Powering Your Classroom with the iPad, Part 2

This is part 2 of the Powering Your Classroom with the iPad series.

Perhaps the most accurate way to assess the particular classroom uses of the iPad is to look through Apple’s PDF manual, “A Guide For Using iPod Touch and iTunes for Teaching and Learning” We can think of the iPad as a larger, faster, and more innovative version of the iPod Touch. Since the iPad will have access to Apple’s App Store, you can download the thousands of educational applications suggested in the iPod Touch teaching and learning manual. For example, there’s the Graphing Calculator app, which enables students to generate bright, rich images of complex equations. For physics and chemistry teachers, the Periodic app provides an interactive platform that will make learning the periodic table easier and more fun.

Besides being hooked up to iTunes and Podcasts, where you’ll be able to download and access documentaries, speeches, and more to enhance your classroom lectures, the iPad also enables you and your students to create and share presentations through Keynote or PowerPoint. With Garage Band, the class can also record narration to go with presentations.

The effective uses of the iPad in the classroom will multiply as educators adapt to this exciting new technology and find ways to innovate their teaching methods accordingly. As Robert Reynolds notes in his article about the iPad’s future in education , the ultimate educational use of the iPad and similar technology will depend entirely on how students respond to it.

This guest post is contributed by Alvina Lopez, who writes on the topics of accredited online colleges . She welcomes your comments at her email Id alvina.lopez@gmail.com .

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