Authentic PL for Teachers

Finding authentic ways to encourage teachers to become familiar with iPads can be challenging at the best of times, so this year we are looking at what we are really asking teachers to do.

We all know that our classroom environments are important. Each term we dedicate a staff meeting time to ‘Walk and Wonder’. The teachers have a specific list of criteria they’re looking for (for us it’s connected to our PYP ethos) and are asked to take photos and/or notes about what they see.

And that’s where the authentic use of the iPad comes in. We created a ‘Walk and Wonder’ workbook using the Pages app, complete with media placeholders for teachers to use to snap their photos within and dedicated places to write their notes as they wandered around the rooms.

We all met together to begin with and had a quick demo on how media placeholders work. The lightbulb moments were very special indeed! 😊

The teachers then spent some time wandering through each other's classrooms and taking photos of what they thought met the criteria given or ideas they wanted to refer back to..

The feedback was awesome - every teacher could see for themselves the value of the ipad and more importantly how they might use it with their students. 

Some teachers asked if I could share a blank template for them to use with their students while  others asked if they could learn how to create a placeholder themselves. That was a success for me right there! 

A blank template was quickly created and shared along with quick videos on how to make the placeholders either on their Macbooks or on their iPads.

We’re looking forward to seeing some innovative uses of Pages in our classrooms over the next little while.

Feel free to grab the blank template here if it’s helpful for your kura too.

Attachments

Blank - Walk and Wonder .pages

Download  (2.1 MB)