iPad Use Review

Having a set of iPads in the classroom was fairly useful for my classmates and I. The iPads made transferring work between school and home much easier. Not having to schedule computer lab time for essays and projects made our class much more productive. The fact that students did not need to have access to a computer to email work home saved a lot of time for our class. Another useful function of the iPads was their ability to connect to the Smartboard. Instead of having to email a project that needed to be presented to themselves or the teacher and reopen it, students could simply open their project on the iPad and connect it to the Smartboard. Being able to avoid the use of computers all together seemed to make our class work much quicker and more productive. The iPad was also useful in smaller ways. When a word, author, or subject needed to be looked up or researched, students could quickly and easily find the information on the internet. And when the class had to read a poem or writing piece together, the document could be easily accessed on the iPad, rather than passing out copies which is impractical and slow going.

            Our class did experience some difficulties with the iPads. The most frequent problem we experienced were the difficulties with the internet and the Wifi. Our school has a fairly poor Wifi connection and it frequently caused the class problems when we could not access the internet. Another problem that would likely be experienced in many schools is our school’s internet firewall. Many useful websites, such as our teacher’s class blog, were often blocked for no apparent reason. These problems usually took quite some time to fix, and interrupted the productive work flow of our class. Also, if our teacher was ever absent, our class would be stuck with a substitute. When this happened, we would not be able to use the iPads, and many students’ entire collection of notes and work was stored on them.

            I think that it would certainly be worth experimenting with giving more classes a set of iPads. However, they would be much more useful in some classes than others. It would be for teachers to determine which classes could best use them. Having iPads to use in class would likely make many classrooms run more efficiently. But I do not think it would be worth it to assign every student an iPad. Many students would not find them all that useful for school work, and might already own their own iPad or laptop. Also, it would be a big problem if such small and expensive devices were lost, damaged, or stolen.