As part of this trial, we have been experimenting with different ways of accessing the curriculum. It is also becoming clear that the use of iPads present us with a multitude of ways of enabling students to express their understandings of concepts. This is exciting. It is such a huge opportunity for us and for the students – these tools are incredibly engaging and this is important but even more important is the fact that they can be tools of differentiation and creation.
Mrs Sansness and I have been working to create an iBook that would support the students’ learning in History this Semester. Our purpose for this iBook was clear – we did not want to replicate the curriculum materials we already had or replace them. Instead, we wanted to create a resource that would supplement what the teachers already had access to. We wanted to provide something that had rich multimedia in it and something that was interactive. A further aim would be to involve the students in the next phase of development – to use the things they created as part of this unit to enhance the ibook further so that the following year, the iBook would be a showcase of the learning journey of a group of students.