Week 6: Using the ipod in the classroom

       The ipad can be a very useful tool to use in the classroom. I do not have an ipad, but I would love to one day! It amazes me what it can do and how easy it is to use. I know several people that have one and they say they don't know what they would do without it. I would have never thought about using the ipad in the classroom until last year. I never really saw the difference between a teacher using an ipad and a computer, but there are some major benefits of using the ipad.
       First of all, it is much easier to carry around that a big dell computer. One of the resources where I found a lot of information about using the ipad in your classroom came from a blog called The Nerdy Teacher .This blog was written by a  teacher who used her ipad to take attendance, input her grades, and check email. She said she would walk around the classroom with her ipad and check to see if her students did their homework. Instead of writing it down and then plugging the grades in her computer later, she would just put in the grade as soon as she passed by the students desks. She said it was also nice when she was teaching and was walking around the room, she could see any important emails that need to be read. During the day it is so hard to keep going back to the computer to check emails, so this made it much more convenient if there was an announcement or something she needed to check right away. So ipads can save teachers a lot of time with putting in grades and checking emails.
       Another big benefit of the ipad that I read about came from Andrea Timbrook's blog called I Pad Apps. This blog had some great ideas and activities for the kids to use on the ipad. It had an example activity for every subject, but the one that caught my eye was something called SpellBoard. SpellBoard is a fast and easy way for the teacher to enter a list of spelling words. All you need to do is enter the word (correctly spelled), the grade level (1-12) and the spoken word (recorded via the iPads built in microphone). Optionally, you can add a written and/or spoken phrase. Also, SpellBoard allows for multiple student profiles so you can track the performance of any student  across any number of quizzes. You can also track how well multiple students perform against a particular quiz. I think this is a great resource for teachers because everyone knows how much kids hate spelling words. I think by using the ipad, kids would think it would be fun and they would want to do it. They would also be able to hear the words spelled correctly, which helps the auditory learners. The blog also included other apps for math, social studies, and science. This blog is a great start for teachers beginning to use the ipad in their classroom because it explains everything clearly and even had videos on what to do with each app.
I would absolutely love to have an ipad in my classroom one day! From reading these blogs, I realized that an ipad can be used by teachers and students.It is a great way for teachers to be organized and have everything in one easy place, and it is great for students because there are some fun activities for students on any grade level in any subject. An ipad would be a wonderful "go to" resource to have in a classroom because the possibility of finding what you need is endless. As they say... "there is an app for everything!"