Let me start off my saying that I teach high school history. Also I spent almost two months this past school year working partly with another teacher to try to figure out a unique way to use mobile devices in my classroom that was different from using a laptop.
And I discovered that for my classroom, laptops trump mobile devices.
I know that there are tons of applications out there now that can help make the classroom more interactive but almost all the same programs can be run on a laptop at a higher speed. I found a few that would relate to my classroom but they took forever to load.
I found one that took you on a tour of Renaissance art with sidenotes at the Lourve in Parise but each painting took about 5+ minutes to load. I also found an application showing 1st hand accounts of WWI veterans but it was limited in what you could do.
Not to say that I am against mobile devices and applications. At the high school level, I think they are great for helping individual students to organize themselves and to look up information quickly.
I have actually talked to my students about how we could use school's ITouches in the classroom. Maybe if we were doing a scavenger hunt of some kind around the school or wanted to go sit outside in the nice weathere, they would be nice. But the school puts limits on where you can take them. And right now you can only use them in the library.
No comments:
Post a Comment