Consumption or creation: iPads in the classroom

John Larkin offers a valuable critique of the iPad - identifying the joys and the challenges when it is used in teaching and learning. Is it a device for consumption or creation? It seems collecting evidence of student work and projects is difficult.

Yet, the iPad has a dark side. Particularly for a teacher working with a class of students, each with their own iPad. Consider a teacher that simply wants to facilitate teaching and learning and does not wish to devote hours to dealing with an interface that can at times be clunky, inconsistent and simply involves too many steps to get it to work. Which interface!? The conventional task of collecting, assessing and returning student works that were created on an iPad.

Read the full blog post here.

Dark Side of the iPad ~ Collecting student projects is difficult! | John Larkin via kwout

HookED SOLO Symbol Generator

Do you need SOLO symbols in hues that match the changing moods of your classroom? Need kereru bill crimson with a hint of orange to start the morning with verve? Would something solidly academic – one of those reliable blues – help those literacy outcomes between morning tea and lunch? What about a murky mangrove swamp brown – for when learning becomes a turgid meander? Or perhaps a limp chlorophyll green for those soft reflective moments at the end of the day? Find the answer to all your pigment ponderings – the HookED SOLO Symbol Generator.

SOLO Symbol Generator — HookED via kwout

e-Learning Planning Framework

Update to the e-learning planning framework. Following consultation in 2011, schools can now download version 2 of the draft e-Learning Planning Framework from this link.

e-Learning Planning Framework / Professional learning / enabling e-Learning - enabling eLearning via kwout

How did they do it?

The first school in 2012 judged 'outstanding' by Ofsted.

Members of Park View's senior management team are feeling pleased with themselves. This school has been on a remarkable journey in the last 16 years, the latest stage of which will culminate in academy status this summer. It has clawed its way out of special measures from being, according to the league tables, the worst school in England's second city to becoming one of the best, and all this in Alum Rock, an area notorious for social disadvantage and gang culture. Just 4% of pupils were gaining five or more A-C grades at GCSE in the late 1990s – last summer that figure was 72%.

Read more here

The first 'outstanding' school of 2012 reveals all | Education | The Guardian via kwout