Why iPad?

It’s Saturday morning, and I have the tradition of commenting on the first post in social media I see…and someone wrote: Why iPad? I answered, and I thought I would share my thoughts here too in the apple community forum. For me, the answer to that question is: It’s about empowering students and teachers, and well, just about anyone.

This powerful, mobile, multipurpose tool can do anything to enhance learning and the learning experience.

Why iPad? First of all, it permits students to access learning and to learn in different ways, which personalizes the learning experience to their specific needs. Students can listen to an audiobook or a podcast, watch a video, read a book or a website, watch and listen to a presentation, etc. With an iPad, everything is possible. Teachers can enhance their lessons any way they dream. They can easily add pictures, graphs, images; they can make their lessons interactive and fun. They can even do this on the fly while they are explaining. Also, students can learn with the help of accessibility features that are built right into the iPad. For example, students who struggle with reading can listen to any text they want, even if the text is well above their reading level. New language learners can also get anything they want translated until they learn the language of instruction. So all students can access learning in different ways.

Secondly, students can demonstrate their learning in different ways, which also personalizes their learning experience. For me, this is a big part of the answer to the question: Why iPad? They can create videos and share them with a real audience outside the classroom. They can easily create and publish books, articles, posters, infographics, a collage, mind maps; they can sketch note their thoughts, anything! They can take pictures or videos and do anything they want with them. They can make graphs and tables so easily. They can draw and explain. They can be anywhere they want to explain what they have learned with the green screen effect available in iMovie. They can easily write or dictate a note. They can make 3D creations to demonstrate their learning too and invite the community to view their creations. They can write a song or a podcast. They can make interactive presentations or create an animation. They can create an app; they can simply show what they have created and screen record, and the list goes on. All this is possible with the iPad’s native apps like Pages, Clips, iMovie, Numbers, Keynote, Freeform, Reality Composer, and Notes. They can also use the iPad’s built-in accessibility features like the audio recorder or the voice dictation feature available in the keyboard, or the translate to text feature. Because the iPad is so easy to use, all these types of creations can be made by students of all ages, even the littles!

Also, when students work together on their creations, they improve their collaborative and communication skills. They share their creations often, and they give each other feedback in order to improve their creations. Students present their work often, and this empowers them too. They become confident and improve many important life skills.

Finally, what is the most exciting thing for me and a big part of my answer to the question “why iPad” is the fact that students feel empowered with iPad. They feel they can learn and create just about anything they want and share their creations with the world. Their creations impact the community, and this makes what they are doing meaningful and important to them.  And for teachers, well, they are just happy to see how engaged the students are in their learning and sharing. 

So there, that is my “why iPad.”