Week One: iPads in the JH

Its been a great week at Howard-Winneshiek CSD with our 1:1 iPads in the Junior High. The students are actively making choices about how to generate, obtain, manipulate, or display information. Technology use allows many more students to be actively thinking about information, making choices, and executing skills than is typical in teacher-led lessons.

Students are learning on the go all the time with these devices in their hand. Just take a look around the community and where are the Junior High students hanging out? I have noticed groups hanging out at the local library, arriving before school or even staying after school later to all use the WI-FI access. But the BIG question to ask our selves is what will we do to help rural students in our district who live on a farm to receive WI-FI access?

The teachers are also learning how to support students in performing authentic tasks. They have been working collaboratively with one another as a team to learn new steps, processes, and Apps for the classroom. This has been a learning curve but they all have been eager to learn new technology and utilize it on a daily basis. When meeting with the staff they were overcoming how students should submit an assignment from their iPad. That evening I received a video that a teacher created from the Show Me App explaining to the students how to submit their homework. It's these types of challenges the staff is coming together to find solutions and how to solve the problem. As Superintendent Carver wrote the staff "there will be Opportunities and Challenges and I am confident we are ready for  what's next"!