Thinking Ahead - 2015

When I look back at the school year, I can see that lots of fantastic stuff happened but I want 2015 to be even better. Is it reasonable to expect every teacher at KPS to achieve the shift in thinking required to use iPads and other technologies effectively? Is it reasonable to expect every teacher to use these tools to transform learning rather than to enhance? I really think it is, especially when the support is there in many forms and when there is no teacher turnover. I get that iPads are another thing on a very long list of high expectations for new staff but that is not an issue this year. In this post I will focus on the early years.

I do get that there is a (very small) place for consumption apps in Kindy and Pre-Primary but I also know that students benefit more from games, books and other resources that have been developed for them and with them. The time spent searching for an app that teaches a concept exactly as we do would be so much better spent creating resources. TinyTap, Stick Around, Book Creator, Keynote, Educreations, Explain Everything are all excellent tools for creating interactive content. Also iMovie, AdobeVoice, Thinglink are just a couple of many tools that could be used to introduce a topic in an engaging way.

What I would really like to see this year is teachers in the same year group collaborating more on making these resources. All of these can be shared with each other in some way. If, each week, each PP teacher makes two games there will be six new games every week. These games might also be great for other year group teachers to use with students who need extra support and students in PP, who need extending, could benefit from resources developed by year one and two teachers. I believe there is a lot more room for the sharing of resources around the school using tools such as iTunesU, GoogleDrive and other cloud based tools. 

Just think, when we get this happening really well, we can start sharing with other schools!