Leading Learning using I-pads

I attended some PLD along with my teacher colleagues on the use of i-pads in classrooms last week. Our school have recently begun exploring the use of these devises in classrooms and decided to connect with a school of a similar size that we know are doing really amazing things with them already.

As with all of these kinds of sessions, the exciting part is that there are those who are extremely knowledgeable, and those of us (like me) who are still learning the basics!

What I love about this kind of open forum teaching and learning session is that it doesn't matter how long you have been teaching - you can be a teacher, or a learner! I had an amazing opportunity to learn from teachers who are passionate about what they are doing with their students. It was so inspirational, I went out and bought my own personal i-pad so I can do some exploring and learning myself!

We joined both school groups together into the age levels they teach and each group went to a different class at our school. I joined the junior teachers who teach 5 -7 year olds. This dialogue was led predominantly by 2 teachers who had the least amount of actual teaching experience, yet they are happily leading learning for their [more experienced] colleagues- Distributed leadership at its' finest. this also shows a clear relationship between distributed leadership and organisational change. Evidence that distributed forms of leadership influence development and change in schools (Harris, 2003). 

As a result of this session, I have taken the opportunity to begin my own use of i-pads with learners. I have the opportunity to work with one of our New Entrant classes each Thursday in our computer room. Here we have been learning how to "cntrl-alt-delete" and find the icons we need etc to explore "Starfall.com". So I took some photos of them using starfall, collated these into "pic collage" and added some text of them telling me what they like doing! Easy! not extremely pedagogically sound at this point, but we all have to start somewhere! If you'd like to take a peek... click here


When I hear about professional learning for teachers being a "one size fits all" for modern educators, I feel extremely bewildered! If teachers are not getting professional learning that meets their professional learning needs, then we are doing them a disservice!

I look forward to a visit to their school for follow up dialogue in the near future!

Harris, A. (2003). Teacher Leadership as Distributed Leadership: Heresy, fantasy or possibility? School Leadership & Management, 23(3), 313–324. doi:10.1080/1363243032000112801

image source here