Leave Your Laptop at Home: This is an iPad Classroom

In a 21st century world the landscape of how one consumes information is constantly changing. The 21st century classroom is no exception; Apple iPads have replaced laptops and traditional textbooks in a class in the College of Education at North Carolina State University.

"Students use the iPad in my class to teach each other principles of development. They use collaborative white boards and electronic diagrams and annotation to organize their ideas," said Dr. Heather Davis, associate professor of educational psychology. "It is important for teachers to enter the classroom with the skills to evaluate and integrate new technology into their teaching and use a variety of hardware and software to engage and empower their students."

Before integrating iPads into her class, when teaching each other, the students might have created a list on a large sheet of paper and tell each other a summary of their discussion. Now, they use applications as tools to shape thinking, plan their instruction and really teach each other, explains Davis. And, because the software is intuitive to use, the students in the class are more willing to consider the ways in which they could have their future K-12 students teach content to their peers.

Each of these future teachers is assigned an iPad to use for the entire academic term. The device comes preloaded with applications for language, mathematics and science, global studies, as well as professional software for planning, teaching and data analysis.

Course assignments require students to mentor children off-campus to gain experience systematically observing behavior to better understand developmental goals and limitations. They learn to collect, upload and analyze data from the field. Some students even design their own observation and interview tools. Partnering with a field site allows students to reflect on and integrate course material with their observations of children in the field.

"What I like most about using an iPad is having access to resources to use with the kids in the field," said Melissa Haberman, sophomore, elementary education. "I can download different books on different reading levels and store them. If one book is too easy or hard to read, I can quickly and easily pull up another. It helps me gauge the children's reading levels.” Students like Melissa can help children learn to make their own electronic annotations: underlining words they do not understand, making notes in the margins and highlighting text.

As technology continues to advance at ever-increasing speeds, experts predict that in the near future children will have mobile devices and digital tablets in hand throughout the school day. Many schools in Wake are embracing iPod and iPad technologies for use in classrooms. According to Davis, we need to embrace the shift towards mobile devices and teach our children how to learn with, think with, and appropriately regulate their technology use.

"This class improves my technology skills," said Sarah Adams, sophomore, elementary education major. "Teachers have to keep up with technology and this type of learning gives us an edge."

Funding for this project was provided by NC State College of Education through the efforts of Dr. Heather Davis and Nathan Stevens, CED Media Center Librarian and Assistant Coordinator. For more information email Nathan Stevens or Heather Davis.

Written by Cathy DiGrazio, senior, communications