IPad in the Classroom ~ Dream ESL

http://www.dreaminginenglish.com

The other article that I was looking at this week, this one was about how the schools were continuing to increasingly use the iPad in their classrooms. Carrie and I on TV on the news the other day about a classroom of kindergarteners in Maine, I think. Maybe I'm mistaken. One of the states. And this whole school was experimenting using it in the kindergarten classes. And, you know, there was a debate. People were making points about whether this would be more interfering with learning or actually aiding the learning process. What do you think?

I can't really think of what the iPad would have that a laptop wouldn't. When I first saw the iPad come out, I thought, well this is really a slick product; but, it's mostly designed for entertainment.

It just looks like a giant iPod, I mean, I'm sorry, a giant iPhone.

It does, it has all the same functions as an I-phone. And you can only open one program at a time, whereas right now on this laptop I've got two programs going. I've got SKYPE and, you know, Firefox/Internet Explorer, whereas the iPad, you can't. So I think it's rather limiting in that regard. I don't know. I'm a little skeptical, thinking it's a bit of a fad [yeah...] at the moment. And it's flashy, and it makes the school district look as if they are...[on top of the technological...] cutting edge, or something, but...

Do you think it's distracting to children at that age?

Yeah, I agree. That was exactly what I was thinking, and I don't want to be curmudgeony, but when I studied journalism and all that, they described television and computers and other things...well, no...television, what they called cold mediums, meaning they don't require the brain to do a lot of active things. [Right.] There's listening and there's watching. Listening and watching don't require the brain to engage nearly as much as reading, well, and speaking. But reading is the point. I suppose that there could be all sorts of slick programs that allow people to do that. I don't know enough about it. I trust that the superintendents of that school district probably had good reason to. But, I'm initially thinking that it's kind of gimmicky.

Yeah, I had the same feeling. I was surprised to learn when one of our neighbor's kids is going to the middle school that Alex and Austen would go to, they were saying that the boy in middle school is actually using a laptop, and he has to send all of his homework via e-mail to the teacher rather than the way we probably grew up doing it. So, I don't know if I like that or not. My first reaction was, as you put it, to be "curmudgeony".

Yeah, I don't want to be like, "Back in my day we had books, giant books. Eh, kids!" ["And we ate dirt."] "Dirt! And we liked it. Kids, today!"

Category:

Education

Tags:

• esl
• second
• language
• lesson
• teacher
• school
• learn
• translate

[KillerPanda04]

Dirt lolololololol but IPads would be good