Android devices are quickly becoming among the most innovative & exciting technology based teaching tools to become widely available in years. Many schools across the country have purchased Android tablets for their students, however comprehensive & essential device training to properly utilize the full power of these new platforms & their best educational apps is not available.
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
There’s lots of information in the media telling us how good the tablet is. You can’t go a day without reading about the interface and the outstanding graphics and the multi-sensory abilities of the Android.
There are many applications, blogs and articles on the kinds of applications to use; and finally many teachers on the internet purporting that benefits of using tablet technology.
So that being said, I’m not going to explore in great detail the benefits of using the Android during this slideshow instead I’m going to ask the question why?
Why do you want to use mobile technology in your classroom or school and how WILL using the tablet benefit your students?
While I believed mobile technology could make a difference in my classroom, I was extremely mindful of ensuring that whatever I did had an educational/curriculum/pedagogical foundation.
THE ANDROID SHOULD NOT JUST BE A 'FILL IN' OR 'REWARD' DEVICE!
I cannot stress this enough. If the device is being used this way, then you are missing out on the educational and pedagogical benefits of using this technological tool.
These devices are extremely individual as they are designed for one to one use.
Students can also be taught to take responsibility for their own device and in doing so feel a sense of ownership for the Android and are more likely to take more care of it.
If your answer is 'because it's the latest device' or 'your school wants you to use it...but you don't know how'...then you need to go back to the drawing board.
There’s no reason why you can’t formulate your own ‘why’ questions irrespective of what your school is doing.
When I first trialed using the tablet in my classroom, what I immediately noticed was that 95 per cent of my behavior issues disappeared.
This continued throughout the year.
The biggest issue I had was getting the students ‘off’ the device, so we had to develop some new ground rules around ‘when it’s time to stop, it’s time to stop’.
I had clear schedules detailing how I wanted the Android to be used. We created the ground rules before we started.
Each student had a visual schedule with the App icons I wanted them to use. I had individualized each of the apps to suit where they were ‘at’ educationally.
I also individualized their device, so if one student liked dinosaurs, he had dinosaur apps; another student who liked fairies had fairy apps etc.
This meant I was differentiating their learning to suit their learning style, learning ability but also what appealed to them. (This did take more work, but it paid off in the end).
Often students asked me to find them apps, so we would look for them together.
Breaches of the ground rules meant withdrawal of the device.
After the first month, I did not have to even threaten to remove a device… The students knew the rules & consequences.
The best result was their learning outcomes and test scores all improved. Parents were so impressed, they wanted to learn how to use the device and purchased one for home.