Ipod in the Classroom

The iPod Touch is a multi touch screen interactive wi-fi device developed by Apple. Last Year the Kilkenny Education Centre invested in 36 of these devices with the goal of examining their effectiveness in the primary school classroom as a learning aid.

We plan on trialing the iPods in a number of schools.

The initial trial took place in St Colman's school, Clara, Kilkenny, who had the iPods from March to November 2010 with great success. Much credit goes to Padhraic Moran and Richard Mulrooney and their students for their work in ironing out any teething problems quickly and successfully implimenting them into their daily classroom activities.

In November, as the trial entered its second phase, the iPods were loaned to Presentation Convent National School, Castlecomer, under the guidance of Ms Margaret Maxwell. Below is an exert from the school newsletter January 2011.

"

You may have heard that children are using iPods in some classes and wondered what we were using them for! We are doing our best to use the very latest technology to help children’s learning.  Kilkenny Education Centre recently bought IPods to lend to schools to investigate the ways they can be used to improve teaching and learning. We are delighted to have been chosen to try them out and see how children’s learning can benefit from this great opportunity.

The learning support and resource teachers, Valerie Landy and Laura Furney have been using the IPods to support learning with the English and Mathematics Curricula in their own rooms and in 1^st class.

So far they have used them to:

Consolidate learning of maths tables: (Popmath app)

Improve phonological (letter sounds) awareness: (ABC pocket phonics app).

Practise sight words (Sight words app)

Look up the meaning of tricky and interesting words (Dictionary app)

Make words using seven letters (Jumbline app)

4^th and 5^th classes have also been using the IPods. Some of the activities they have been doing are:

Art: Looking up the Water Lily paintings of Claude Monet and analysing the use of colour and impressionist painting techniques. Painting their own water lily painting in response (Monet HD app)

Maths: consolidate learning of multiplication and division tables (pop math app). Practise adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions (??? App)

Self Assessment:

Using stopwatch app to time completion of speed tables. Check for speed and accuracy and determine own learning needs regarding learning of tables.

Check own definitions of words against dictionary definition (Dictionary app)

We’ve only been using the IPods for two weeks and have already found lots of ways they can support learning. Next, we plan to download podcasts of books and record ourselves reading to develop reading fluency and accuracy.

Here are some pupil reactions to the IPods. I think you’ll agree they are going down well!

 ‘I think having iPods in the classroom is great fun. We get to do our maths on it and our tables and a lot more. We use our IPods almost every day.’  Eimear Barrett (Fifth Class)

‘I think that the iPods are great fun. Today we used them for art. Miss Maxwell downloaded applications on to our iPods. We are learning about Monet, a famous French painter. We will choose one of his paintings and write about it and paint our response to it. Today we are pencil drawing them. We will be painting tomorrow as we do not want to get paint on the IPods.

Laura Mullally (Fourth Class)

"

The Kilkenny Education Centre will be running workshops in March/April for any other schools looking to get involved. More information will be available on our website as it becomes available.