Kings Norton CLC: Emerging Technology
Today I’m down in Birmingham doing a presentation at the Emerging Technology Conference at Kings Norton CLC. My task is to talk about Mobile Learning in Education – using iPod Touches, iPads, iTunes and iTunes U – in 45 minutes! It’s virtually impossible to cover all the possibilities of this huge topic in such a short space of time, so I’ve come up with a few examples and hope that delegates find them useful. I’ve provided an outline of my presentation below, along with all the links I’ll be talking about.
Background
I run the Radio Lingua Network (website | iTunes link) of language-learning podcasts, and our education branch website can be found at radiolinguaschools.com.
iTunes
iTunes is a tool which allows you to organise your digital content: music, audio files, movies, tv shows, podcasts and much more. It can be downloaded free from the Apple website and is available for both Mac and PC. It comes bundled on all Macs and on many HP and Dell PCs. Anyone who has an iPod, iPhone or iPad must have iTunes, so there are millions of copies of iTunes worldwide, and many of your students will be very familiar with iTunes.
iTunes Store – Podcasts
In addition to allowing you to organise your own content, iTunes lets you access content from around the web, and around the world. Click on the iTunes Store link in the left hand menu of iTunes to access music, movies, tv shows, etc. This content is available for purchase, but the iTunes Store also offers three main areas of free content which are of huge interest to educators:
- iTunes Podcasts
- iTunes U
- the App Store
Examples of podcasts used are:
iTunes U
While the range of materials available within the iTunes Podcasts area can be daunting and at times difficult to filter, iTunes U provides an area of content categorised by subject and organised by institution which has already gone through a quality assurance process. Examples quoted include:
iPod Touch / iPhone apps
Time does not allow for a thorough demonstration of iPod Touch and iPhone apps. However, the following apps were mentioned:
- Dress up and make up (£1.19)
- Make a Martian (free)
- Decibel Meter (£1.19)
- Coastermate / XSensor (free)
- iRevise (£1.19)
- iStudiez Pro (£1.79)
iPad apps
I discussed various ways of using the iPad bundled apps in the classroom. Links for third party apps and content I mentioned can be found below:
- Walk Talk and Learn French podcast
- iWork for iPad (Apple website)
- Pages – Word processing (£5.99)
- Keynote – Presentations (£5.99)
- Numbers – Spreadsheets (£5.99)
- Omnigraffle – planning, mindmapping (£29.99)
- National Geographic Atlas (£1.19)
- The Guardian Eyewitness Photos (free)
- TypeDrawing – (£1.79)
- Pianist Pro - (£5.99)
- Korg iElectribe – (£5.99)
- forScore – (£2.99)
- Vuvuzela – (free)
Other resources
The Creative Classroom – a series of video podcasts produced by Apple Distinguished Educators including episodes on creating content for mobile devices.
iPad in Education – a new website created by ADE Ian Wilson looking at using the iPad in classrooms.
iPods in Essa Academy – Times online article about Abdul Chohan’s introduction of 1:1 iPods in his school.
Mobl21.com – Create mobile learning content quickly and easily, and serve it on your students’ devices
