Tune into Technology: iPads

Week 3:

Well first let’s just say that the options with one iPad (or 1 per student) are endless! From classroom management to content-rich lessons, you could easily try one new thing a day and probably love nearly everything you do! Since there are SO many things to do with iPads and since we have already posted about how we use them in Literacy and Math, today we are going to focus more on how iPads can be used as a teacher tool for classroom management.

I recently blogged about two free apps that make picking who is first much easier. Tap Roulette and iLeap Pick a Student are great apps that will help make choosing your students go a lot quicker and hopefully have less whining when they aren’t chosen! They can easily be used for small group work or whole class when you are trying to choose a student. Check out more about these apps here.

And I know, I know…I talk about this WAY too often on here, but, seriously, if you have yet to try Evernote out, trust me, you need to use it! 🙂 

So, really, here it is- Evernote helps me with my classroom management because it keeps me organized. I’m always ready to share information with other teachers, parents and my little friends, themselves, because I have all my notes about each little friend in one spot, on Evernote. I can easily pull up Evernote on my iPad and show other teachers during student meetings the progress they have made through pictures, voice recordings or notes I’ve taken during our guided reading time. To me, it’s the same as taking notes in a notebook, but now it’s all digital and you have the added benefit of pictures of student work, recordings of student work AND it’s all right there together in one long note.  I simply date each entry and just add a little each week/day/however often I feel it is necessary, based on the abilities/needs of the student. You can read more about how I use it in my classroom here and even check out the step by step tutorial I made for setting it all up here. 

If you work in a primary classroom, you know that transitions can get a little noisy!  My hope is by the time the kids get a little older they won’t need this…but I could be wrong maybe kids of all ages have a hard time with transitions?!

This free app is called Too Noisy! Too Noisy works wonders!  This app helps students to be able to see when it is getting, yes, you guessed it…”too noisy!”  

When the students are quiet the smiley face stays smiling and the red stick is pointing to the green part.  

I sometimes will put this app on display during work time but mostly during transitions.  The students think it is a game to keep the smiley man happy and so they do tip-toe around much quieter than normal to try to keep this little guy smiling!  

Alright, alright…if you have been following Aylin and I you know some of our favorites we mention these things as often as possible because truly they have made a big difference in our classroom!  With that being said, I can’t help but to throw Class Dojo into our list of favorite classroom management apps!  

Class Dojo can be put on as many devices needed which makes it incredibly easy to use throughout the day!  I have it on my phone and a couple of our classroom iPads so it is easy to grab at and give kids points at any time during the day.  Even if we are walking in the hallway to a special I can bring my phone or a classroom iPad to give students points!

If you missed my Class Dojo post you can click here to learn more about getting started with Class Dojo or here to learn the reasons why you must give it a try this year!  

We can’t wait to hear more about how others are using iPads in their classrooms!