iPad Summit Recap

"I don't know how to do this, I never received Professional Development on it" - said No Student, Ever. (Thanks +Tom Murray for the great quote)

iPad SUMMIT 2013

I recently held two summits in our district. These summits were designed to focus on learning and best practices with iPads, iOS, apps, and technology in general.

Many a twitter chat, blog post, and podcast as of late has been about a call to arms to actively take back PD (professional development) from the one hour, one day, one time slate of PD that has been given and change it into something more authentic and useful for teachers. This call to arms has also put its cross hairs on technology PD and the problems there within.

Technology has been one of the biggest criminals when it came to the one hour, one time sort of PD. I, myself, have been the victim and a suspect with receiving and giving this sort of tech PD. I'm not proud of it and of course, hindsight is 20/20; but now our foresight should encompass this as well. We shouldn't give PD about a what a tech is. Rather, we should be giving them all the time on WHY the tech is essential to unlocking learning and engagement in students and HOW it is transforming our culture, schools, and the way we teach/learn. My good friends at #edtechchat and #edchat have spoken about this at length with  +Tom Whitby and +Nancy Blair speaking about this specific change in their podcast.

If educators stop learning and trying new things, what message does that send to our students? Thankfully, I have some great educators in my district that are always willing to learn.

How can we make school look more like life? Summits like these help us mix the paints together. 

I wanted to take that model and truly help out my teachers. I wanted to make the technology less about the technology and more about the learning, engagement, and excitement that can come from it. I wanted to make this iPad summit about not just apps, but about the collaboration, creation, and communication that can happen with them and the transformation of student learning that can come from using them.

Using my trusty brain, my resources, and my PLN, here is the presentation:

We focused on three areas - function, purpose, and apps. This tiered strategy helped those who needed some basics with the iPad and gave those with experience some purpose: they helped out their colleagues who needed it, just like I would have my students do. 

To show off how to get to certain parts, I used AirServer via AirPlay. If you don't know what that is, take a look at my prior post about it - http://tinyurl.com/m64ptnj

We shared tips and tricks, looked at how to import and export and even talked about how the iPad can be used to help learners with disabilities by going through the accessibility functions within the device. We used the iPad as a document camera and shared what we were working on (we were all connected at once!) with the rest of the groups and some fantastic education ideas came out of just that. Imagine you students working on a document and then sharing it with the class. Have multiple students to this would truly bring communication and innovation to the forefront. Finally, we stopped at guided access, which really was a fantastic area for some teachers when it came to locking the iOS in a certain app to use during centers or the like. 

Finally, we looked at just a few apps that were really high on the SAMR scale. These included:

• Explain Everything
• E-Backpack
• Class Dojo
• Google Drive
• PuppetPals HD
• BrainPOP
• Google Maps
• and more... 

But it wasn't about the apps. It wasn't even about iPads. It was still about learning and the students. Shedding the light on why technology has failed in the past and where we need to go as a population of educators to prevent those pitfalls from happening in the future. I had teachers and educators of all content levels, backgrounds, and grades. Experience with tech, teaching, or iPads was not necessary and I had teachers that were vets and those who were new share ideas with each other. And that is the true purpose of PD. It's not about learning something once and never talking about it again, its about learning something, talking about it with your peers, and taking it and making it your own so that your students benefit from it. 

Truth be told, I didn't know how it was going to go. I thought the summits may have bomb.

After three minutes in each one, the educators in them let me know - they want more, they want to learn, and they are eager.