This fall I successfully taught two college courses using only an iPad 2 (and iPad Air) — no desktop or laptop. The experiment went easier than I expected but it was not without challenges.

I teach Art Appreciation and Art History at a local community college. For each session, content is presented on Keynote slides (typically consisting of 25 – 75 slides). Creating the presentations takes anywhere from three to fifty hours — most of that spent on the iPad. Naturally, the preparation involves a lot of time on the Internet for research, image selection, and administrative tasks.

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Talk about a great endorsement – they just don’t get any better than this. Just in case you can’t read the quite text on the image above, here it is:

For the first time in 22 years of teaching, 100 percent of my kindergarten students went to first grade reading above grade level.

That’s from Kristi Meeuwse, a kindergarten teacher at Drayton Hall Elementary School in Charleston, South Carolina. Apple’s case study on how Meeuwse has used the iPad in her classroom, and how much her students have got out of it, is a fascinating read – and a real feel good story as well.

Meeuwse has created her own books, tailored to her class and her city, to address the lack of non-fiction books for her students’ age group. Students are even creating their own content to respond to respond to assignments – and getting engaged and excited about their class work.

Here’s another huge benefit of using the iPad that’s highlighted:

With 25 students in her classroom, Meeuwse used to teach toward the middle. She would struggle to pull up the lower students, and the students working ahead were left to spin their wheels. iPad, however, allows Meeuwse to personalize learning for her students by creating leveled books. Once she creates a book, it’s easy to duplicate it and create different leveled readers from it, allowing students to learn at their own pace.

Microsoft can shout all they want in their TV ads about tablets for ‘doing real work’ – but I’m hard pressed to think of any better work than this. Not just getting kids more engaged and exited about learning, but getting such great results – that’s work worth bragging about.

Check out the whole case study at this iPad in Education page.

Image Source: | Source: O4NT

Today seven new ‘Steve Jobs Schools’ have opened in the Netherlands. These schools have a radical new approach, with iPads right at the center of it. The schools are located in the Dutch cities of Sneek, Breda, Almere, Emmen, Heenvliet and Amsterdam. They’ll be following the principles of a program called O4NT – Onderwijs voor een nieuwe tijd, or ‘Education for a New Era’ in English.

This program places the iPad right at the core of the student experience – with one iPad per student and the iPads replacing textbooks and serving as a ‘virtual school’. As MacRumors reports, One of the key purposes of using the iPad is to help students develop ‘information and communication technology (ICT) and information processing skills, collaboration techniques and a critical, problem-solving and creative mind’.

Some of the other notable points about the O4NT program include:

— With one iPad per student, the schools are said to have more flexibility to adapt to the needs of individual students rather than tailoring lessons to a group.

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Image Source: http://www.larkin.net.au/blog/2013/03/01/vic-ipad-workshops/

Wow. More details have come out this week on the massive iPad rollout by the Los Angeles Unified School District. The country’s 2nd largest school district will get free iPads in the hands of 31,000 of its students this school year.

And that’s just the beginning of their huge iPad program. As CiteWorld reports, the plans are to rollout iPads to all of the 640,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District by late in 2014.

Here are some of the impressive details about this iPad rollout:

— Phase One will get iPads to students in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools – and it is targeting kids who likely do not have their own computers right now.

— The school district is stressing the importance of preparing their students for using the technology they’ll need to be comfortable with when they graduate.

— Each student will get their own iPad that’s pre-loaded with educational apps. Another part of the project will bring digital textbooks to the students’ iPads through a deal with a major educational publisher (which will also save the district money when compared to printed textbooks).

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Image Source: http://www.larkin.net.au/blog/2013/03/01/vic-ipad-workshops/

Apple has announced today that they’ve received approval from the Los Angeles Board of Education on a $30 million rollout of iPads to the nation’s 2nd largest school district.

The iPad rollout in the LA Unified School District will start this fall and will bring iPads to every student across the district’s 47 campuses. Here’s a little details on the apps that will be used on the iPads and a great quite on the reasons why the iPad was selected:

“The Board voted unanimously for Apple because iPad rated the best in quality, was the least expensive option and received the highest scoring by the review panel that included students and teachers,” said Jaime Aquino, LAUSD Deputy Superintendent of Instruction. “The vote is another step forward in the District’s plan to equip every one of its students with a device by 2014. When completed, the LAUSD will become the largest district in the nation to provide each of its students with the technology.”

Apple will provide iPads that include the Pearson Common Core System of Courses delivered via a new app as part of the integrated solution. Apps such as iWork®, iLife® and iTunes®, in addition to a range of educational third-party apps are also included.

Good to see that the LA Board of Education missed the (Microsoft) memo about the iPad being only for consumption and can somehow get by without Powerpoint.