Testing Out iPads

Our district is doing some trial runs of iPads in a few classrooms, and I am blessed enough to be able to test them out in my English 12 class over the course of the next few weeks.

To be honest, I'm skeptical. After seeing some of my students carelessly throw their laptops on the desks, I worry about the durability of these tiny little things. Typing for a long amount of time on the iPad is also tedious---I should be writing this blog on the iPad, but I'm using my laptop because it's quicker to type text.

Currently our students have laptops, which I use everyday in class. This year I've moved to cloud computing so students don't have to store items on their individual machines. So in this sense, an iPad is sufficient; they don't need a hard drive. I also like that the iPads are so compact---they are lightweight and easy to carry around while I teach. I love the touch screen feature, and though I complained earlier about the typing---it is getting easier the more I use it.

My 12th graders and I are making a list of assignments/projects we want to try while we have access to the iPads so we can get a good feel for how conveninent and inconvenient they are. Cost wise, it seems that an iPad is the smarter choice for a 1:1 type program, but I want to test out as much as possible in order to give our technology committee the best feedback possible. If you have any ideas for what to try out on the iPad (please don't say "play Angry Birds" as I've heard that ALL day from my 9th graders!), please send them my way. I am attending an iPad training seminar on Thursday, so I do hope to post more about this later!