Activate Learning with No-Low Lift iPad Activities

Sharing engaging strategies that leverage iPad with teachers is at the top of my priority list. It's even better when those strategies don't require much knowledge about the technology tools or teacher work to get it all setup for the students. Some of my favorite activities to share are the ones that require little to no prep and get the students creating.

I recently led a professional development to share 4 quick strategies for engaging students. Each one is described below.

ABC Brainstorm Strategy

Display a single image on the board for students to see. Ask them to write a word that describes the picture for each letter of the alphabet using their app of choice such as Notes, Freeform, Keynote, etc. After 2 minutes, ask them to find a partner and compare words to see if they can fill in any additional letters. When students are done sharing, they can return to their seats and you can ask "What are some words you came up with for the letter ____?" Then have a short discussion about how they relate to the picture. Now that student's background knowledge is engaged, start the meat of the lesson!

In the Wild

This one is my favorite. Have students snap a picture of their surroundings. Then use markup to locate or add objects in the photo in response to a prompt. In the example above, teachers were asked to snap a photo of the room we were in and use the various colors to locate the types of angles they found in the room. They had 3 minutes. From there we could move on with a lesson about angle types and relationships.

Thin Slide

I can't take credit for this idea. It is one of my favorite Eduprotocols. I just borrowed their Google Slides template and opened it in Keynote. I then made the Keynote document collaborative so all students could access the same document to add their slide. The only rules are they can only use one slide, one image, and one word to respond to the prompt. The prompt I gave teachers for this workshop was "What quality makes a great leader?" We used this as an introduction to the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding. This could be used for just about any topic at any grade.

Quick Takes

This one is fast and can be chaotic but so fun. Give students a prompt. In this example, we are getting ready to start our lesson on the Industrial Revolution. I wanted them to think about what life was like before all of our modern day convinces. Students often feel awkward recording in a room full of people (especially high school students!). I told the teachers they had 2 minutes to record a 30 second video of themselves answering the prompt. The trick was they all had to get out of their seats, find a space facing the wall around the outside of the classroom, record, then return to their seats when they were done. Absolutely no one wanted to be the last one at the wall recording. So, they got up recorded and sat back down. These videos could be submitted to your LMS for a quick check to see what students already know about any given topic.

Your Turn!

How could you use one of these strategies in your content? Or, what quick, low-no lift ideas do you have to activate student learning? Share in a comment below!

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