My Growth as a Teacher using an iPad - Part 1

This month we celebrate the iPad's 5th birthday! Since February 2010 there are six iterations of the

iPad: 1, 2, 3, 4, Air, and Air 2 (each with 2 or 3 versions), and of course the iPad mini. My iPad 3 often seems like an extension of me today, but it was not always that way. As I pause, amazed that iPads have been around for 5 years and finding it hard to remember teaching before their use, I take a few minutes to chronicle my use of iPads.

I was teaching at the Schmoker Reading Center when the iPad was born. Guy was the first person I knew who purchased an iPad. At weekly meetings he showed us the amazing things this new device could do, "It's not that it does that many things, it's just that it does them so well." We saw how simply and elegantly Keynote could create graphs for easy presentation and clear understanding. Taking notes in meetings was so simple using iPad Notes compared to setting up a laptop. We learned to save images with the touch of a finger, and search for information anywhere at anytime on this mobile device. Each app we learned about was more fantastic than the next!

It took only a few months for Kathy and I to purchase iPads too! We wanted to learn along with Guy, and none of us wanted to be left behind. Education was changing and we could see how this new device could be helpful for the struggling readers with whom we worked. Now we could replace our cassette tape recorders with QuickVoice as we recorded children reading during Running Records. We could access our tutors' lesson plans online and provide feedback in real time by typing Notes and emailing immediately. Soon the Reading Center purchased a cart of 20 iPads so each child could use these devices. Now children could read eBooks on topics of interest at their reading level, create graphic organizers to organize their thoughts for writing, research online and create multimedia presentations of their learning, listen to themselves read by recording their voice and then evaluate for fluency, and summarize their reading to increase comprehension by saying a sentence and allowing Dragon Dictation to turn their speech into text.

We conducted research as we integrated iPads into tutoring, analyzing student results after using online word sorts to understand long / short vowels and spelling patterns, learning sight words and tracking online, teaching phonological awareness, and reading online to promote fluency. At the end of the 2011 summer project 80% of the striving readers advanced one or more grade levels, a level of achievement we had not previously attained. Children were empowered, parents asked what apps we used so they could download them on their phones for their children to practice at home, tutors learned how iPads could enhance teaching, and university instructors shared these successes with anyone who would listen!