive for positive traits and complete positive actions through the entire experience. 

Who Do You Want To Be?

Teens are often asked the question ‘who do you want to be?” They can define their own traits or choose from a selection of popular traits that the group comes up with.

Create Your Own Mission

Teens should create a mission designed to demonstrate the trait they chose in the first step. During this step they can look at other student’s posts for inspiration.

Post Your Action

Teens post the result of their action, such as a video or photo, which will post to Instagram. They should use hash tags for the traits they want to show.

Social Feedback

Teens view streams of actions by trait that they care about being as inspiration and give feedback and points for fellow users.

Katie was a teacher, graduate student, and is now the lady who makes sure Edudemic is as useful as possible. She oversees the editorial process and is basically a Swiss Army Knife of solutions.

Source: http://www.edudemic.com/creative-thinking-students/

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What You Should Know About Education In Finland

By Katie Lepi

Even if a trip to chilly Finland hasn’t topped your list of vacation spots, you’ve probably heard about one of Finland’s great accomplishments —its world- class (and world-leading!)  education system. Students and schools in Finland are ranked as some of the best in the world – well ahead of many larger developed nations like the US and Canada. High school graduation rates are excellent, more students go on to earn college degrees than in other areas of the world, and Finnish students pretty much rock the pants off of standardized tests. 

There are a number of theories out there on why this is – many attribute it to teachers earning better pay and more respect, less homework, more active time (like for recess), and a very minimal amount of standardized testing. The handy infographic below takes an in-depth look at some of the details behind the success of education in Finland, and what makes it work so well. Keep reading to learn more.

Finland’s Educational Success

• The high school graduation rate in Finland is 93% (compared to 78% in Canada and 75% in the US)
• 2 in 3 students in Finland go on to college
• Their mean PISA score is significantly higher than any other country (that uses that test)
• The student to teacher ratio is about half of what it is in the US (1:12 vs 1:24)
• There are about ten times fewer standardized tests than in the US
• Finnish students rarely have homework until they are in their teens – they have more time to be kids
• Finnish students have about 75 minutes for recess – US students have about 27 minutes
• Teachers there are required to have a Master’s degree, and only the top 10% are accepted into graduate teaching programs (fully state subsidized)
• Finland’s teachers are as esteemed as doctors and lawyers

Katie was a teacher, graduate student, and is now the lady who makes sure Edudemic is as useful as possible. She oversees the editorial process and is basically a Swiss Army Knife of solutions. 

Source: Edudemic.com

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A Must-Have Model For 1:1 Success In Schools

By Adam Webster

Easier as it would be to pretend otherwise, the truth is that integrating mobile technology into a school is not a ‘one size fits all’ sort of thing. That said, there are some basic principles which I think probably stand true for all schools going on this journey.

This graphic illustrates the model which I think any school would benefit from understanding if not following.

Why?

To explain it briefly I believe that there needs to be a vision for WHY you are embarking upon this project (I will discuss this briefly later).

This WHY will be different for each school and that is how it should be. However, if that vision is not coming from the Head/Principal of your school/institution, then it will be infinitely more difficult to achieve your desired end result. There are a lot of Principals who don’t ‘get’ technology (Prensky might argue that this is because they’re Digital Immigrants) but that doesn’t mean that they don’t see its potential. Each school will have a different reason for engaging or not with technology, but essentially it is the responsibility of you as the person who wishes to push this project forward, to find out what that is.

Necessary Collaboration

The Principal and the Lead Teacher need to share this vision.

I have deliberately labeled a ‘Lead Teacher’ and not ‘Head of ICT’ and to me it is absolutely essential that the Network Manager and the Lead Teacher are different people as the roles are ridiculously different.

If the person leading this integration at teacher-level isn’t actually a teacher, the project is destined to be less of a success. Having a teacher who understands the benefits of technology in the classroom adds a massive amount of credibility to the project, but also reassures those around them that it can and does work because they are seeing it being done.

The Network Manager should share the vision of the Principal and the Lead teacher, but if they don’t, it isn’t a deal-breaker. What would be, is if the Network Manager doesn’t facilitate the vision coming true. This is the person who can make or break your plans and so it is important that they agree with how it is implemented and that you trust them to give you good advice. If you have this, and you have the infrastructure to support your vision, then you will be well on the way to implementing a successful mobile learning strategy.

Training

The next step is to train up a core set of teachers who will fly the flag for you. I offered each of these members of staff in excess of 7 hours training (and an iPad!). Very little of this training centred on what I would call ‘showpiece apps’. The focus is getting the right workflow, improving productivity and teaching lessons that engage and inspire in ways that can be maintained and developed over time.

This training seems to be the component that many schools forget. The iPad may be an intuitive device, but not if you haven’t grown up with touch devices, smart phones and social media. And certainly there is a massive transition from the iPad as a personal leisure device to the iPad as transformational learning tool.

It takes time to make this change and this change should happen before the students have devices in their hands. To empower your teachers, they need to feel that they have had time to adjust and learn how to make the device work in the way they want it to.

There is a huge amount that can be achieved with 1 iPad  in the hands of the teacher, and an Apple TV.

Whilst this is happening, you can still engage your students. You need a lead group from the student body just as much as you do from the staff. It may be that these are the students who will review apps, or run a ‘Genius Bar’ at lunchtimes, they may use iPads to control homemade robots, or they may just have really strong opinions about the amount of technology that should be used during the school week. Whoever they are and whatever their perspective, they can help make this journey more successful and that is why they are your Digital Leaders.

Once these groups are in place winning over the rest of the staff and the parents should be fairly straight forward, because you’re not trying to fool anyone; you will have done your research, made your mistakes, improved your infrastructure all based on recommendations and experiences in live, but controlled environments and as a result the next step – a wider rollout – will be easier.

Adam is the Director of Digital Learning at an independent school in the UK. He is also an Apple Distinguished Educator. His areas of interest are in creating and developing innovative, powerful and simple workflows using mobile technology in the classroom, and in helping schools plan for a 1:1 deployment.

Source: Edudemic.com

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