iPad Licence

Today was the third day of class for my students and I.  We have made personal introductions, gone over procedures, and discussed  classroom expectations.  Now it is time to get down to the business of introducing my students to the iPad.  

On the first day of school I did an informal poll to see how many students had used an iPad before.  What I discovered from this poll was roughly less than ten out of one hundred students had experience using and iPad.  Since few students had no experience with the iPad I decided to spend one of my "early" days introducing the iPad to the class.

My goal was to keep the lesson simple, yet informative.  I began by letting the students know that the only way they should clean the screen is by using one of the lint free cloths. I explained that using their sleeve, tissue, or hand could scratch the screen and once the screen is scratched there is no way to fix it.  Next I moved on to turing the iPad on, scrolling to different pages, and using the home button.  My classes were all amazed when I showed them what happens when you double click the home button moving all of the app icons to the bottom of the screen.

I also decided to demonstrate a few of the accessibility features next.  I let the classes know that the iPad could read for them, but I strongly suggested that they leave that feature alone (if anyone from Apple is reading this please improve this feature).  One of the most popular accessibility features was the white on black, however this was short lived.  Most of the kids thought it was cool until those who choose to leave it on decided that they could not focus on text and pictures.  Some students did find the feature very helpful.  The final accessibility feature that was demonstrated in class was the three finger zoom.  As we continued to work with the iPads most students decided that pinching and stretching the screen was a much more effective way of zooming in and out.

One of the last iPad features introduced was the rotation lock.  I explained that they had the ability to lock the screen in one position.  This feature was popular.  Most of the students preferred to lock their iPad in landscape.  I think this had a great deal to do with the type of case that we are using.

At the end of class I gave an eight question true/false assessment.  Most of my students got 100% of the questions correct.  As a reward for passing the quiz I plan on making "iPad Licenses" for all of my students.  I hope this gives a since of pride and encourages the kids to take care of the machines.