Five practical tips for iPad success in the classroom

When embarking on any process involving change it’s vital to prepare your teaching staff and students through communication, encouraging involvement and managing resistance.  Once you have planned your launch, at the stage of initiation the first goal is to build iPads into all daily school activities carried out by educators and learners. Start by ensuring staff begin to transfer daily routine tasks to their iPads and that they don’t relapse if they are pushed for time or other factors make it more appealing to use paper-based options.

The speed and success of the realignment will, however, be dependent on several factors:

• Leadership team’s commitment to the change process (management)
• Ensuring the infrastructure and resources are in place to support students and staff (preparation)
• Communication of the new initiative and prior warning of the switch-over (communication) 
• Staff’s understanding of and ability to demonstrate iPad best practice (training)

At the helm should be at least one senior leader, fully fluent and competent on the uses of iPads in education and who in the beginning can offer support and guidance on successfully transferring daily routines onto an iPad. While here at LearnersCloud we offer exam-tailored GCSE tutor videos that complement staff’s teaching strategies, it’s clear that many attempts to integrate mobile technology in the classroom fail or are at least delayed due to the lack of a skilled and experienced iPad leader. Here’s a simple checklist of iPad good practices that senior leaders must understand if they are to achieve successful integration:

Five everyday iPad practices that staff need to know:

 

How to implement a 'Bring Your Own Device' (BYOD) scheme

As schools throughout the UK struggle to keep up with the costs of digital learning technologies many are initiating their own Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programmes, encouraging students to bring their own tablet, laptop or smartphone device with them into class.

Generally speaking, there are three main reasons why a school would adopt a BYOD scheme: 

1. Student familiarity
2. Bridge between formal and informal learning
3. Cost savings

Yet while digital learning and the prospect of students bringing in their own devices is gathering increasing exposure and support there is also growing concern that BYOD programmes are further expanding inequalities between low and higher income families as well as encouraging new forms of bullying.