Over the past few weeks, EdTechTeacher’s Greg Kulowiec and Beth Holland have presented two webinars about iPads in the classroom. (If you missed them, you can watch the recordings on the EdTechTeacher webinar page.) Two themes that came to the forefront of these online discussions included Creating & Reading Digital Content and Student Learning. Both Greg & Beth have elaborated on these themes through recent blog posts.

Creating & Reading on the iPad

During the iPads in the Classroom Part 1 webinar, Greg spoke about the potential for using annotation tools with custom digital content generated from web pages.

“One of the most easily accessible and applicable functions of the iPad across the curriculum is to use it as a reading & note taking device and there are two fantastic websites, that when used in conjunction with the iPad, make it incredibly easy to turn any web based content ( blogs, websites, articles, primary source documents, etc…) into either a PDF or ePub document, right on the iPad.”

In the rest of Greg’s blog post, he provides detailed instructions for using Joliprint and dotEpub. You can read more on The History 2.0 Classroom.

Differentiated Learning on the iPad

Beth discussed several strategies and apps to promote student learning during the iPads in the Classroom Part 2 webinar.

“I’ve admitted this before. I did not instantly love the iPad… However, as the device – and my thinking – evolved, I started to become an advocate for it. One of the main reasons for my launch onto the iPad bandwagon had to do with its ability to differentiate learning experiences for students. In addition to providing instant Internet access and a host of learning tools, it gave students an opportunity to customize their own learning… The iPad puts the power of learning in the hands of the students.”

In the rest of her post, Beth provides her Top 8 List of reasons for why she feels the iPad is an invaluable tool for creating unique, differentiated learning experiences for students.

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