Fryer, iPads & Reflection

I recently check out Wesley Fryer’s podcast series “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.” The name of the podcast series intrigued me, as our society and schools have become faster as our technology has improved, but we cannot allow creativity to be lost. The particular podcast I listened to and will review is “Lessons Learned from June 2012 iPad Media Camp.” Dr. Fryer taught a 3-day seminar on how to integrate the iPad and especially video into the classroom. More resources are available at ipadmediacamp.com

Summary & Commentary:

The summary will be first with my personal commentary and reflection on the idea indented directly underneath.

 Fryer reflects on his own teaching and the whole seminar that he taught in June. He was very intentional about having teachers work in groups and choose more cutting-edge group names, like band names.

The neat thing about iPads is they can easily be used outside of the computer lab for long periods of time, because of the battery life.

 Teachers should know their technology as they assign projects to students, it really helps if the teacher has actually completed the projects that they assign.

 Fryer reflects that the teachers learned the most from their own hands-on work, which obviously correlates to the classroom, when students often learn best through hands-on work.

All of the participants used the “Show-me” app to make narrated slide shows and then uploaded them to the same channel.

 This could be a very neat resource for the classroom. Students who get nervous in presentations wouldn’t have to present in front of the whole class and a lot of classroom time could be saved from presenting in class. Students then could watch each other’s presentations later, or at home, and have the presentations to use for review for a test. This technology could make it much more feasible to incorporate more presentations into the class without spending a lot of time to present in class.

Teachers created a short interview video on iMovie and then moved onto more complicated video creating. There is now a YouTube education site that teachers and students can make channels to publish videos to.

                Making videos is a really neat opportunity for school projects. Even younger children can make videos to express their opinions and what they learned, really giving the opportunity for neat presentations and lasting projects. As teachers, we need to remember to give our students at all ages and ability levels options when it comes to projects and presenting.

Teachers should make their assignments easily accessible to their students. Fryer achieved this by making the wiki he was using everyone’s homepage. Similarly QR codes can be handy for students, because all they need to do is scan it.

                This type of accessibility could make it really easy for students to remember their assignments and ask questions. However, for this system to work the teacher, as well as the students need to be diligent in checking it and updating it.

Overall, Fryer has some really neat ideas of integrating technology into teaching, especially with the iPad. I thought this podcast was especially neat, because it was his reflections on teaching teachers. Reflecting on our teaching is definitely best methods. And as a beginning teacher listening to the reflections of others can often be enlightening.